Why did the government withhold the crucial information that the woman detainee who was forced to strip naked and performed ear squats at a police station is a Malay Malaysian?

That's the question which has been troubling the minds of many Malaysians. It has now been established that the police knew who the woman was soon after the infamous 71-second video clip was exposed by member of Parliament Teresa Kok on Nov 24.

Hours after Kok showed the video on her laptop to her outraged colleagues and journalists in Parliament, two police officers from the Petaling Jaya district police headquarters - where the incident took place - came to inspect the clip.

Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang has an interesting theory on why the nationality of the woman victim in the ear-squat video-clip scandal was held back.

He suggested that the information was kept secret to protect Umno's chances of beating rival PAS in the Pengkalan Pasir by-election.

Nomination day for Kelantan's Pengkalan Pasir by-election - which saw a three-way contest between Barisan Nasional's Hanafi Mamat, PAS' Hanifa Ahmad and independent candidate Ibrahim Ali - was two days after the video was made public.

If this was true, it tantamounts to the government sacrificing national interests to Umno's party interests, argued Lim.

Deputy Internal Security Minister Noh Omar had on Nov 28 - four days after the expose - said that he received the full report from the police probe on the scandal.

While he confirmed that the detainee in the video was not one of the four Chinese nationals who had earlier complained about being strip searched, Noh pointedly refused to reveal the nationality of the naked woman.

This was despite that he was repeatedly pressed to do so by journalists at a testy 30-minute press conference.

"It is most ridiculous that Home Affairs Minister Azmi Khalid was still calling on the woman victim to come forward to cooperate with the authorities when visiting China on Dec 6, promising to give her the necessary immigration clearance even if she had illegal status, as she is needed to give evidence when the police and Noh Omar had the information right from the very beginning...

"Could it be that Noh Omar was worried that if it was revealed that the woman victim of the police naked ear-squat videoclip scandal was in fact a local Malay woman and not a Chinese national as generally believed, it could completely change the course of the then on-going Pengkalan Pasir by-election campaign in Kelantan and its outcome, by giving PAS a runaway issue and turning a possible win for Umno into a sure loss in the by-election?"

Fence-mending mission

On Dec 6, after 10 days of campaigning, voters in Pengkalan Pasir went to the ballot where BN's Hanafi edged out PAS' Hanifa by a tissue-thin majority of 134.

On the same day, Azmi arrived in China on a six-day fence-mending mission .

Azmi said in Beijing that the mistreatment of Chinese citizens in Malaysia involved not just the alleged police abuse, caught on video-tape, but also other criminal acts.

According to Lim, had the information about the nationality of the woman detainee was made known, it would have made it easier for Azmi in his damage-control exercise.

"There should be a full and proper accounting as to why Noh Omar withheld information to Parliament, the country and the Chinese government about the nationality of the woman victim...," said Lim.

The opposition leader charged that Noh Omar, through his action, had committed "a gross breach of parliamentary privilege" and "undermined" national interests.