While appearing to be logical and self-evident, KK Lim's letter Give money to police, not army suggesting more resources be allocated to the police but not the army is highly misleading.

As long as the culture of the Royal Malaysian Police Force (PDRM) is not radically reformed, no amount of increase in resources would make it perform better in accordance with international standard. What PDRM needs is internal reform, not extra resources.

For example, PDRM must retrench surplus personnel in Special Branch. Problems of international and new terrorism should be managed by specialist units in the Malaysian Armed Forces (MAF) that are more professional. Special Branch officers who have been trained on anti-insurgency manuals are antiquated and many a time, counter-productive.

PDRM must also fight corruption and abuses of power seriously to repair its image in the eyes of the people and the world at large. No amount of increased resources would enhance its image or inefficiency if the culture of corruption and abuses of power persist.

It also needs comprehensive and in-depth education on international human rights, as well as psychological re-conditioning to treat Malaysians as customers or buyers of their security services, not as enemies to be hated and maltreated.

PDRM must also introduce Politics 101 lesson at all levels and ranks for its personnel to understand and respect parliamentary democracy, leaders of both ruling and opposition parties, and the functioning of a modern system of democracy.

It must be taught noise and even traffic jams in peaceful demonstrations do not constitute 'violence'. Real violence should be re-defined as the actual, planned, organised and intentional use of lethal forces in offensive postures.

As for the armed forces, while more security resources should be allocated for the navy and air force in the modernisation drive, we should cut back budget on the army because there is no imminent threat of land invasion from any foreign country, and large-scale internal rebellion. As the defence minister has pointed out, Malaysia has no intention of attacking Singapore.

What the army needs is the improvement of the quality of personnel to prepare our soldiers for modern and even post-modern warfare with emphasis on high technology and multi-dimensional knowledge. Improve human skills first before thinking of purchasing any hardware.