The theme 'Suhakam Bersama Rakyat' for the human rights body's recent visit to Perak on May 17 was certainly a misnomer and most misleading.

The event was held at the grand State Secretariat Building in Ipoh but no publicity was given to the public beforehand except for a banner in front of the building.

An estimated 95 percent of the 800 who attended were civil servants from all over Perak, including at least 20 naval staff in white uniforms. Imagine the logistics and costs involved to arrange this.

It would have been more appropriate to have called the event 'Mentri Besar Perak Bersama Dengan Kakitangan Kerajaan'! I wonder how the Suhakam commissioners which included Siva Subramaniam and Hamdan Adnan felt about the whole thing.

Fortunately, a real meet-the-people session was organised the same afternoon by DAP MPs and state assemblypersons in Batu Gajah during which members of the public complained to the commissioners about, among others, the indiscriminate summoning of motorists by traffic police ('saman ekor').

The police retaliated by setting up road-blocks the very next day! They even had the gall to say that the number of traffics summons issued by them was 1,300 and not 600 as claimed in a DAP press statement. It is obvious that police knew what the public had complained to Suhakam about.

The DAP then called a press conference and showed a photo in a Chinese daily which showed the Perak menteri besar and Deputy Tourism Minister Zahid Hamidi riding a scooter without crash helmets. The party said the public wanted to know hy they were not summoned as well.

The general consensus is that the police should concentrate more on serious crimes instead of petty issues.