MACC is holding far too many secrets that it has not shared with the public over the suspicious death of the young political secretary.

Teoh Beng Hock’s tragic death seems to have jolted this country from the euphoric daze induced by the media blitz that has glorified Najib Razak’s premiership. Staring starkly at the people now is the image of a rotten state of depraved institutions, of which the obnoxious Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) represents but the tip of an iceberg.

This rotten state was mercilessly exposed during the entire infamy known as the Perak power grab where none of the government institutions were spared from political manipulations to engage in unconstitutional and unlawful activities to satiate Umno’s obsession to seize and preserve power at all costs.

In this context, no one should be so naïve as not to recognise that Beng Hock – political secretary to Selangor state assemblyman Ean Yong Hian Wah – is the victim of political persecution, the latest in a series of hardly concealed acts of subversion and sabotage against Pakatan Rakyat (PR) since the March 8, 2008 election exposed Umno’s precarious political future.

In the present incident, MACC is in the midst of an operation to destabilise the Pakatan-controlled Selangor state government through endeavours to prosecute PR assemblymen, for which it has been busy fabricating the necessary evidence through threats and coercion of potential witnesses. And Beng Hock is clearly a victim of physical intimidation and mental torture under such a process.

That this was the case was indicated by Kajang municipal councilor and businessman Tan Boon Wah, who was interrogated at the same time as Beng Hock; both were called in separately as witnesses, not suspects.

Tan described in graphic details how he was physically abused and mentally tortured to falsely admit (which he refused) that he did not supply the 1,500 Malaysian flags at the cost of RM2,400 to the constituency of Seri Kembangan, implying that its assemblyman Ean Yong had corruptly pocketed the money. Beng Hock was understood to have been worked on to yield the desired result against Yong.

Tan also disclosed racial insults thrown at him during the interrogation, thus reinforcing an earlier allegation of racially biased persecution as all the seven assemblymen presently under investigation by MACC for suspicion of misappropriation of state allocations are ethnic Chinese. This view is further collaborated by Dariff Din (a Malay assistant to assemblyman Lau Weng San), who was also interrogated at the same time as Beng Hock and Tan.

Dariff said the interrogators were obsessed with his racial identity as he looked like a Chinese (Dariff is of mixed Malay-Chinese parentage); and spent the bulk of the interrogation time just to make sure that he was as claimed – a Malay. Dariff said: “everything went smoothly after they learned that I was a Malay Muslim???. He added that from what he observed, MACC was merely “fishing for evidence against Pakatan assemblymen??? without any specific clue of corruption.

Against such a backdrop, the calls by various authorities to the public not to hurl accusations but to trust the police to conduct a “professional and thorough??? investigation is taken by many as an insult to their intelligence, as if the public is unaware that these two law enforcers – MACC and police – have long been perceived as routinely playing a game of 'you scratch my back, I scratch yours', the latest being the MACC’s recent exoneration of the Inspector General of Police Musa Hassan of alleged fabrication of evidence in the Anwar Ibrahim's 'black eye' probe, despite the presentation of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary by Anwar.

So, can any one be blamed for being skeptical, thinking that it is now pay-back time for the police to return MACC the favour?

Serious doubts

Now that the police has said the initial pathologist's report indicated Beng Hock died of injury due to falling from a high place, the mystery is zeroed in on the circumstances surrounding his plunge from the building. It is here that serious doubts have surfaced over MACC’s version of what happened to Beng Hock.

Issue 1: Was Teoh Beng Hock ever released by MACC?

MACC chief commissioner Said Hamdan has disclaimed responsibility for Beng Hock’s death on the ground that he was released before he met his death.

Director of investigations Shukri Abdul had earlier claimed that Beng Hock was released at 3:45am on July 16, and was last seen at 6am sleeping on a couch in the MACC office after been given permission to rest there. The next MACC heard of the deceased was when a cleaner in the building shouted that he discovered a body lying on the 5th storey balcony of Plaza Masalam in Shah Alam.

This story implies that Beng Hock walked out of the office on his own without being seen, sometime after 6am. But Teoh couldn’t have done that as he did not have the electronic access card to open the door.

Furthermore, if Beng Hock was released, surely his handphone must have been returned to him. So how come it was not with him when his body was found?

Besides, it is hard to believe Beng Hock had chosen to linger in the same office where he must have been subjected to many hours of traumatic roughing-up in the hands of the interrogators. Any reasonable person would have – after calling his loved ones (again suspiciously, he did not) – rushed home in the first instance to escape the dreadful place, considering that his car was conveniently parked in the same building and that he was scheduled to register his marriage with his fiancee on the same day.

 

Issue 2: What happened between 1:30pm and 5pm?

Though Beng Hock’s body was discovered at 1:30pm, it was not until after 5pm that MACC disclosed the news to assemblymen Ean Yong and Ronnie Liu who had been waiting for over an hour in the MACC office insisting to meet him. Why should MACC have hidden the news for so long unless there were compelling reasons?

 

Issue 3: Why was the outer timber door of the MACC office unprecedentedly closed for some half an hour at the time when someone discovered Beng Hock’s body?

The Chinese section of Malaysiakini reported on July 17 that its reporter Rahmah Ghazali observed an inexplicable happening at the MACC office at 14th floor, where the outer timber door was mysteriously shut between 1:15pm and 1:35pm, and re-opened shortly before 1:50pm on July 16.

Rahmah explained that she first arrived at the MACC’s 14th floor office at 1:15pm to attend a press conference to be given by Kampung Tunku assemblyman Lau. Seeing that no one was around, she went down to the 4th floor to wait in the reception hall.

When other reporters arrived at 1:30pm, she followed them to the 14th floor again, but was surprised to find the outer timber door of the MACC office closed; it was then about 1:35pm. Thinking that the staff could have closed the door to go for lunch, she and other reporters went down for food. She then called Lau who expressed disbelief that the timber door was closed, as MACC was supposed to operate around the clock.

Knowing that Lau was already on the way, she decided to skip lunch and went back to 14th floor, and found the timber door re-opened this time; the time was about 1:50. Lau arrived at 2pm. After talking to reporters for about 20 minutes outside the MACC office, he went in to make a report. None of them knew then that Beng Hock was already dead.

1:30pm was the time when some one discovered the body. Why did MACC take the unprecedented step to shut down the office briefly, closing the door between 1:15pm and 1:35pm, and re-opening the door at shortly before 1:50pm? What did the staff do behind closed doors at that crucial moment that they would not want outsiders to see? The mystery seems to deepen.

Royal commission the only option

In summary, it is apparent that MACC is holding far too many secrets that it has not shared with the public over this tragedy.

Entrusting the full responsibility to any of the existing law-enforcement agencies to unlock these secrets would not do, as none enjoys public confidence.

There is no option but to appoint a royal commission of inquiry comprised of competent individuals who have the trust of the public to unravel the present mess, if Najib does not want mistrust of his leadership to deepen. And not a minute is to be wasted for this commission to spring into action, should vital clues needed to establish the truth not be lost forever.