Police's arrogance of power: the root cause

It is indeed time for Malaysians to understand with more in-depth knowledge the root cause of the arrogance of power on the part of a rogue segment of the powerful police force from a historical perspective because many security cultures and operational habits come into being not overnight but over a period of time.

Of course, bad habits just die hard. Also, absolute power is, like opium or heroin, highly addictive.

Malaysia - 45 Years Under the Internal Security Act (Kuala Lumpur, SIRD, 2004) should be very helpful to those who are interested to know how the police was politicised - and became insolent like the ancient Roman Praetorian Guards - in the Cold War era by both the international rightwing and the local SOBs to suppressed even legitimate, constitutional and democratic opposition such as the Labour Party of Malaya and People's Party and to serve as Umno politicians' ultimate leverage in their intra-party dog-fights for powers. It happened long before the sacking, arrest and torture of former DPM Anwar Ibrahim in 1998.

Malaysia - 45 Years Under the Internal Security Act was penned originally in Chinese by a former ISA detainee Koh Swe Yong and translated into English by Agnes Khoo, a PhD candidate in a British university who also authored Life As The River Flows - Women In The Malayan Anti-Colonial Struggle (Kuala Lumpur, SIRD, 2004).

Koh, himself physically and psychologically tortured by police Special Branch interrogators without being known by the outside world while under detention in the 1970s, now publicly and proudly dedicates his book to:

The People of all races and creeds in Malaysia,
who have courageously sacrificed their lives and become our martyrs,
who have been detained,
who are still in prison,
who are deprived of their citizenship,
who have been deported,
who are still in exile,
because
they fought against colonial aggression and occupation
they fought for our liberation and the independence of our country
they fought against imperialism and hegemony
they fought for democracy, human rights and social justice.

From a historical perspective, it is indeed interesting to see how far the police reform can go given the fact it is still being used or misused as ruling politicians' tool to 'handle' the opposition and for intra-party power struggles. How to break the abang-adik and mutually hutang-budi relations between Umno (including, yes, the Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi who came to power only in a vacual situation created by the downfall of Anwar Ibrahim which involved the rogue segment of the police) and PDRM.