Mat Zain’s insistence that police could investigate Gani based on the contents of his statutory declaration (SD) without lodging a police report.Mat Zain drew attention to Sections 107 and 107A of the Criminal Procedure Code related to information given to the police and their powers to investigate.
Tan Sri Abu Talib Othman said”I am saying this not in support of Gani but to protect the public office of the AG,”Tan Sri Abu Talib Othman said
Sometimes, the formidable morphs into the pathetic for along time It’s all fixed juggernaut, with its potent combination of powerful interests seemed to carry such sweeping and overwhelming force that it looked to be above any challenge, criticism or scandal the same ability to enforce a conspiracy of silence is taking on an air of pathetic absurdity.A former police detective will not see any investigation into his allegations of wrongdoings by the Attorney General unless a police report is lodged, a former top government lawyer said when commenting on the explosive claims.Former AG Tan Sri Abu Talib Othman said that retired Kuala Lumpur CID director Datuk Mat Zain Ibrahim must lodge a police report if he has evidence of criminal wrongdoings by Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail (pic, left).”He was a senior police officer and must have evidence against Gani (the current AG) before making a report and stand by what he alleges.
The brute force of power has replaced the unwritten rules that governed behaviour as the primary arbiter of our actions. Protection and punishment. The two standard responses to we from a minister that both protection and punishment are necessary instruments for dealing with this problem, responding to Mat Zain’s insistence that police could investigate Gani based on the contents of his statutory declaration (SD) without lodging a police report.Mat Zain drew attention to Sections 107 and 107A of the Criminal Procedure Code related to information given to the police and their powers to investigate.Mat Zain had also alleged that Gani had deliberately lost the case, resulting in the ICJ ruling in favour of Singapore. He urged the authorities to investigate the reason Malaysia lost the island to Singapore, saying the matter involved the country’s sovereignty.The former cop had said the reason he came out with the SD was to convince Putrajaya to establish a royal commission of inquiry over the loss of Pulau Batu Puteh to Singaporebut clearly much more is involved. The current idea of action seems to be focused on either preventing an incident that has already happened by limiting the focus to the very set of circumstances that were involved illusion the past, or to run away from the complexity of the proble
“We do not know if he has an agenda. No point in him hiding behind the SD whose contents may be hearsay.”Abu Talib said justice must be done if the police report contained elements of criminality.”Of course, Mat Zain is also open to prosecution if he lodges a false report against Gani.”Mat Zain had said that he had handed a copy of the SD to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak and senior Putrajaya officials, alleging wrongdoings by Gani over the Pulau Batu Puteh case.In 2008, the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Netherlands ruled that the sovereignty of the island, half the size of a football field, belonged to Singapore.In the 31-page SD, Mat Zain had claimed that hundreds of millions of ringgit had changed hands and deposited into a Hong Kong bank account over this case.
The problem of course is that protection and punishment, accompanied by anger and recrimination directed at the police and the politicians, seems at least somewhat tangible. Talking about societal change and the shaping of new mindsets seems to be a project in wishy-washy wishful thinking. When change is distributed so thinly over so many people, it looks impossible. It is much easier to believe that the police force and a limited number of people in power can be made to change and give us solutions.The change in the gender climate that can be seen around us needs to be understood differently for something fundamental has changed. real change has been the conversion of covert fantasy into a sense of overt acquisition, which has been aided by a new sense of power and its legitimacy.
The implicit restraints that had been put in place socially have been dismantled, and power in its new form begs to be converted into opportunity. The primacy of desire means that the eye is always hungry, avid in its quest for acquisition, and any action is seen to lack consequences that cannot be reversed or managed through the use of some form of power.Police brute force of power has replaced the unwritten rules that governed behaviour as the primary arbiter of our actions. Currently, we live in a world between rules — those of an earlier era do not apply and new codes have not been framed or agreed to. The responsibility shifts to the enforcement of the law, but this is deeply compromised by the fact that the process is managed by those that cannot fully comprehend the meaning of the changes that we see around us. the operative word being ‘finally’. will it take government a lot to reach to this point, and the final call apparently to ask the Attorney General Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patailto resign the argument was that these were merely allegations and that nothing conclusive had been put on the table. The idea that people could resign (and remember this is just a resignation from a position, not a jail sentence, and one that can easily be reversed if the individuals are eventually found not culpable) for misdemeanours that were strongly indicated seemed to be an alien one.
The need to evade responsibility both on part of the individuals as well as the government till as long as possible is a part of a larger narrative that goes beyond these instances or indeed this government. It seems to be part of a growing tendency to frame all debates in the vocabulary of the extreme. Demands are conceived of in the extreme, and deadlock prevails till some overwhelming force gets applied. Nothing happens without the intervention of courts, and that too only when they give direct orders, or the party high command when it exerts direct influence on a subject. The opposition too frames its demands in extreme terms- in every session, the resignation of some minister or the PM is demanded and used as a reason to boycott Parliament. The legislative houses have been reduced to empty shells, that exist to exert force rather than extract solutions from problems through debate and discussion. The only mode of protest that is deemed to have any value is that of the boycott which devalues the very institution that it is part of. Any other intermediate form of protest has lost currency. Of course, through cynical overuse, the boycott has now become a routine fact of life, and the government has begun to find it convenient to go along and put the onus of inaction on the opposition. The boycott threat has spent itself; now, without a desire to bring down the government and face elections, the government simply ignores the opposition.
The malaise is not restricted to the political establishment alone- the media and the middle class speak in the same language. Calls for aggressive pro-active ‘decisive’ action against criminal wrongdoings by Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail , the demand for all manners of crime, the need to weed out corruption with a silver bullet of some kind- the yearning for decisive answers and final solutions can be seen everywhere. The conversational pitch is set so high that any attempt at reasonableness is construed either as a sign of deliberate muddying-of-waters or of weakness. What has been lost is a belief in the power of discussion; today’s conversations at held at gunpoint and end up being guttural exchanges of threats.
In a complex world, the desire for simple answers that are the result of the use of superior force is potentially dangerous. For it translates into a desire for seductive forms of clarity and a susceptibility to the shallow symbol. The contempt for engaging in dialogue, exploring shaded modes of resolution, staying in intermediate zones of accommodation and negotiation, being comfortable with the idea of give-and-take makes all problems seem intractable. The recent episode involving criminal wrongdoings by Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail is a case in point – the use of diplomatic means rather than futile sabre-rattling demonstrated the power of restraint and nuanced dialogue. In the real world, not all problems have neat solutions, not all individuals have all the answers, not all words need to be backed up by actions and not all acts of strength translate into power. We navigate through issues using a combination of word, gesture, symbolic action, benign neglect, tolerance, the veiled threat and the occasional use of brute force. Scams have come and gone in a flurry, and all debates have been about individuals. Any attempt to bring about institutional change has been thwarted, any meaningful dialogue about bringing about deep and real change has been avoided. The two ministers have gone, and what difference has it made to anything? Had their departure been an act of contrition, it would have meant something. Otherwise, it is just about two insignificant politicians being replaced by two others and life going on as usual.
