KUALA LUMPUR: City Hall incurred about RM300,000 in losses due to the Bersih 3.0 rally on April 28.
Mayor Tan Sri Ahmad Fuad Ismail said the costs incurred was due to landscape damage, recruitment of additional staff and cleaning the streets after the rally.
The landscape damages according to Ahmad Fuad, had occurred on the field in Dataran Merdeka and other surrounding areas.
Shrubs in these areas were damaged due to those present who stepped on it and remedial works are on-going, the mayor said.
Ahmad Fuad was also disturbed that those who participated in the rally had left behind so much of rubbish that were strewn all over the city centre.
"We collected about eight tonnes of garbage from the streets," he said after City Hall celebrated Labour Day.
"It is all right to hold a rally but behave 'lah'. Rallies in other countries don't result in so much litter," he said.
Despite allegations of police brutality against individuals, Ahmad Fuad however went on to commend the police for their actions during the rally.
"Laws are laws. There must be followed," he said.
"You go against the law, then you blame people for carrying out enforcement," he lamented about rally participants who breached barricades at Dataran Merdeka which led to police firing tear gas and using water cannons to disperse protesters.
On the violence of the police against the Press and protesters, Ahmad Fuad said: "I don't know who was violent and who was not."
"It is very subjective. When you beat people, and they retaliate you call them violent."
"When people don't abide by the law and the authorities retaliate, it is termed violence.The Home Ministry needs to investigate this," he said.
City Hall is also studying whether to take legal action against rally organiser Bersih 3.0 for breaching the block at Dataran Merdeka, he added.
Asked if the violence could have been avoided if the rally was allowed to be held at Dataran Merdeka, Ahmad Fuad defended his decision as it was according to several laws.
"I have the laws to back me. I had given them an alternative but they don't want to follow the law," he said.
City Hall had reportedly rejected an application from Bersih to hold the rally at Dataran Merdeka as it was not a national event that would benefit people.
Ahmad Fuad had, in a statement, cited the 1992 Local Government (Dataran Merdeka) (Kuala Lumpur Federal Territory) by-law, whereby no gathering can be held at the historic space without a written consent by the mayor.