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The Police Ropes In Traffic Offenders
When a policeman gives you a ticket for a
traffic offence, you acknowledge it by signing it. It asks you to settle the matter
at the police station or appear in court. If you do neither, the magistrate
issues a warrant of arrest if the police requests it. The police, in the current
blitz, did not act as it should. Over the years, it ignored 600,000 traffic
summonses, but the home ministry exempts all before 1990. If the police obtained
fresh warrants of arrest for the 275,000, the magistrates must explain why they allowed it.
If the warrants were issued at the time the offenders did not turn up in court, the
police should explain why it ignored it until now. Those caught in the blitz
should ask
when produced in court when the summons was issued, when the court
hearing was, and when the warrant of arrest was issued. If there is a warrant and
it is executed years later, that should be challenged. If you claim trial, the case
against you cannot be proved. But it takes time and
money, and Malaysians, as a
rule, would not fight for their rights.
The police take
the law into their own hands. If you are caught speeding on the highway, you must
be stopped and the summons issued. The "saman ekor", issued after an electronic
beam finds you speeding, is not valid. Yet, when you renew your road tax, you are
barred unless you settle this non-existant speeding offence. The High Court
decided the Road Transport Department cannot refuse to register all vehicles
belonging to an owner if one is blacklisted; but the RTD chief promptly said he
would ignore the ruling.
The demerits one racks up for
traffic offences raise an interesting legal question: it is the car or the driver that
acquires the demerits? The police does not stop you to inform you of your
demerits; he just notes the number of the car down, and adds the demerits to it.
If the car is driven by other than the legal owner, why should he suffer? But this
happens every day. If you settle your summons, would it it is erased from the
computer records. You have to come two days later if you want a receipt. By
then, you run into a brickwall if you want to check on that. Usually, it is not, and
you are back to square one.
But while the country is agog
at a police so inept that it cannot enforce the warrants of arrest upon 275,000 traffic
offenders except in a blitz, there is more than we are told. The government is in
desperate need of money. Enforcement agencies are ordered to collect as much dues from
the public as possible. The "lesen terbang" and the police blitz are
but two prominent. Company secretaries are routinely fined RM3,000 for breaches
of statutory duty, like not filing annual returns on time. The aim is to collect
as much money as possible. The government claims it is flush with money, and
"prove" it with new projects worth billions of ringgit, but it cannot meet
day-to-day expenses.
It does not meet its bills.
Many small business men so indebted are driven up the wall. Petronas, with its
ready cash, saves it from bankruptcy. It privatised or corporatised those
departments which gave it its funds for day-to-day spending: Telekom, Tenaga,
Pos, Internal Revenue. It would not admit it mishandles the economy nor cut
cut down spending nor take steps to overcome it. It is
important these days to
show Malaysians how well the economy is and how well it manages it. So a charade
is kept. All is well. When it is not. The finance minister, Tun Daim Zainuddin,
who would not pass up a chance to extol the virtues of the Malaysian economy when it
does not have any,
is strangely silent. But the defence minister announces new military
installations, three cronies amongst others awarded contracts to build a submarine
base, what will be built in the future come fast and furious.
Be that as it may, when the government acts as now over
the blitz, it tells the people
two things: one, it must punish them for not supporting it as it insists they
should; and two, its institutions are so devalued, corrupt and worse that they
cannot carry this out with so much inconvenience
that it angers the people even more.
One example: while Malaysians are asked to check on their status in this blitz at
police stations around the country, it does not mention, as it should have, that there
is a limit to which a police station would handle public queries about the traffic offences.
In Kuala Lumpur, the Jalan Bandar police station would handle only 400 queries and
checks, the Lembah Pantai 200, the Mega Mall police post 100. This means that all
who come after 10 am will not be attended to. There are no signs anywhere
about it, and people are told after queing for hours. Yet, we are told, in the
media, the police will stay up late to attend to this request.
M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my
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