It would appear that the Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar has also become victim of the Ismail Sabri virus as to make him say and do weird, outlandish or unacceptable things but putting up a pretence that what he is doing is the most normal, routine or ordinary thing.
Ismail made a rabidly racist call on Malay consumers to boycott Chines business and is trotting round the country basking as a hero as he felt vindicated not only by UMNO leaders lining up behind him with the placard “We Are All Ismail Sabri”, but by the Cabinet as well.
On Wednesday, the entire Cabinet succumbed to the Ismail Sabri virus when the Cabinet decided, as announced in a subsequent Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) statement, that Ismail’s call did not target Chinese traders alone but was aimed at all traders.
The PMO made a gem of a statement, which should framed for all posterity, stating:
“We were informed that his statement was aimed to reprimand traders who refuse to reduce the price of goods even when the price of fuel has reduced.
“The reprimand was aimed at all traders and not at traders of any particular race. He also suggested that consumers use their buying power to force traders to reduce the price of goods.”
The police has not been spared the Ismail Sabri virus attack, as the Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar reiterated today that the police will not call off its investigations involving Ismail Sabri but will continue with its probe.
On Monday, after Ismail went overboard with his racist fulminations on Facebook calling on Malay consumers to boycott Chinese business, I had asked the Inspector-General of Police whether his twitter account had broken down or whether Bukit Aman had suffered a breakdown of Internet access, as he had been strangely quiet for several hours on his twitter account on Ismail’s transgression.
One of Khalid’s trademarks as IGP is to immediately take to the twitter to direct his police officers to investigate political or civic society leader for any infringement of the law in their statements or speeches, and I myself was such a victim, when the IGP twittered that the police would investigate me under the Sedition Act for saying on the fifth anniversary of the death of Teoh Beng Hock that his killers have yet to be brought to book as Beng Hock did not commit suicide by jumping off the 14th floor of MACC in Shah Alam on July 16, 2009.
It was a few hours after my tweet that Khalid took to the twitter to say Ismail would be investigated.
However, with the Cabinet exonerating Ismail from any transgression, it is the height of ridicule for the police to continue with the rigmarole claiming that the police will still investigate Ismail’s “innocuous” (according to the Prime Minister and Cabinet) call on Malay consumers to boycott Chinese businesses.
Khalid should just call off his tweet directive on Monday to police officers to investigate Ismail as nobody believes that the police will dare to find the Prime Minister and Cabinet wrong and in violation of the law in massaging Ismail Sabri’s racist call to Malay consumers to boycott Chinese businesses into an inoffensive call to all traders and not at those of a certain race.
Why waste police time and resources on an investigation into the Minister for Agriculture and Agro-based Industry when it is obvious even to a child that such police investigation will not be going anywhere?