As usual, Ops Warta II has begun with much fanfare and media blitz.

To get 3.3 million outstanding summonses settled, the police would ferret out traffic offenders at strategic road blocks, house-to-house and public buildings searches.

Offenders have to pay RM300 for the traffic offence and another RM300 for ignoring the summon. Warrants of arrest will be issued after the 14-day grace period if the compounded fines are still not paid.

Tracking traffic offenders and compounding their fines are made easier with assistance of computers and the appropriate software.

Whosoever the bureaucrat who conceived this Ops Warta II would expect to get a promotion and even a Datukship for bringing traffic offenders to book and helping the state collect all outstanding revenues. He thought he would never go wrong with the rationale that traffic offence was still an offence and it was important to create awareness among road users that they had to settle their summonses immediately when they received them either personally or through mail. He would expect that the government as employer would appreciate such initiatives and dispense the necessary rewards for a job well done.

I think he is in for a surprise. Things can go terribly wrong in such calculations. Such an operation can cause public disaffection with severe political repercussions. His political masters won't like it when the full implications of such an operation dawn on them.

First, consider the inherent unfairness of such an operation to large sections of the motoring public affected.

Many offenders are not even aware of the offences that they have committed at the incipient time of their commission by reason of "invisible" surveillance by hidden cameras and hidden traffic police with ray guns.

Neither is an offender given an opportunity to know or mitigate the traffic violation on the spot and contemporaneously mitigate it by explaining the extenuating circumstances if any. No differentiation is made between a reckless speed hog and a guy who exceeded the speed limit momentarily in the rush to get a sick family member or a wife about to deliver to the hospital's emergency ward. There are also unique circumstances where the traffic cop directing traffic, gestured a motorist to move on notwithstanding the red stop light in front and a flashing camera behind.

Modern traffic surveillance methods by electronics and computers may be accurate in monitoring, save on deployment of manpower and reduce opportunities of bribery but they negate too often the human element of compassion and consideration for extenuating circumstances in enforcement of traffic laws.

Many of us receive our summons weeks or months later and cannot even recall whether we did commit any traffic offence and if so under what circumstances.

Some of us have never even received notices of the summons if they were indeed dispatched either due to them being misdirected in the post or that they have been sent to our old addresses.

Summonses then accumulate from one to 10. Now we have to pay RM3,000 for 10 outstanding summonses. Where do we get that kind of money? If we have no means to immediately fork out this sum, it will be aggravated by another RM3000. If we don't pay the RM6,000, a warrant of arrest will be issued against us. You think an average wage owner can fork out that kind of money immediately to replenish the state's coffers depleted by wasteful projects? You think that is fair?

We now live in tough and challenging economic times in which factory and office workers face retrenchment and even middle-class white collar bank officers are laid off because of redundancy due to bank mergers.

Are we supposed to beg, steal or borrow and then join the one-mile queue in some police station to settle the fines?

If our begging does not culminate in securing a loan from a friendly lender, are we supposed to pilfer or steal our employers' petty cash to avert the warrant of arrest being issued? In other words, are we supposed to graduate from a traffic to a criminal offender due to the financial pressure of Ops Warta II?

The net effect is that Ops Warta II will cause much public disaffection and soon become "Operation Public Infamy" because of the injustice and widespread public harassment it entails.

While a traffic infraction is still an offence, it is however not a criminal offence importing the same measure of moral turpitude and gravity of consequences as to justify house-to-house search, the police's embarrassing and apprehending the offenders in public car parks and commercial buildings etc. Are we living in totalitarian Nicaragua, Somalia or Soviet Gulag or something?

Public sympathy will soon be with the offenders, against the enforcers simply because many members of the ordinary public themselves will be affected adversely by this operation that cast a wide net and cut a broad swathe.

The majority of Malaysians, it has been said, are known to be laid-back on abstract human rights issues championed by our NGOs, and have no grouses against the government as long as they have jobs, enough money and peace of mind to go to the many shopping complexes and entertainment outlets and enjoy material comforts (the bread-and-butter issues).

The majority are not human rights activists and don't really bother which alleged militant is detained under Internal Security Act or which demonstrators — whether for the cause of labour, jihad or whatever — have been bombarded by chemical-laced water cannons or arrested for unlawful assembly.

But large sections of them are affected by and do feel outraged about Ops Warta II that strikes directly at the bread and butter issues and by its vigorous enforcement will be perceived as police harassment within the Malaysian Gulag!

As traffic summonses affect many of us personally, the disaffection generated will, like it or not, be a political factor especially if and when the opposition parties seize and harp on it. Not surprisingly, I have already heard from a few affected (including surprisingly civil servants) that the next time around in the general elections they will vote even against their Barisan Nasional employer. Imagine for this reason — and not some lofty human rights ideal!

Consider however this. To large sections of average voters and members of the public, police high-handedness or brutality is not identified by harassment of activists or demonstrators for whose cause, little empathy, sad to say, is felt — but everyday harassment by too vigorous an enforcement of operations like Ops Warta II is to many Malaysians a human rights violation!

Surely, Deputy Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi should grasp the political implications of Malaysian voters behaviour and bolster his image by acting incisively to stop some overzealous bureaucrats from seizing performance credit in the implementation of such an unpopular operation at the expense of, and hijacking in the process, the larger agenda of Barisan Nasional's popularity and political capital — especially when general elections is around the corner.

For these reasons, I will not be too surprised — indeed, I will predict — that as opposition parties pick on this issue and drum it up, Ops Warta II will soon either be forthwith rescinded or, as a face saving gesture of back tracking, toned down by more, and longer reprieves to mitigate its adverse effects on public sentiments.