It’s another window-dressing in the making - that’s how Malaysia’s premier human rights group Suaram has described the proposed Special Complaints Commission (SCC).

According to Suaram, the SCC bill tabled in Parliament on Thursday in place of the promised and long-awaited Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC) was an “utter disappointment”.

“The SSC, in our view, is a much watered-down complaints mechanism to deal with police misconduct and abuse of powers,” said Suaram coordinator John Liu.

“Clearly, the SCC bill, if passed, will see the setting up of yet another commission merely for the purposes of window-dressing the deeply-rooted problems in the police force.”

He said Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's pledge to reform the police force and to combat corruption have emerged as mere “empty promises” with the proposed SCC. The SCC will not be probing corruption cases.

“In the past one year alone, a number of allegations of high-level corruption in the police force had surfaced, involving no less than the top-ranked and third highest-ranked police officers.” lamented Liu.

The proposed SCC will consist of seven members, comprising a chairman, the inspector-general of police, the director-general of the Public Complaints Bureau, the director-general of the Anti-Corruption Agency and three other members appointed by the prime minister.

“As this commission is aimed at dealing with the misconduct and abuse of powers by enforcement agencies officers, the composition of members from the very same enforcement agencies in the proposed commission seriously undermines the independence of this body.

“This is against the recommendations made by the Royal Police Commission that commissioners of the IPCMC shall not be from amongst current or former members of the police force.”

Delay highly unacceptable

The proposed SCC will also have extremely limited role to only receive, inquire and investigate complaints in relation to the misconduct of enforcement agencies. It would not have powers to impose any punishments, as compared to the originally-recommended IPCMC.

Liu also lambasted the government for taking such a long time to come up with such a disappointing proposal.

“The Royal Police Commission in its report had set May 2006 as the deadline for the setting up of the IPCMC. Not only has the government failed to meet the deadline, one and a half years later, it has come up with a proposal that falls way short of the recommendations of the Royal Police Commission in 2005.”

This is “highly unacceptable”, he said.

Liu argued that serious human rights abuses and impunity will continue to be rampant with the setting up of a commission with questionable independence and an extremely limited role.

“To resolve these issues and to restore public confidence in the police force, nothing less than a full-fledged IPCMC as recommended by the Royal Police Commission will do.”

A waste of public funds

Meanwhile, Police Watch Malaysia coordinator Dr B Chandran slammed police chief Musa Hassan for showing no interest in making the police as a responsible and discipline force.

“The setting up of the SCC is a total disregard of the royal commission which was set up to look into ways to enhance and improve the police force. It’s a total disregard of the public’s opinion,” he said.

Chandran has resigned himself to the fact that nothing much is going to happen on the abuse of powers and corruption in the police force.

“Abdullah has decided not to take up the challenge to improve the police. It appears the public have wasted their funds on the royal commission and they will be wasting more funds on the SCC.”