-Dean Johns, March 20, 2013.

However often I repeat this message, and however true it self-evidently is, I’m all too aware that there are millions who will never get it. Many can never afford to.

The ringleaders of the regime and their hardest of hard-core accomplices can’t face such a fact, as it threatens them with the loss of their ersatz status and stolen loot, not to mention the prospect of prosecution and imprisonment.

And their multitude of small-time confederates, either petty crooks getting a cut of the action or assorted supporters and sycophants hanging around in return for hand-outs, are also highly unlikely to imagine that there can ever be an end to BN.

But it seems to me that more and more Malaysians who are capable of thinking, fending and standing-up for themselves are finally convinced once and for all that not only must BN be destroyed, but it must also be destroyed before it’s too late.

That BN must be destroyed, in other words, while there is still some of Malaysia to save. Because in concert with its cronies, this criminal conspiracy posing as a political coalition has stolen so much of Malaysia’s land, oil, timber and other natural resources, and so many public utilities, and so many companies in the media, communications and other commercial categories. Not to mention so many billions of public money through ‘commission’-inflated defence and other purchases, that it’s amazing there’s anything left over.

And chances are, there’s not as much of Malaysia remaining ‘unstolen’ as BN would like the public to think there is. Given the regime’s insatiable appetite for larceny, combined with its fetish for secrecy and total lack of transparency, there are likely far less funds remaining in the Employees Provident Fund (EPF), or in the nation’s treasury at large, than the regime claims.
‘Squeezing every last cent’

Certainly, there must be a great deal more public money out in under-performing or unrecoverable ‘soft loans’ to cronies besides the RM250 million involved in the National Feedlot Corporation scandal. And even more countless billions ‘lost’ and embezzled than those in the Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) and other known infrastructure scams. But as long as this robber regime is in power, the complete, shocking truth will never be known.

Meanwhile, the BN criminals and their cronies will keep right on looting Malaysia, and squeezing every last cent out of every Malaysian.

It has gotten to the point at which every time people turn on their taps, switch on their lights or electrical appliances, send messages or make phone calls, buy cars, fill-up with petrol, drive on toll-roads, shop for ‘government-controlled’ staple foods or conduct many other activities, they are putting money in the pockets of BN members and cronies.

I suppose it is some small consolation that at least the water, power and some other products and services that BN and its cronies take a cut out of are the apparently genuine if often over-priced articles.

Unlike the police force, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, the Election Commission, and many other civil services for which the people pay good money and receive a patently fake, inferior, BN-brand bill of goods in return.

And perhaps the biggest BN rip-off of all – short of the outright theft for which the regime is so notorious for – is the case of the ‘mainstream’ media. A monstrous cartel designed not only to give cronies a near monopoly on the sale of the nation’s advertising time and space, but also to peddle a fake, BN-biased version of the ‘news’.

While doubtless still making a killing for their masters financially, however, these crony media have so slavishly resisted revealing all the plainly-evident reasons that BN must be destroyed that in the process they’ve destroyed their own credibility.

Thus, they have reduced themselves to mounting pathetic and impotent attacks on Malaysians’ only remotely trustworthy home-grown source of political, business and other significant national news, the digital media.

Of course BN has done its best – or worst – to pollute cyberspace with its lies, spin and suppression of bad news about itself, with online versions of its non-‘news’ media and blogging by teams of its own paid sneak-geeks fancifully known as “cybertroopers”.

But BN’s lapdog bloggers are proving as big a flop in the credibility stakes as the mainstream media are, with the result that regime ‘editors’ and ‘journalists’ have taken to whining about the unfairness of it all.

Pot calling kettle black

In a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black, executive editor of The Star ‘newspaper’ Wong Sai Wan has publicly claimed that the only way the ‘credibility’ of the mainstream media can be regained is by discrediting the social media and attacking what he called “political cybertroopers”, thus falsely implying that anti-BN bloggers are on the opposition payroll.

“The rise of cybertroopers have (sic) made the social media unreliable,” Malaysiakini quoted him as ranting at an event organised by BN-mouthpiece ‘news’ agency Bernama and some organisation calling itself Press Forum Asia.

“Cybertroopers are liars, thus making liars out of social media,” Wong (left) added on the way to his bizarre and contradictory conclusion that the only way to run independent media is to “do everything and anything for the bottom dollar. Any other way and it becomes politically motivated.”

No mention of the truth, or the duty of the news media to inform the people about their government, you’ll note, just lies, lies, lies in pursuit of the sole motivation for the BN regime and its crony ‘contractors’, ‘entrepreneurs’, ‘editors’, ‘journalists’ and one other stake-holder – money, money, money.

As much of the people’s money as they can get their greedy hands on, and as much as it takes of what’s left over of the people’s money to dole out enough petty hand-outs, pre-election pay rises and outright bribes to keep BN in business.

But as I said up-front, more Malaysians than ever before in the nation’s history are sick to death of being so shamelessly ripped-off and misled by this rotten regime. And thus, the people are not only finally convinced that BN must be destroyed, but also armed with both the numbers and determination required to get the job done.

DEAN JOHNS, after many years in Asia, currently lives with his Malaysian-born wife and daughter in Sydney, where he coaches and mentors writers and authors and practises as a writing therapist. Published books of his columns for Malaysiakini include ‘Mad about Malaysia’, ‘Even Madder about Malaysia’, ‘Missing Malaysia’, ‘1Malaysia.con’ and ‘Malaysia Mania’.