Is Hishammuddin the right person for the job of Home Minister?

 Firstly, no less a person than the Home Minister whose portfolio includes the police needs to address the issues raised by the whistleblower. Hishamuddin Hussein should convene a special press conference at which he can refute the damaging allegations made of political interference in the work of the police and the charge that “the police have succumbed to the political pressure in agreeing to achieve the targeted KPI set under the NKRA.”

Should he fail to do so, it will be an admission of guilt. Worse, it will show him as unfit and undeserving of the high position of Home Minister. In such a development, it is incumbent on Prime Minister Najib Razak and the cabinet to give Hishamuddin his marching orders and put him out to pasture in the same way that has happened to Shahrizat Abdul Jalil.

Secondly, Koh Tsu Koon and Idris Jala, ministers in the Prime Minister’s Department and the latter, chief executive officer of the Performance Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu) must not pretend to be dumb and deaf on this.

As CEO of Pemandu – the unit monitoring the implementation of the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) initiative – Idris Jala is responsible for the statistical data that is released to the public. The whistleblower has provided a detailed account of how crime records are recorded and processed, and how these records have been manipulated to give the impression of a decline in crime in Malaysia.

The onus is on Koh and Idris to show that the whistleblower had got his facts wrong and to also answer the other serious allegations in the internet media on Pemandu’s role in this botched attempt to fool the public.

For the sake of their conscience and personal integrity, it will be necessary for both Koh and Idris to apologize to the public should their own investigations show that the allegations made by the whistleblower are substantially correct. This public apology must be followed by a clean-up of the mess and by strong action to punish those responsible for this despicable attempt to hoodwink the public on such a serious matter. Only in this way will Koh and Idris repair their reputation which is in tatters following this debacle.