During the first Ops Warta in 1992, 22-year-old sales adviser Fong Ooi Lee was arrested, handcuffed and detained for a day in a lock-up over her failure to pay two traffic summonses.

At the police station, she was asked to remove her shoes and jewellery. She was also subjected to a humiliating strip search.

Fong was not a wanted criminal. She had no previous criminal records. Her only crime was having outstanding summonses for speeding and making an illegal u-turn, for which she later paid the respective RM140 and RM130 fines at the magistrate's court.

Four years later, Fong sued the police for handcuffing her "in full view of the public when there was no reason whatsoever for her to have been treated in that manner".

The police admitted liability and the High Court ordered the government to pay Fong RM30,000 as damages.

Fong was not the only one that was subjected to such degrading action. Many others were arrested over their failure to answer traffic summonses or to appear in court.

The arrests, under Ops Warta, was the result of a crackdown by the police to hunt for more than 10,000 traffic violators who had failed to turn themselves in despite repeated warnings.

However handcuffing these offenders became a controversy.

Questionable operation

This year, Ops Warta 2 was launched and police went on the hunt to get the offenders to settle a total of 3.3 million outstanding summonses.

Errant motorists were given a May 1 deadline, later extended to May 16, by which they must pay the maximum amount of RM300 for every summon they have and an addition of another RM300 for ignoring the first summon.

Offenders were warned that warrants of arrest will be issued after a 14-day grace period and if the compounded fines were still unsettled, police officers will go to homes, public car parks and set up roadblocks to nab them which they did.

In the run in to the deadline, thousands of traffic offenders jammed the payment counters, some even to the extent of queuing at police stations from dawn.

However the police action to round up the traffic offenders came into sharp focus when many, including the Bar Council and de facto law minister Rais Yatim, questioned the legality of the action.

The issue was over the imposition of the additional RM300 fine as well as the legal aspects of serving summonses to traffic offenders.

Then in September, the government announced that only about 35,000 summonses were issued under Ops Warta 2, and from that number, 29,840 summonses were cancelled as the offenders could not be traced. Later the government said that a total of 850,000 old summonses were cancelled.

Ops Warta 2 came to an end at that stage. However numerous questions still linger.

Commoners and politicians

And recent developments indicate that the problems are two-pronged. One affects ordinary citizens and the other, the politicians who are elected by the citizens to govern on their behalf.

Considering the plight of ordinary citizens first, it is regrettable that while the government had admitted that it had failed collect revenue from its outstanding 3.3 million summonses, it is also adamant in not being lenient to those who had paid the summonses, especially when it comes to imposing the extra RM300 penalty per summon.

Those who had paid are claiming that they should be refunded, as it is unfair that they alone were penalised when a majority of others were left off the hook.

The government is totally uninterested in clarifying the status of these offenders, as well of those whose summonses have been cancelled.

And seeking for more details only led opposition MP and DAP secretary general Kerk Kim Hock to be suspended from attending Parliament sittings for three days in October.

As for the politicians, it has come to public knowledge now thanks to a local daily that several menteris besar, chief ministers, state secretaries and state executive councillors have yet to settle more than 1,000 summonses amounting to more than RM100,000.

Flimsy excuses

State leaders from Johor, Kedah, Kelantan, Melaka, Pahang, Penang, Perak and Perlis all have outstanding traffic summonses dating back from 1999, mostly for speeding.

Since the disclosure, these VIP traffic offenders though willing to settle the summonses have been magnanimous in giving excuses for the accumulated summonses.

Most said the summonses were not sent directly to them, but to the state secretariats, thus denying knowledge of the summonses. Others, like Kedah MB Syed Razak Syed Zain, admit of instructing their drivers to speed "in the rush to get to appointments".

On the other hand, state leader like Melaka CM Mohd Ali Rustam blames the present speed limit for the 22 summonses he had amassed and wants the speed limit increased, depending on the capacity of cars, to 160kmph from the present 110kmph.

He, rather condescendingly, said that it was unsuitable for high-powered cars like a Mercedes Benz and or a BMW to travel at low speeds.

Double standards

The question that comes jumping out right now is whether the police were practicing double standards in Ops Warta 2. This was precisely what a letter writer in a national broadsheet asked two weeks ago. He accused the police of failing to enforce the law without fear or favour.

Just like the letter writer, most of us want to know why were these VIP offenders not hauled up just like the rest of us when they had missed the May 16 deadline? After all, it will not be difficult to gain access to these politicians.

If the police could put up roadblocks and visit other traffic offenders at home, why can't and didn't they do the same for these VIP offenders? Is it because they are people with power and authority? But to answer that, politicians are not above the law and law is the same for everyone.

Even until this stage, the police are practicing double standards. While they are unwilling to refund the extra money paid by common offenders, politicians like Mohd Ali had to pay just RM1,190 for his 22 summonses (mostly for speeding), meaning an average of RM54 per summon. That's cheap!

Shock treatment

It would have been an incredible sight to see the police obtaining warrants of arrest against these politicians. Better still if they were handcuffed like Fong and given a common criminal-type treatment.

That shock treatment would have brought these politicians down to earth, making them realise that they are after all servants and not masters.

But to expect that to happen would be like daydreaming. Our police will never do that for their authority and power is exclusively reserved for commoners you and I.

The best one can hope is that the police would take the lessons learnt from the unsuccessful Ops Warta 1 and 2 and do a better job when they embark on Ops Warta 3 which they will soon so that the law is applied justly to everyone.