Bullets used in Batu Buruk

BERSIH, a coalition of opposition parties and NGOs dedicated to the reform of the electoral process in Malaysia to one which is fair, transparent, and respectable, has organized a forum in Batu Buruk, Terengganu on Saturday evening as part of their effort to educate Malaysians on the need for reforms. However, what was supposed to be a peaceful forum turned extremely ugly when the police sent in the FRU to disperse the crowd of some 500. The crowd was in no mood for compromises and the end result was 2 persons shot (one in the neck, the other in the chest) by a non-uniformed police personnel (the PDRM claimed he's an FRU officer...but what was the FRU officer doing running about solo?). Water cannon were used, tear gas, and now live bullets. And from the angry crowd, rocks were hurled. The Star claimed that even molotov cocktails and home-made-bombs were used (similar excuses given by some ex-IGP in 2001 to justify the arrests of key leaders of PKR under the ISA), and was less than truthful when it didn't even report that it was a BERSIH forum and not an opposition one. Of course, Najib had to come out quickly and claimed that the personnel used his pistol for self-defence. Of course, no prizes for realizing that if the police has acted as they did early this year in the peaceful anti-toll hike demonstration in Sunway Pyramid, this ugly fracas would never have happened. But increasingly the police seem adamant in hitting hard on anything they perceive as opposition-related. If only they would have been as ruthless against more serious and violent crimes that are threatening to wreak havoc in this country. Read more about this event in Liz Wong's blog here and here, as well as Malaysiakini's report. Lulu's take here and Malik Imtiaz's take here.

In the mean time, the Auditor General's report for 2006 is out. As usual, it contains plenty of damning examples and evidence of wasteful and corrupt practices which inflated prices of government procurement sky high. Yet, year in year out nothing has ever been done to prevent the recurrence of such wasteful practice. In fact, no substantive comments were ever really made by those in power regarding the report. As an example, a set of technical pens which has a market price of RM160 was procured at a price of RM1,147! Multiply that by 90 sets, and you would have an inkling on the scale of such fraudulent act. Read this, this, and this for a better appreciation of this chronic, yearly problem. RM10bil for the folks in Budget 2008 as frontpaged in yesterday's Sunday New Straits Times? Please clean up the nonsense in your own backyard first, Pak Lah! And before we forget, what has happened to the RM14.4bil "savings" from the reduction of fuel subsidy early 2006?