Pakatan Harapan vice-president and MP for Ipoh Barat M Kulasegaran cautioned against a media frenzy developing in the police investigation of 1MDB affairs and its principal quarry, former prime minister Najib Razak.

“The media is no doubt enjoying the shedding of its past fetters and fears but it should not allow its newfound liberty to become a licence,” said the lawyer-legislator.

The DAP leader said it was understandable newshounds would want to camp out at the various places where the police were looking for clues to the 1MDB imbroglio.

“But the rule of law demands we extend to suspects due process whose cornerstone is that justice is not only done but must be seen to be done,” opined the five-term parliamentarian.

“The media must refrain from subjecting suspects to trial by media through their blanket coverage of the police investigation of individuals caught up in the 1MDB scandal,” he cautioned.

Kula observed that constitutional government and its concomitant rule of law imposed chastening mechanisms on grants of authority to the executive branch to enable the latter to manage the national estate with energy, coherence and purpose.

“The chastening mechanisms which are the due process of law and the presumption of innocence until proven guilty have to be respected as otherwise the rule of law becomes only a cover for the exercise of arbitrary fiat,” he said.

Kual mused that perhaps the time has come for the creation of the independent panel to investigate public complaints of misconduct by the police, a recommendation that was made by a royal commission in 2005 but was shelved for reason of opposition from senior police officers.

“In the new era of individual liberty and executive accountability now dawning, this may perhaps be the time to revive that recommendation of the royal commission,” he said.

In the ongoing investigation by police of the 1MDB scandal, complaints have been heard emanating from individuals sympathetic to the suspects that the police have displayed an excess of zeal.

This has been denied by the police.