MP SPEAKS | Yesterday, inspector-general of police Khalid Abu Bakar advised political cartoonist Zulkiflee Anwar Ulhaque, who is better known as Zunar, to channel his creative juices towards drawing "nice cartoons" if he wanted to exhibit his work.

"He can draw McDonalds or Donald Duck," Khalid quipped when asked if Zunar would be allowed to showcase his cartoons in a public exhibition.

Perhaps Khalid failed to read and/or understand that we have a Federal Constitution which guarantees “fundamental liberties”, including “freedom of speech, assembly and association”.

While such liberties are not absolute, we are supposed to be far from a totalitarian or police state to the extent where the IGP tells an artist to draw “nice cartoons”.

Certainly, just because Zunar’s criticism of the ruling kleptocratic elite who are mired in rampant corruption, abuse of power and incitement of racial flames are portrayed in a manner which is unpalatable for those who are in power, that certainly does not mean that they are illegal in any way.

In fact, Tan Sri IGP, you are not required to like Zunar’s art!

Khalid tried to justify his repeated arrests of Zunar by claiming that the artist had “insulted the country’s leaders”.

He asked what if the tables were turned when someone drew cartoons which insulted opposition leaders? "If tomorrow such cartoons targeted Penang Chief Minister (Lim Guan Eng), would he like it if we just ignored them?”

Firstly, a hopefully not too profound question for our inspector-general of police:

If a thief were to be insulted by a caricature of him or her as a “despicable thief”, would you arrest the thief or the artist?

Is the alleged “insult” that has hurt the feelings of the thief wrong in the eyes of the law, or should a thief who steals billions of dollars from the people of Malaysia be arrested, investigated and charged instead?

After all, as far as we are aware, no leader of this country is legislated to be above the law.

Opposition leaders regularly demonised

Secondly, Khalid raised the most ironical of examples – with regard to purported insults against opposition leaders, such as the Penang chief minister.

In fact, DAP and other opposition leaders have been regularly demonised via caricatures appearing in Utusan Malaysia for the past decades, their posters and pictures torn and burnt by Umno demonstrators. And what exactly have the police done against these parties?

We are not asking for the police to take action against these people. However, the fact that the IGP only takes action against those who criticise Umno leaders and closes one eye on those who viciously attack those in the opposition clearly demonstrates his bias and hypocrisy in the reasons provided for the persecution of Zunar.

We call upon Khalid to stop making Malaysia and its police force the butt of international jokes by stopping all actions against artists, civil society members and political dissidents.

Instead, Khalid should regain the respectability of the force by initiating urgent arrests and investigations against all parties, cited by the United States, Switzerland and Singapore investigators, as having stolen and misappropriated billions of dollars from 1MDB and SRC International, including but not limited to Jho Low and his father, Riza Aziz, Eric Tan Kim Loong, 1MDB and SRC officials as well as the shameless ‘Malaysian Official 1’.

TONY PUA is the MP for Petaling Jaya Utara and DAP national publicity secretary.