Minister: I don't mind having Ambiga in PCA panel

The Government may consider putting in personalities that people trust, including Bersih 2.0 leader S Ambiga, into the three-member panel under the amendments to the Crime Prevention Act (PCA).

“If you talk about the personality involved in the board… if you want Ambiga to be there, maybe government can consider," Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Paul Low told Astro AWANI in an interview yesterday.

"I don’t know. Will you be happy? Whatever it is, I don’t have a problem if Ambiga is there, I just want to see the criminals arrested,” he said.

The three-member panel under the new PCA which will decide whether a person can be detained is an improvement from the era of Emergency Ordinance(EO) or Internal Security Act (ISA) where the Minister was given that power, said Low.

The problem now, he said, was a deep mistrust of the government.

“The circumstances are different, now there is a supervisory board… but people still argue with me, ‘what if the panel is corrupt?’ but I say to them: anyone can be corrupt,” said the former Transparency International Malaysia president.

Low added that both EO and ISA were two laws he has always been strongly against, both in terms of their formulation and implementation.

The amendments to the 1959 PCA, or the Prevention of Crime (Amendment and Extension) 2013 Bill, was passed for the third reading in Parliament at midnight. It will now go through the Dewan Negara before being gazetted as law.

Low stressed that having the PCA was a “last resort” and posed this question: “People say you cannot have draconian laws or prevention without trial, that the police should get all the evidence and achieve all the convictions. To me I ask, is the police capable of doing it today or not?”

“Ideally, I also want a superb force that catches its man all of the time, and convict 100% all the time the person in court. I would want that, then you don’t need the PCA. That’s why I say it is a last resort,” he said.

Low stressed that having the PCA should come hand-in-hand with the modernisation of the police force, which he admits is “not superb”.

“You don’t have an effective enforcement, and you have an effective organised crime. That is taking away my rights. What do you expect me to do? Still argue that we don’t need this law?”

“This is not the final (outcome). The next step is to improve the force. But the need right now is to fight crime,” said Low.

“This is not the final. The next step is to improve. That’s not emphasised. That is what they are doing.

Detention without trial… (is) not to detain forever, but it is to (give police time to) convict the person in a trial. In the main time, you don’t have a superb force.

“I support the PCA purely because… mine may not be a legal point of view, I am speaking from a citizen’s point of view: I have my rights to be safe from crime…especially in a organised manner. I expect the enforcement agency to protect my rights and not protect your crime. That’s what I mean when I say my rights are more important than the criminals.”

Low said that he did not agree with lawyers saying that everyone’s rights are equal. “To me, when you commit a crime, you deny some of your rights already.”

He also said that criminals are not just repeat offenders, but dangerous people who can penetrate businesses, with politcal links and have probably even penetrated the police and judiciary. “We are dealing with people like that.”

Low said that “the worst part” is that some think the law is being formulated to put those critical of the government in jail.

“I am not blaming them because in the past it has been done. As far as I can see, I read the law, the prevention is against people who are in these specific criminal offences, and being a political leader is not in those list of activities, unless you yourself is a 'taiko lah'. (So), being critical of the government is not part of that.”

The controversial PCA amendments was tabled for first reading on Sept 25 and in the past three days went through heated debates in Parliament before being passed early this morning.

Critics flayed the government for effectively bringing back detention without trial, an element which existed in laws such as the now-defunct EO and ISA, which is regarded as 'draconian' and abused as tools to silence opposition voices.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak had initially said in 2011 that such laws were no longer needed, but the recent spate of violent crimes have forced the Government to reconsider such a stand. The Government has also assured critics that the law will not be used for political purposes but was focused on keeping the people safe.