The Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abdu Bakar announced this morning that the police have recorded a statement from Home Minister, Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi over his speech at the Pengkalan Kubor by-election which Perak DAP and DAPSY had made police reports as being “seditious”.
Perak DAP State Secretary Wong Kah Woh and DAPSY chief Teoh Kok Seong lodged the police reports more than three weeks ago on Zahid’s “seditious” speech inciting racial sentiments, and it makes a total mockery of Zahid’s public oath that the police would investigate “within 24 hours” any sedition police report when the police took more than three weeks to take a statement from the Home Minister, who is the subject matter of the sedition police report.
The timing of the IGP’s announcement on the eve of the Bar Council’s “Solidarity Walk” against the recent blitzkrieg of sedition prosecutions against Pakatan Rakyat leaders, activists and intellectuals is also intriguing – is it to make the point that the police are even-handed and will investigate anyone who is the subject of a sedition police report?
If so, can the police explain why it has not yet investigated the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak and the former Prime Minister Tun Mahathir although the DAP MP for Segambut Lim Lip Eng lodged separate sedition police reports against the two on Sept. 24 more than three weeks ago?
Is the police also trying to make the point that the police, in its investigations, is capable of recommending to the Attorney-General that the Home Minister be charged under the Sedition Act?
Tell it to the Marines!
As a former UMNO Minister had suggested during the current parliamentary budget debate that those charged under the Sedition Act 1948 must be made to prove their innocence, is Zahid prepared to be charged under the Sedition Act to let the courts decide whether he is guilty as well as accept the shifting of the onus of proof bearing the presumption of guilt instead of presumption of innocence?
Furthermore, would Zahid go along with the outrageous viewpoint of another Umno MP who seem to be quite agreeable with the idea that those found guilty of sedition should be “shot in the head”, claiming that this was what happened in China and during the Japanese Occupation.