Manufacturing "riots" to intimidate voters?

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fru1 (6K)

This whole exercise is clearly orchestrated to benefit the BN
Aliran is shocked to learn that "large-scale riots and chaos" will be enacted by the police as part of their training in the run-up to the general election. This two-day affair would involve 1,400 personnel drawn from various agencies including the Federal Reserve Unit.

It is difficult to believe that the police have hit upon this brilliant idea quite suddenly. This whole exercise is clearly orchestrated to benefit the Barisan Nasional. It is being held, as it were, on the eve of the 11th general election and has been given wide publicity through a Bernama news item on 25 February.

Roping in the police as part of the BN's apparatus to ensure "a resounding victory" ( which the BN leaders have been bleating about lately) is an obvious strategy to browbeat the electorate into voting for the BN. An element of fear and intimidation is being deliberately injected into the run-up to the general election.

If indeed there is a need to prepare for "all eventualities", wouldn't good planning demand that this sort of preparation be an ongoing exercise so that the police are in a state of preparedness at all times. There is no need to give wide publicity to such routine exercises as it will only create fear among the people unnecessarily and suggest that imminent danger is in the offing.

Aliran condemns in the strongest terms this so-called mock exercise as a mockery and calls upon the Home Affairs Minister, who also happens to be the newly annointed Prime Minister, to cancel this exercise in intimadation and fear.

P Ramakrishnan
President
26 February 2004

For other media alerts please refer to the Malaysian Election Media Monitors Diary.

This statement was sent to the local media including The Star and the Sun. We have stopped sending statements to the New Straits Times as they have never been carried.