We want the IPCMC Bill, not the SCC Bill

We are gravely disappointed with the BN government over the tabled Special Complaints Commission (SCC) Bill instead of the originally proposed Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC) which was made by the Royal Commission To Enhance the Operations and Managements of the Royal Malaysian Police previously.

The SCC Bill had clearly defeats the true intention of the Royal Commission to enhance the professionalism of the police force and to ensure that the doctrines, laws, rules and procedures are adhered to and implemented by the police.

The current SCC Bill had in fact failed to look into the fundamental requirement for complaint mechanism in order to make the police more accountable to the public for their actions or omission to act on public complaints. Besides, the SCC also lacks of its independence nature in providing an effective check and balance on the police force. Our worries doubled when we found that the SCC Bill intends to put the inspector general of police (IGP) in the governance structure of the commission and concerns are further increasing when details of the SCC Bill shows that the commission will have no powers to conduct independent investigation into the police force i.e. submissions will be channeled back to the police to investigate complaints lodged against themselves.

In the Royal Commission official report in the year 2005, it found that the internal mechanism currently governed by the police themselves were in fact inadequate, unreliable, and often ineffective. As such, the IPCMC was introduced to address all these inefficiencies and to come out with a reliable structure in order to address complaints made against the police in a fair and transparent manner. The Royal Commission had then saw the importance of such implementation to improve the much needed public confidence in our country’s policing system and to make the police force more accountable to the public as a whole.

The proposed SCC is completely useless in the sense that the public will not have any confidence nor any trust to lodge a complaint against the police given the fact that the SCC will be governed by the IGP himself where it will definitely create a conflict of interest. Second the inquiry procedures lead back to the police force itself of which will create another interest confliction.

In this case, if there is any complaint made by the public on the police force, there will be indeed no proper attainment of justice in an impartial manner free from any element of collusion.

Therefore, by tabling the SCC Bill is similar to nothing has been done. It’s just simply waste of time.