Perakians have been urged to stand up for their rights and against the creeping police state which saw scores of people arrested for ‘illegal assemblies’ over the past few weeks.

"We seem to be entering an era of police rule where one cannot wear black, hold candlelight vigil, fly a balloon, plant trees, walk to courts and citizens are being subjected to all forms of humiliation,” lamented DAP state chief Ngeh Koo Ham at a ceramah in the party headquarters in Ipoh last night.

“If such abuse of power by the police is not put in check by the people than we may soon have a situation whereby everything we do in our lives could be considered unlawful,” he told the 200-strong crowd.

“As such, Perakians must stand up for their rights and not be intimidated by the police into surrendering their basic human rights.”

perak hunger strike pakatan adun police arrest 260509 02 Ngeh added that the task of the police force is to “safeguard the security of the people and the state, and not the security of Umno and BN”.

“The abuse of the separation of powers - of the monarchy, executive, legislative and judiciary - has made Malaysian democracy the laughing stock of the world. The floodgates have now been opened for the courts to question the powers of the menteri besar and the assembly speaker.”

khalil idham lim PAS Titi Serong assemblyperson Khalid Idham Lim ( left ), who was also at the ceramah, took the police to task for not focussing on the high crime rate in the state.

“Police are getting ‘buta gaji’, they should instead concentrate on their job of enforcing the law without bias.”

Khalid Idham took a dig at CID deputy chief Glenn Anthony, whose “1, 2, 3 tangkap” remark in Tuesday’s arrests has become the butt of jokes in Ipoh.

“Where is democracy when people are not given enough time to disperse?”

Vigil went off without incident

blogger talk 100506 chang lih kang Another speaker, PKR state deputy chief Chang Lih Kang ( right ) apologised to the audience for the two ‘PKR frogs’ - Jamaluddin Mohd Radzi (Behrang) and Mohd Osman Mohd Jailu (Changkat Jering) - who became BN-friendly independents resulting in the collapse of the Pakatan Rakyat state government.

"We are not power crazy, but we will take back power from the power-crazy people,” he said referring to BN.

Chang also argued that Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s One Malaysia policy was not meant to create unity but more divisions among the country’s major ethnic groups.

“BN politicians are good at divide-and-rule policy as they say to the Chinese community that they have to ‘potong’ (circumscribe) if PAS comes to rule and to the Malay community, that Nizar is a puppet of DAP."

Lim Swee Kuan, special assistant to DAP supremo Lim Kit Siang, and Wong Mei Wan, special assistant to Ngeh, who were both arrested at a candlelight vigil in Kuala Lumpur, were honoured by Perak Pakatan politicians at the event.

dap perak ipoh candle light vigil arrest 270509 03 "Perakians must keep the dream of democracy alive in Perak and it is people’s power that should be the deciding factor in deciding the political future of the state," said Nga Kor Ming, the Taiping parliamentarian and Pantai Remis assemblyperson.

The crowd later observed a 10-minute candlelight vigil inside the DAP headquarters. Unlike previous vigils, the event last night ended without any incident.