I refer to the Malaysiakini report Forensic team sweeps luxury condo .
In a country where people are literally crying for protection from snatch thieves and car-jackers, I must say the speed at which the Malaysian police moved in to sweep the condo where Anwar Ibrahim allegedly sodomised his latest victim had left me quite stunned.
Let’s look at the pace of things as they happened:
On Saturday, one of Anwar’s former party workers complained to police about the so-called sodomy. By Monday – or within 48 hours -- police were combing what was supposedly the crime scene for DNA and other evidence.
Just the other day, my sister who lives in Kuala Lumpur, cried over the phone for an hour with me as I listened from San Francisco over how she was car-jacked right before her own eyes, with not a single lawman coming to her aid.
It was 8 am. and on a Saturday too. She had stopped for a while before her store in downtown KL and was removing some things from the boot when a guy jumped into the driver’s seat of the car – where the ignition and air-conditioner was still running, no thanks to the humid weather – and coolly drove off.
She screamed for help, and not getting any, ran into her shop and dialled 999. When she finally did get a cop on the line, she gave the car number, make, colour, the place where the incident took place and the route most likely taken by the thief.
Instead of sending out a squad car right away to look for the missing vehicle, she was told to lodge a formal police report first ‘in order for investigations to take place’.
It has been three weeks since that report and not a single phone call has come from the police, according to my sister who lost not only a brand new car but also thousands of dollars in cash that was meant to be deposited in a bank that morning.
Crimes like these are surging by the day in Malaysia as the hike in prices of fuel and other essential products make people more desperate for survival.
While these are happening, our police is busy looking through an apartment somewhere, quite possibly for seminal stains on a mattress.
If the priorities of Malaysian law enforcers by itself are not frustratingly comical, the officialdom’s sanctions of their actions makes me crack up.
Just today, I read of the prime minister assuring the safety of both the complainant and the accused in the so-called sodomy case involving Anwar.
Given that the task of ensuring of someone’s safety is usually the job of the police, I assume the PM meant that both the complainant and Anwar had been given police protection.
I have not read a single news item since the weekend that Anwar had been given round-the-clock police protection.
In fact, the whole of Malaysia – and to an extent, a good part of the world – learnt over the weekend that he was protected by the Turkish embassy in Kuala Lumpur.
