Rudyard Kipling"
“When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
Sacking the IGP is only part of the solution - By Commander S THAYAPARAN (Retired) Royal Malaysian Navy
Wednesday, June 13, 2018
Malaysiakini : “The reality is that we do not wash our own laundry - it just gets dirtier.” – Frank Serpico, the man who exposed police corruption in New York
COMMENT | I have no idea if the Singapore Straits Timesarticle
is credible and if the top cop and the rest of the petty fiefdoms in
the Royal Malaysian Police (PDRM) are about to get their night of the
long knives. I sincerely hope so. I really pity those cops who actually attempt to do some good on the
job. Not only have they got to deal with a hostile public but they have
to watch their backs when it comes to their comrades.
Some folks think that replacing or sacking the inspector-general of
police (IGP) would go some way in resolving the issues that plague the
PDRM but this action - part-punitive and part-reform - is merely the
first step on the long arduous road to reforming the PDRM. The reality is that the person who replaces the IGP must want to
reform the police force and chances are that this cosmetic change of
replacing an unpopular IGP will not do anything to ensure that we have a
police force and not, as some would argue, a uniformed division of
politically-affiliated thugs.
Someone once asked me what the atmosphere is like in the PDRM. This
as a professional who served in the state security apparatus and having
close links – at one time – with the PDRM. I said, imagine ‘Serpico’ but
without the Frank Serpico. When I talk about corruption in the PDRM, I
am not talking about the “duit kopi” stuff that average Malaysians are
exposed to. No, I am talking about the multi-million, perhaps billion-ringgit
criminal enterprises which range from drugs to human trafficking. That
is the foundation of police corruption in this country and which acts as
a filtering system for recruits into the upper echelons of the criminal
elite.
I will bet you my last ringgit that if there is ever a full-scale
credible investigation into police corruption in this country, many
politicians would be caught in the ensuing chaos that would make the
1MDB scandal look like a mischievous kid’s game. When we talk about police corruption, we are talking about a system
with links to international cartels and criminal enterprises which run
the gamut from illicit substances to money laundering. Who knows what
kind of legitimate businesses would be implicated in the complex
money-laundering schemes that are part and parcel of police corruption
in this country?
Wang Kelian
is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the complicity of the
state security apparatus and human trafficking in this country. What about meth labs, drug houses, drug safe houses, illegal gambling
dens, protection rackets, prostitution and the other illicit activities
that happen in a country where the top cop in Terengganu can say that
Malays are not involved in gangsterism? Ah, race. That too. Kua Kia Soong in his book,
‘Racism and Racial Discrimination in Malaysia’, pointed out that
post-1969, the system rejected a multi-racial police force and civil
service in favour of policies that ensured that the racial composition
of both favoured the dominant majority community.
This, of course, played well with the narrative that non-Malays were
not interested in joining the state security apparatus and the civil
service. This, of course, was to mean that the non-Malays were not
patriotic and this horse manure was then used to justify policies that
favoured one community over the others. If the top cop has to go, then Pakatan Harapan is on the right track.
But the removal is treating the symptom and not the disease.
No real political will
Remember when I said that I do not have a problem admitting when I am wrong. Well, this is one of those occasions. When the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas) man,
Wan Saiful Wan Jan, joined Bersatu, I threw a little hissy fit, arguing
that he was better of stirring the pot outside of political cabals.
However, since he is now in the maelstrom, so to speak, this would be
the perfect opportunity for Harapan to use the talents of young people
like Wan Saiful to carry out reforms, especially when it concerns the
state security apparatus. After all, it was Wan Saiful and Nicholas Chan who argued for decentralising the powers of the IGP, which I concurred with and Chan summarised it well:
“This paper aims to posit a scenario of reform whereby the
accountability of the IGP is enhanced through having more structurally
independent police chiefs in the country. “The basis of this proposal stands on the premise that the IGP’s
wide-ranging powers and interlocking relationship with the federal
executive need to be dispersed, moderated and restructured in a way that
is more reflective of Malaysia’s federated system and rising demands
for local democracy from its populace.”
The IGP cosying up with whoever is the grand poobah in charge is, of
course, part of the problem. A major part and what I found interesting
about the Straits Times piece (if credible) is that all those
special units which are supposed to handle specific crimes are, in
reality, fronts for corrupt police officials to organise their schemes
in a systemic manner which separates them for the rest of the police
force.
Look at it this way. Say you are a group of corrupt cops linked with
various drug syndicates. You know that your activities get in the way of
regular policing. The top brass - not all of whom are corrupt -
understand this too. So it’s more convenient if there is a specialised
unit to handle the business of policing drugs than involving the rest of
the police force. So cops get to look away and do not have to answer for and to with
these specialised units. Consider this. In a functional democracy, in
the West, there are already problems with these units so what more a
country like Malaysia which has always been run by kleptocrats.
Going back to my piece on the slavers and killers of Wang Kelian,
consider what the immigration officers told their interrogators when
asked who was involved in the criminal activity: "It would be easier if
you asked us for the names of officers not on the take." It is the same situation if we actually discovered the level of
corruption in the police force with these so-called specialised units.
Keep in mind the state security apparatus is extremely protective of
their operating procedures and tradecraft, some of which are no doubt
immoral or illegal but part of maintaining the security of the realm. We
are not talking about these things now. Not yet. We are talking about
the corruption which has become a beast of its own.
Till this day, I get calls from former comrades who tell me that
there are elements in the state security apparatus, both retired and
still serving, who take exception to what I write. Why am I stirring up
trouble, they ask. The country has made a turn for the better. Why write
such pieces?
What keeps me going is that there are still serving personnel in our
security apparatus who encourage me to draw attention to the decrepit
state of the state security apparatus. Former police personnel who point
me in the right direction, because after years of serving in a corrupt
system and keeping their heads down – for fear of their lives in some
cases – they see the Harapan regime as the final chance to get the state
security apparatus back on track.
So far, I see no real political will to confront this issue. What I
see are political operatives breathing a sigh of relief now that they
are the ones in charge of the state security apparatus after decades of
being on the receiving end of state-sanctioned brutality.