MACC rapped over police report against Thai pathologist
(The Star) – The DAP has rapped the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) for lodging a police report against Thai pathologist Dr Pornthip Rojanasunand.
Secretary-general Lim Guan Eng said this was the first time a police report has been lodged against a pathologist, and termed it as “something unusual”.
“This is an act of intimidation. She must not be pressured but allowed to present her findings without fear or favour.
“By doing this, the MACC is giving the impression that it is covering up the truth or being influenced by certain quarters,” he told a press conference after launching the “No Plastic Bags on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday” campaign at Komtar here on Saturday.
It was reported that two MACC officers had lodged police reports against PKR party organ Suara Keadilan and Dr Pornthip over an article “confirming” that political aide Teoh Beng Huat was murdered.
Hisham Mohd Yusoff, 30, and Raub Ghani, 41, of the Putrajaya MACC investigation branch lodged the reports at the Shah Alam district police headquarters.
On July 16, Teoh, 30, the political aide to Selangor state executive councillor Ean Yong Hian Wah, was found dead at the MACC office located on the 14th floor of Plaza Masalam in Shah Alam.
Teoh’s body was exhumed four months later after the coroner allowed a second post-mortem, which was conducted by Sungai Buloh Hospital Pathology Unit head Dr Shahidan Md Noor, with Dr Pornthip in attendance as an observer for the Selangor state government.
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Are police reports by police/MACC against Guan Eng, Ean Yong, Dr. Pornthip and Suara Keadilan part of a high-level sinister design/conspiracy to clamp down and strike out at fair comments on important national issues?
Kim Kit Siang
On Christmas Eve, the Selangor Police lodged a police report of sedition against DAP Secretary-General and Penang Chief Minister, Lim Guan Eng, for his speech at the Pakatan Rakyat national convention in Shah Alam on December 19 expressing national sentiments that the mysterious death of DAP aide Teoh Beng Hock at the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) headquarters in Shah Alam was a case of murder.
Three days later, the Selangor Chief Police Officer Datuk Khalid Abu Bakar alleged that the DAP Selangor Chairman and Selangor State Executive Councillor Ean Yong Hian Wah had “intimidated” the police in “directing” the police to stop their investigation of Guan Eng – when all that Ean Yong had done was to call on the police to stop their baseless investigation.
Yesterday, two MACC officers, Mohd Yusoff and Raub Ghani, lodged police reports against Suara Keadilan for an article in the Parti Keadilan Rakyat newspaper “which confirmed as murder the death of Teoh” as well as against Thai pathologist Dr. Pornthip Rojanasunan for “leaking” the information to unauthorised people the forensic report of the second post-mortem on Teoh on Nov. 22.
In the Top News of 2009 for the various media, Teoh Beng Hock invariably topped the list for his tragic death at the MACC headquarters last July.
One electronic media even named the MACC “the Malaysian of the Year” – not for the breakthrough it had achieved in fulfilling its parliamentary mandate to spearhead an anti-corruption drive to catapult Malaysia among the least-corrupt nations but for so dismally and disastrously failing its mandate, or as Malaysian Insider has put it, MACC “stood out as an unfortunate symbol of all that is wrong in the country, unkept promises”.
Collectively, the police and MACC reports against Guan Eng, Ean Yong, Dr. Pornthip character as they bespeak of a sinister design or conspiracy in high places to clamp down and strike out at fair comment on important issues and developments in the country.
Those in authority and power have got their priorities all wrong.
Instead of making Malaysians safe and secure in the streets, public places and even the privacy of their homes, so that gated communities are being dismantled instead of being installed at unprecedented rates in various parts of the country, the police are more pre-occupied with wasting precious police resources and man-hours on the political agenda of the Barisan Nasional to with its political opponents.
Instead of declaring war on corruption, the MACC continues to give top priority to its agenda as the catspaw of the Umno/Barisan Nasional political masters by declaring and continuing its war against the Pakatan Rakyat.
Unless the MACC can win public confidence by operating as an independent, non-partisan and professional anti-corruption body, it is heading for another run as top newsmaker in 2010 for perverting its statutory mandate and abusing the vast powers and resources entrusted to it by Parliament to combat corruption.
The police are also undergoing a similar crisis of public confidence.
