Penang Watch

This is a rare admission by a mainstream media that mass demos -the target of suppression in the name of national security or peace and order, is not the threat to national security. What it identified as the threat instead are small gangs who operate outside the laws to instill fear to the population. Notice the acts identified were all aligned to the ruling parties and targetting NGOs/professional groups/ opposition parties. From from what it described as `anarchist' groups these groups seems to have quite clear political orientations. They operate where legal political forces dare not venture. May be they are just paid by interested parties to commit such acts. And seldom do you find the police find them, let alone act against them. Now we are told who are the real threat to Malaysia's national security and the incompetence of the police-finally, from the horse mouth!

NST Online » Columns
2008/09/29
EDITORIAL: Inflammatory statements

AMONG the bitter lessons learned since 9/11 is that terrorism is not a numbers game. It took just a score of individuals to perpetrate that attack on the United States seven years ago, a half-dozen or so for the Bali bombings in October the following year, and about as few in the London bombings of July 2005. Similarly, while this nation grapples with the various troubles of present times, the real threat to society is not so much from the mass movements of rallies, demonstrations or political shifts as from the psychopath on a motorcycle armed with a bottle of kerosene. The clear and present danger is not from any organised dissent arising from loss of faith in the institutions of state as from anarchists operating alone or in gangs, taking advantage of sociopolitical discontent to crawl from the shadows and wreak havoc on society.
Thus was it with the paint-bombing of the home of Election Commission chief Tan Sri Rashid Rahman last March, the Molotov cocktails tossed into the compound of Datuk Seri Shahrizat Jalil in early August (the intended target apparently having been the house's previous owner, Bar Council president Datuk Ambiga Sreenivasan), the improvised explosive devices left on the doorstep of the Bar Council premises during a protest against a forum on religious conversions a few days later, and lobbed at the home of Teresa Kok's parents off Jalan Ipoh in Kuala Lumpur in the small hours of last Saturday.

The police described the attack on the DAP member of parliament's family home as "criminal intimidation", which seems mostly due to the ineptitude of the thug responsible. Had the bombs been properly assembled and fused, the crime could have ratcheted up to arson or, unthinkably, murder. The police should ascribe the appropriate gravity to such acts -- especially when, as in the case of the Kok family, the thuggery is underscored by the foul imprecations contained in the note attached to one of the bottles.

With this country as racked as it is now on questions of national unity, race relations and religious freedom, there must be zero tolerance of such acts. These are by no means petty crimes; they feed off sociopolitical grievances to strike fear among innocents. Those responsible must be pursued with a vengeance and dealt with to the fullest extent of the law. There is naught but Pyrrhic victory in apprehending political rabble-rousers while allowing the most verminous elements of the rabble to terrorise the citizenry with such impunity.