If indeed instances like nude ear-squat scandal and the 'Botak Gate' were attributable to only a few black sheep, then the police force should indeed embrace Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission which helps to winnow wheat from the chaff.

The fact that there is overwhelming resistance against such watchdog suggests a more prevalent problem and that it is not ready as yet to subject itself to outside scrutiny and public accountability. Umar Mukhtar thinks that MPs, supporting the police's internal and self- regulation as the alternative to IPCMC, are stupid and missing the point.

Quite the contrary, I think they are actually quite clever and on the point. The Royal Malaysian Police Force (PDRM) is traditionally as much a servant to the regime and political establishment as a servant to the public and law enforcement.

PDRM is resentful why it should be targeted as a showcase for transparency and accountability whilst other public sectors - who hold no higher claims to transparency and public accountability - are, for the time being, spared. Basically, the MPs can empathise with PDRM's position that it is 'not ready'.

Feudal rent-seeking and subsidy values based on patronage prevail in the wider society especially in public sectors. Indeed, the entire political establishment is held together by a seamless web of such norms.

The public till finances failed crony-related projects and GLCs. It is not only the black sheep in PDRM but also the entire hierarchy of the land office, immigration, road transport department and other public agencies that look at the public as a means to supplement their income.

The nexus of empathy and support from MPs, power politicians and bureaucrats for PDRM is derived from such shared norms.

To the extent that the IPCMC is a metaphor for transparency and public accountability in diametrical opposition and conflict with such norms, it represents a clear and present threat to the very norms that glue and hold together in a seamless web the entire establishment.

It is feared that once the IPCMC is implemented, it will set the precedent and open the floodgates for such check and balances to be institutionalised, one by one, in all other public sectors, and the partying of supplementing income from the public till will see the beginning of an end. The IPCMC is the first cut on a main strand of this web. Things will thereafter fall apart as more cuts are made.

When the Royal Police Commission recommended the IPCMC, which was given public endorsement by the prime minister, it appears that both the commission as well as the PM might have entirely forgotten or at least not factored in the political and cultural dimension of what IPCMC's implementation stands against.

That and how difficult it would be to change an entire generation of ingrained mindset threatened by the IPCMC as the metaphor of transparency and accountability.