Parliamentary Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang will be calling for a parliamentary roundtable to discuss how to salvage the original proposal made by the Royal Commission on the Police Force to have an external oversight mechanism to check police abuses.

"I will convene the roundtable discussion in Parliament next Thursday inviting concerned NGOs, including the 16 members of the Royal Commission," he told a press conference in the Parliament lobby today.

Quoting former royal commissioner Tunku Abdul Aziz Ibrahim, Lim said: "No police force in the world has been successful in policing itself, which is why the royal commission was unanimous in its key proposal for the establishment of the Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC)."

Aziz, in a forum on Monday night, said the government's decision to set up the Special Complaints Commission (SCC) instead of the IPCMC amounts to an insult to the rakyat.

“In fact, it is an insult to Parliament itself. So to say I’m disappointed is a really an understatement. I think this sense of disappointment, the sense of quiet outrage is shared by all right-thinking people - hoping that at long last this would be a rare opportunity for Malaysia to change the way the police work in this country.

“Obviously, if this bill goes through, we can say goodbye to all these high hopes and aspirations that one day we would have the best police force that money cannot buy.”

Regrettable matters

Lim was of the view that although the government agreed to defer the second reading of the SCC Bill to the next parliament sitting, there are two matters which are most regrettable, which are:

- The refusal to set up a Parliamentary Select Committee to canvass the widest public consultation on whether the original proposal to have an independent IPCMC should be salvaged and reinstated

- The rigid government mind-set in refusing to reconsider the IPCMC proposal, which has been abandoned in favour of a SCC which has the inspector-general of police, ACA director-general and the director-general of the Public Complaints Bureau as permanent commissioners

"As there is no select committee to canvass public consultation on the fake IPCMC Bill, there is an urgent need to have a substitute body to conduct such a public consultation process in the next two months," he said.

"This will be the major agenda of the parliamentary roundtable on the SCC Bill next week."