Did Umno Get Preferential Treatment In The Putrajaya Chicken Fiasco

---

 

The Putrajaya Umno Youth do-gooders turned lawbreakers in the free frozen chicken cock-up were let off too easily with a fine: they should have been roasted for making a mockery of the law.
The organiser, and the thousands who jammed the streets for their share of chicken, displayed an astonishing and deeply depressing inability to understand the dangers they were causing.
Many viewed the mayhem on Thursday as a potential Covid-19 superspreader event that undermined collective efforts to curb the spread of the virus.
Considering how police have in the past dealt with other lesser transgressions and applied the law with their discretion, their response to issue a mere compound fine on the organiser is unreasonable.
It will be a shame if the Umno division does not face the full brunt of the law under the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases Act 1988.
The incident reeks of reckless behaviour by the initiators and those who scrambled to get to Precinct 9 for a free chicken.
Even if it was a drive-through event, it was in sharp contrast to those who endured movement restrictions, sitting at home to make the lockdown work.
As cities and towns under MCO 2.0 lie eerily empty, it is appalling to see a massive gathering of people who didn’t care about the rest of the country.
Aside from the goodness of the programme to reduce the financial burden of the people in Putrajaya, such non-compliance of rules threatens to bring the law into disrepute.
These rules stipulate that we must have a reasonable excuse to leave our homes and that with a few exceptions, gatherings of more than two people in a public place are prohibited.
The punishment for breaking the rules is either a fixed compound notice of RM1,000 or potentially a criminal conviction.
So, while the police are empowered to make them go home and if necessary use force to do so, why didn’t they? What kind of signal does that send to the people about the willingness of police to enforce the restrictions?
The public cannot be blamed for feeling it was skewed action by the police because nothing was done to either stop the event or to disperse the crowd.
Putrajaya police chief Mohd Fadzil Ali said while the organisers had not been given permission, they went ahead with the event anyway.
He added that physical distancing was difficult to implement among the crowd and that other protocols were also not adhered to by the organisers who distributed 2,000 frozen chickens.
Why then did the police sit still? Was Umno given preferential treatment?
Did Putrajaya Umno Youth vice-chief Mohd Zushaidey Zulkifli mislead the public when he told Sinar Harian that the division had obtained the necessary approvals from the National Security Council and the police?
It is rather strange that drive-through events are only held in Putrajaya. Last month, about 10,000 people filled the streets en masse when they attended a drive-through wedding reception of the son of Putrajaya MP Tengku Adnan Mansor at Dataran Putrajaya.
It is not as though the administrative capital of Malaysia is out of the woods. Yesterday, it recorded 35 new infections, bringing the total number of cases there to 550.
If people don’t follow the rules, more lockdowns will occur.
With cases rising we are now at a tipping point, which is why we have to do everything we can to get on top of the virus by following the rules.- FMT
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.

---