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Media Statement          
by Lim Kit Siang  
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(Parliament, Wednesday): The Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s five-prong strategy announced yesterday to combat the rising crime index is not impressive at all – too little, too late and too indifferent in lacking seriousness and commitment by Abdullah to make Malaysia safe again for its citizens, visitors, tourists and investors.

Under Abdullah’s premiership, crime has reached endemic dimension with Malaysia gaining an international notoriety as a country unsafe for her citizens, visitors, tourists and investors.

When he became Prime Minister on Oct. 31, 2003, Abdullah pledged that one of his top priorities would be to reduce crime to restore to Malaysians their fundamental right to be free from crime and the fear of crime, whether in the streets, public places or the privacy of their homes.

Today, Malaysians feel even more unsafe from crime than when he became Prime Minister.

Abdullah had raised great hopes about his commitment to create an efficient, incorruptible, professional and world-class police service to declare an all-out war against crime when he set up the Royal Police Commission which came out with 125 recommendations, the most important of which was the proposal for an Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC).

All such high hopes of Malaysians for a world-class professional police service to keep crime index low to make the country safe for the people, visitors and foreign investors have been dashed to the ground in the past four years.

All these high hopes have come to nought. The proposal of an effective IPCMC has been killed, replaced with a clawless and toothless Special Complaints Commission proposal.

Under Abdullah’s premiership, the police fought a losing war against the rising crime index, which had worsened from 156,315 cases in 2003 to 224,298 cases in 2007 – a sharp rise of some 45% in the past four years.

The crime index crashed through the 200,000 barrier for the first time in nation’s history with rape more than doubled from a daily average of four women in 2003 to 8.5 women last year.

This means that under Abdullah as Prime Minister, women are even more unsafe from the crime of rape, with the risk of rape more than doubled than when Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad handed power over to him four years ago.

Abdullah’s multi-pronged anti-crime strategy announced yesterday has fallen like a damp squid as nobody believes that it will have any effect to make Malaysia at least as safe for personal safety and property security when he became Prime Minister four years ago.

When will Abdullah wake up to realize and admit that crime in Malaysia has become endemic under his premiership, and that the prevalent feeling of citizens, visitors, tourists and investors that they have lost the sense of personal safety and property security is one of the greatest failures of his premiership?
 

(09/01/2008)