In this business of governance in Malaysia, the view from the top can be very different from the view at the bottom. I think the twain shall never meet.

A case in point is the issue of police violence on innocent citizens and yet-to-be-convicted people suspected of being criminals.

Given our near feudalistic top-heavy social structure, it is most unlikely that those rare alpha males and females sitting at the top of our politico-financial pile will ever be at the receiving end of police violence, unless they fall out of grace - like Anwar Ibrahim.

Why is this so?

Well, policemen from senior officers to constables on the beat are ordinary human beings. They respect and fear power like the next John Doe on the street. They are also civil servants through and through. Brushing against very powerful people may put their career and their rice bowl in jeopardy.

At the very top of the pile, top politicians and top policemen also enjoy a kind of symbiotic relationship. Like any branch of the civil service, the police department is thoroughly politicised. It has been used as a political instrument - and the most powerful one at that - to ensure that politicians stay in power.

Vested interest group

Like all other branches of the civil service, the police department is also a vested interest group unto its own. There is the matter of power, influence and prestige that comes with more laws, more jurisdictions, more manpower, more annual allocation, and more control over the lives of ordinary citizens. They need their political masters for these purposes.

There are also personal vested interests for individual police officers to think of. Like all top civil servants, senior policemen needs promotion, perks, titles, which will determine the size of their pension, and perhaps the prospect of a senior corporate position upon retirement.

Eventually, because of the long-standing politicisation of the police force, all policemen tend to internalise the values of their political masters, without having the opportunity to develop a professional independent mindset that would distinguish between government of the day and eternal government that rule by divine right. That professional impartiality may develop only if ever there has been a change of government.

A symbiotic relationship is one in which one partner cannot do without the other. Mutual back-scratching among humans here is like the behaviour of mutual grooming among other primates in the jingle; it reinforces the invisible bond that guarantees group cohesion.

In a sense, top politicians are also hostage of a sort to police power. {Sometimes I wonder. How many of our top politicians have their political and personal affairs recorded on secret files within the inner sanctum of the police department?}

The prestige of awesome police power has had a long history in Malaysia.

Long history

The birth of the Malaysian nation almost ended in a messy miscarriage from the twin threat of a prolonged communist insurgency and the spectre of race riot in 1963.

The survival of the Malaysian nation state has been used as justification for the numerous constitutional amendments and new legislations aimed at maintaining order, to the detriment of civil liberties and human rights enshrined in the federal constitution.

The ISA, the Emergency (Public Order and Prevention of Crime) Ordinance of 1969, the Essential (Security Cases) Regulations of 1975, the Restricted Residence Act, the Police Act, the Trade Unions Act and the Sedition Act, the Universities and University Colleges Act, the Printing Presses and Publications Act, and the Official Secrets Act are all legacies of this historical obsession with public security.

As a result, the police force - being the government arm that monopolises state violence in the enforcement of laws - has been given a great deal of ultra-constitutional powers, in arrest and detention on suspicion alone, and in the interpretation of what constitutes public security, often beyond the judicial process.

Obviously, even long after the states of emergencies have long ceased to exist, it is to the interest of politicians in the ruling coalition to manufacture an aura of fear for real or imagined security threats, especially those based on the potential for racial or religious conflicts.

The mirage of a permanent state of siege is a useful justification for oppressing legitimate dissent by civil society groups and opposition parties. The not so small phalange of alpha males and females now dominating the politico-corporate world in Malaysia are now heavily dependent on the loyalty of the police in ensuring their personal survival and the furtherance of their vested interests.

Beholden to police powers

You could say that top politicians and their pyramids of vested interest groups below them are now beholden to the wide powers of the police for their hold on political power and their dominance in the corporate world.

That is why Abdullah Badawi, despite an initial attempt in projecting his image of a reformist prime minister, will not dismantle the fantastic powers of the police. To do so would mean political suicide for him.

That is also why, when domestic criticism redirect our attention on the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib to police torture of suspects at home, prominent ministers will come out in the defence of the police. Listening to them, you get the impression that our police force of about 90,000 or so is squeaky clean and super-efficient.

The feeling of citizens on the ground, however, can be very different.

If there are credible opinion polls in Malaysia on public perception of our police, I suspect a considerable portion of our citizens will describe their feelings for our men and women in blue as being somewhere between fear and cynical contempt.

Respect, confidence, and love are not the sort of sentiments that burst forth spontaneously from one's heart when one chances upon an encounter with anyone in a police uniform.

Perhaps the misdeeds of a small handful of rouge policemen have tarnished the public image of the police force. That would be the standard response of public officialdom.

Lack of mechanisms

And then perhaps the sort of crimes committed by policemen is but the tip of the iceberg, except that this iceberg is bigger than the one that sank the Titanic. Given our culture of secrecy surrounding the working of our security apparatus, we will never know for sure.

A fair question would be this: given the sweeping and awesome powers of the police over ordinary citizens, and the lack of mechanisms to check the abuse of those very powers, can we be confident that policemen in general will exercise enlightened self-restraint when dealing out state violence?

I am not questioning the sincerity among the rank and file of the police force in fighting crimes, maintaining public order, and serving King and Country. The more reflective and longer serving ones will probably see themselves as carrying on their long institutional tradition of acting as guardians to the society as a whole.

But times have changed. I am not convinced that new police recruits in recent decades are the same materials of which their predecessors are made.

A judicious question would be: how many people in the employ of the police department have at least a university first degree?

The dire situation with our falling standards among university graduates being what it is, a university degree does not guarantee human qualities and excellence in the work place. But it is an indicator.

Put it another way. Is being a policeman a prime career choice among the brightest of our Malaysian youths of all races? Is this the most important institution of our nation staffed with the best brains of the nation? If not, why not?

I know next to nothing about the pay-scale for the police of course. Correct me if I am wrong, but my vague impression is that, for police officer with the rank of inspector and above, the pay can sustain a liveable lifestyle, with the possible exception of those living in expensive Klang Valley.

But the same may not be said of those sergeants, corporals and constables, the foot soldiers at the frontline of contact with the public. I understand that a new constable is paid less than an experienced waiter or a bar tender in a posh hotel in Kuala Lumpur.

You pay peanuts and you get monkeys to work for you. Low pay among the public sector has always bred the motive for corruption.

But pay is not everything that determines the quality of work done. Policemen are Malaysians, and are affected in the evolution of their moral values by the development of their society at large.

Public hypocrisy

The political, moral and financial corruption that has since spread like a cancer in our body politics must have affected the worldview of policemen up and down their rank and file also.

How will this institutional degeneration affect their attitude towards discharging their duties? Will they refrain from the use of terrible violence when arresting suspects, shoot first and ask question later, beat prisoners under remand into confession, and torture ISA detainees?

Will they respect and care for citizens as friends and paymasters, whose information will be vital for solving crimes? Or will they see every citizen as a potential criminal, over whom they can unleash the sort of violence sanctified by laws?

When the views expressed from the top to the world at large do not fit the reality on the ground, it is called public hypocrisy.