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The days when the Malaysian Bar is viewed as an organisation whose leaders breathe the rarefied air of the ivory tower seem to be over. Even its members today appear to be a lot more in sync with society and its mores than was previously the case.

This can be seen from the increasingly “relevant” role it is playing in trying to get the Independent Police Complaints & Misconduct Commission (IPCMC) established. The setting up of IPCMC, quite a mouthful really, was recommended by the 1st Royal Commission on the Police more than a year ago.

That this online petition is relevant and makes the Malaysian Bar relevant is underscored by the fact that before the ink of the 1st Commission report could dry, Malaysians were incensed when earlier rumours that congealed into speculations - as only these can in our tanah pusaka - were confirmed by media reports that police had subjected a lady to the strip and ear-squat regime.

This impelled the setting up of the 2nd Royal Commission on the Police whose terms of reference were significantly narrower. Nevertheless, what the hearings revealed were disquieting enough to alarm decent and law-abiding Malaysian citizens.

The “sting” of the claim that it was part of the Malaysian police “heritage” to subject remandees to such strippings and ear-squats cut to the quick of a wide-section of Malaysian society.

What followed was even more alarming: the public “rejection” by three police-related organisations of the IPCMC. The three organisations are the Senior Police Officers Association from the Inspectors’ Branch, the Senior Police Officers Association from the Gazetted Branch and the the Association for Officers of Lower Ranks.

Then came the shearing moment - yes it is not a "shining" moment - when 11 elderly Malaysians were shorn of their hair like sheep after they were caught gambling mahjong in a coffee-shop in Negri Sembilan during Chinese New Year.

To say the least, the timing was more insensitive than the shearing of the remandees’ crown of glory. Chinese New Year is a time when families and friends get back together and regale about the good old days. Instead, they spent their time in the remand cells with their heads shorn.

As if this was not enough, a 61-year-old Malaysian housewife was forced to strip and money allegedly taken from her purse just recently.

All these incidents which could have been easily avoided bring to the fore the lament of the Prince of Denmark in Hamlet that “The time is out of joint, O curséd spite that ever (we signatories) were born to set it right.”

It is for these reasons, and these reasons alone, that the online petition urging the Prime Minister to set up the IPCMC should be supported without reserve.

All the coalition parties of the Prime Minister’s trend-setting United Malays’ National Organisation were returned in the last election with a precedent-setting strong mandate.

Should the IPCMC be set up by May 31 when the ruling National Front coalition has at least another three good years of its mandate left, it will demonstrate the sincerity of the Prime Minister and his close associates in setting right what is perceived as a monumental wrong, a wrong that strikes at the raw fundamentals of human rights.

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