Arrests of two men from MCA

Something smells really fishy in the way the mainstream press ­ in particular, the MCA-owned The Star ­ reported on a couple of police arrests in the past week.

One arrest involved a Datuk who was KL’s gaming and vice king. The other a Labuan man.

However, theSun, The Star and New Straits Times did not publish their names. Why?

These are not minors; they are both in their forties. They are also businessmen. When Eric Chia was arrested, he was named at the outset. The papers did not offer any reasons for not giving the names of the two here. Why the discrepancy then? What laws or restrictions are there to justify the discrepancy?

Could it be because the two men arrested are actually from the MCA?

The Labuan arrest also raises a number of other questions.

To begin with, while The Star reported that the man was merely an MCA member, the other two papers did not consider him as such. Specifically, theSun said he was a “top-ranking Labuan MCA official” while NST referred to him as a “top-ranking Labuan MCA leader”.

Indeed, the MCA's Star appeared to be deliberately trying to bury the fact that the Labuan arrest actually involved a top-ranking MCA leader when one reads its report on 4 April.

The first paragraph described the man only as a “prominent businessman” (theSun indicated that he “was said to be a top underworld boss in Labuan”). Nowhere was the MCA mentioned (in The Star) until the seventh paragraph (out of a total of eleven in the report). Even then, the paper referred to him merely as an MCA member.

But that is not all.

Over in NST, the last two paragraphs of the page 4 report (on 5 April) state:

On reports that a top-ranking Labuan MCA leader had been detained for alleged involvement in vice activities, he (MCA President Ong Ka Ting) said MCA had 10.3 million members, many of whom also hold posts outside the party.

“We do not know what these people do outside....” he said.

It becomes quite clear now why The Star alone stated that the Labuan man was only an MCA member. It nicely synchronised with MCA President Ong’s point that the MCA could not know what all of its 10.3 million members do outside the party.

Still, one has to wonder about the journalistic integrity of NST for letting Ong off the hook for saying the Labuan man was just an MCA member.

If NST does not have any journalistic self-respect, at least have some respect for the public. We can appreciate Ong’s point if the Labuan man was merely an ordinary MCA member. But he was no ordinary member, was he, NST?

Since the man was “a top-ranking Labuan MCA leader”, how, then, could the MCA President be allowed to get away with his response to the media?

Hmm...could it be because both UMNO-connected NST and MCA-owned The Star are part of Barisan Nasional?

And all along since the election on 21 March, the mainstream media have been blaring on and on about Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi’s code of ethics for elected BN representatives, including efforts to create a clean BN cabinet and government.

If The Star and NST could not even do a credible and ethical job of reporting on these two recent arrests of MCA leaders who are not part of Abdullah’s cabinet, how can they be trusted to perform credibly and ethically if or when cabinet members were found to have been involved in any wrongdoing?

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