The revelation that a majority of ministers in the cabinet have accumulated nearly 1,000 unpaid summonses raises questions as to how the road taxes for their vehicles could be renewed each year.

According to an official at the Road Transportation Department (JPJ), owners of vehicles with outstanding traffic fines cannot renew their road taxes until payments have been made.

It is illegal for motorists to use a vehicle without a current road tax, which must be renewed annually.

When renewing road taxes, information on a road user's unpaid summonses would show in the computer network which is directly linked to the JPJ's mainframe computer.

Motorists are then told to clear their unpaid summons before they can renew their vehicle's road tax.

This is, of course, in theory. The reality is quite different, said a motoring expert, who declined to be named.

He said there seem to be some bureaucratic glitches between the police and the JPJ.

"Summonses information must first get to JPJ," he said.

"If the police does not send over the information, then a motorist would not have a record. That is why sometimes you could renew your road tax even when you have a backlog of several summonses from years ago. It's because the information has not reached JPJ yet."

However, the expert said that if a car owner is unlucky enough to be issued a traffic summons by a JPJ officer, it is a "guarantee" that the owner would be unable to renew the road tax of the vehicle if the owner does not pay up.

Summonses are usually issued by the police, as JPJ has less manpower.

Demerit points

Another question, although not related to road tax renewal, was why the driving licences of the politicians, or their drivers', were not suspended after having committed dozens of traffic offences.

The JPJ has a road safety demerit system called Kejara. It is a point demerit system whereby if a motorist exceeds 15 points, the user's drivers licence could be suspended for six months.

Ensuing offences would result in further suspension and finally a permanent cancellation of the drivers licence.

Speeding, the most common offence committed by the ministers, carries demerit points of between 6 and 15 points, depending on the severity of each offence.

"However, for the demerit system to work, police officers would have to fill out forms. It's a complicated system, which of course does not work because you don't see any of the ministers' licences suspended or revoked," said the motoring expert.

Double standards

He also criticised several ministers, including Deputy Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, who claimed that they were not driving their cars when the traffic offences were committed.

"If you look closely at the bottom of the traffic summons, it is stated that if you are not the driver of a vehicle, but someone else was driving your vehicle, then you can fill out the form and direct the police's attention to that particular person. The police would then reissue the summons.

"We can't know for sure whether a minister was behind a wheel or not. But you can't expect people to believe that you had no knowledge of the traffic offences committed in vehicles under their names.

"The only scenario I can imagine is that their aides could be hiding the summonses from them, but it's very unusual as the summonses were not paid for up to seven years," he said.

On why the ministers have been getting away with it for so long, the expert felt it was due to a mix of procrastination, inefficiency and a fear of penalising high-profile politicians.

"The summons are issued to high-profile car owners. You know where their offices are. The police cannot claim that these people cannot be traced.

"They can't say we cannot find them... even if that is the case, you can send a formal notice to their office," he said.

The police said more than RM2.82 billion remain uncollected in traffic summonses issued between 2001 and 2004 to some 9.4 million drivers nationwide.

Malaysiakini has sent a request to the traffic police for an interview last week and has yet to hear from them.

Full list of cabinet members and their unpaid fines