Federal constitution had empowered the police to set up supervisory body to exercise disciplinary control over PDRM, including IPCMC and as such, the Najib’s Government shall not further delay to implement the recommendation as stated by Tun Dzaddin’s Royal Commission since eight(8) years ago.
Under the heading of Police Force Commission, Article 140(1) of the Federal Constitution clearly stated : “ There shall be a police Force commission whose jurisdiction shall extend to all persons who are members of the police force and which, subject to the provisions of any existing law; shall be responsible for the appointment, confirmation, emplacement on the permanent or pensionable establishment, promotion, transfer and exercise of disciplinary control over members of the police force :
Provided that Parliament may by law provide for the exercise of such disciplinary control over all or any of the members of the police force in such manner and by such authority as may be provided by that law, and in that event, if the authority is other than the Commission, the disciplinary control exercisable by such authority shall not be exercised by the commission; and no provision of such law shall be invalid on the ground of inconsistency with any provision of this part.
Article 140(2) also provided that Federal law may provide for the exercise of other function by the Police Force Commission.
From the above provision, it is undisputed that Parliament is empowered to pass any law to govern & exercise disciplinary control over members of the police force and that is to include, setting up of Independent Police Complaint & Misconduct Commission(IPCMC).
Hence, the above constitutional provision had proven that the statement made by the Home Minister, Dato Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi when answering question in parliament are both flaw and misleading.
Dato Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi while replying to MP’s question in the Dewan Rakyat last week had told the House that the main reason why government did not accept the Royal Commission’s recommendation to set up IPCMC is because such proposal is unconstitutional. This is now proven to be wrong and misleading.
As such, it is only appropriate that Zahid shall step forward to apologize to the Dewan Rakyat for the mistake he had made and failing which, it can be construed that he had made such statement with deliberate intention to mislead the Dewan.
Should that be the case, being a member of parliament, I will consider to refer the Minister to the privilege committee under Rule 36(12) of the Standing order for making false statement with intention to bring disrepute to the Dewan.
One must remembered that according to Zahid’s reply, it was revealed that there were 231 custodial deaths in the period of last 10 years, and death under police custody is a manifestation of cruelty, brutality and severe infringement on human right by the authority which must be taken with utmost seriousness.
As custodial death mostly involved police force, it is only appropriate that an independent body be set up to investigate wrong doings, if any, by the police. Any internal body to conduct investigation against own peers obviously is never sufficient nor shall it be effective. The present system under EAIC had been proven to be ineffective to curb such abuse of power.
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