These days, the governments of Muslim countries are wont to criticise the actions of the US government as unilateralist, overblown, overkill and provocative. While such criticism is both valid and precise, they should also spend some time looking at the conduct of their own security forces within their respective borders.

If it is well and fine to disabuse the American government for some of its own myopic failings and contradictions. But the governments of countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia should also vent some of their bile and venom on the unilateralist behaviour and excessive violence of their own security apparatus, ostensibly in the name of 'protecting peace' and 'maintaining stability' For whose peace and stability is being protected here? The general public or the ruling elite?

Such considerations come to the fore when one witnesses ugly spectacles such as the behaviour of the police last Saturday, when force was used to disperse a crowd of peaceful protesters who had gathered in front of the Bukit Aman federal police headquarters. Judging by the photographs taken at the scene, it was clear that the group that was assembled was neither violent, threatening nor capable of breaching the walls of the institution itself.

They were, in fact, exercising their fundamental right of assembly and had assembled for the simple aim of highlighting contradictions and alleged abuses by the police; a growing public concern in Malaysia that is both legitimate and has been tacitly acknowledged by the government's recent announcement that there should be a royal commission of enquiry into the conduct of the Malaysian police force itself.

More questions have been raised by this debacle: Since when has it been a crime to voice one's opinions in this country? (Since a long time, might be the answer of many). Would such an attempt to highlight the failings of a public institution be regarded as an attack against the state or the government? (After all, the Malaysian police force is a public institution, and its members should remember that those who were standing outside the gates of Bukit Aman were also Malaysian citizens and tax-payers, the very people who contribute to the wages of the police themselves.) Was it even necessary to use methods such as water cannons, or beating up civilians (as recorded for posterity by the cameras)?

Blatant case of overkill

Speaking solely from the point of view of a political scientist, one has no option but to conclude that this was a blatant case of overkill and excessive use of force - precisely the point that the protesters had wished to raise in the first place. If ever there was need of empirical evidence to prove their point, it has been provided by none other than the police themselves.

The scholar of politics will tell you that any government has to base its legitimacy on the consent of the public at large. No amount of repression or use of state-sanctioned violence can or will protect a regime that is under criticism. Indeed there are ample cases where the excessive use of indiscriminate violence leads to precisely the opposite: it erodes public faith in the institutions of the state, alienates the electorate and discredits the ruling power. Force has always been the final refuge of the despot, and the normalisation of the use of force and violence merely contributes to the collapse of the social contract, increased marginalisation and alienation of the populace and ultimately the weakening of the sinews of the state itself.

Added to this has to be the question of state-society relations itself. The state, we should remember, is plainly part of the public domain and should be seen as such. The sad fate of so many post-colonial societies (and ours in no exception) is that the post-colonial ruling elite have grown accustomed to power and to thinking that the institutions of the state are an extension to their own political domains. This has unfortunately become the case in Malaysia, as institutions such as the police come to be seen as an extension of the ruling elite and the ruling coalition of parties. The last sordid example of this was the police raid on the offices of malaysiakini, which was widely seen as being done at the behest of none other than Umno Youth.

Cosmetic whitewash

Many sections of the Malaysian public are also concerned about the Malaysian government's tacit support of the so-called 'war against terror' and the government's decision to allow for the creation of bodies such as the regional anti-terror centre in Malaysia. Will these concerns be deemed out of bounds as well? Does the Malaysian public not have the right to even question the wisdom behind these developments? (Again, 'No' might be the answer of many.)

It is this conflation of the state, government, the ruling elite and the public institutions that is at the root of the problem: the very problem that the special royal commission on the police and the protesters outside Bukit Aman are both concerned about and wish to raise. If the current political administration in Malaysia wants to be taken seriously by Malaysians and foreign observers alike, it should begin by looking at itself and the role it has played in this gradual yet painfully visible process of institutional decline.

The Malaysian police force was, is, and should remain a public institution accountable to us, the Malaysian public - and not used by certain elite groupings to maintain their own hold on power. The act of blasting ordinary Malaysian citizens with water cannons and beating them in full view of the public has been the latest in a series of own goals of the institution; and it lends a hollow ring to talk of 'reform' and 'moderation' that is en vogue these days.

The water cannons of the police have instead added to the growing suspicion - held by many- that all we have been fed thus far is a cosmetic whitewash: though the stains remain, and they embarass all and sundry.

Dr FARISH A NOOR is a Malaysian political scientist and human rights activist.