Or maybe I’d better make that ‘rotten, radiculous regime’ in light of Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin’s recent ravings in an interview with KiniTV.
“To be radical today is not to be right wing. To be radical today in Umno is to be centrist because that is the radical position,” he claimed, adding that he has transformed Umno Youth from an “out-of-touch right-wing organisation” into “something that is relevant to the young people of today”.
But as I’ve said before, young people of today are sharp enough to see that the perennial problem with Umno Youth, Umno itself and BN at large, is not that they’re left- or right-wing, but that they’re utterly and irredeemably wrong-wing.
So much so, in fact, that they’re no longer political entities at all, but components of what has degenerated into a criminal conspiracy to rule and rob Malaysia for as long as it can get away with it.
And it’s managed to get away with it for a very long time indeed. At least 30 years, in the case of the allegedly filthy-rich Dr Mahathir Mohamad and sons, and the family of Sarawak Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud (left in photo).
Yet these and countless other members and cronies of the BN regime who are prosperous so preposterously beyond their legitimate means are so confident of their immunity to prosecution by the BN ‘legal’ system that they simply, arrogantly, deny all allegations.
Even going so far, as Taib did recently in the face of the release by international NGO Global Witness of clear video evidence of his family’s corruption, as to claim that the revelation was a plot by Anwar Ibrahim.
Anwar “has used his strong links with international NGOs to bring the Sarawak state government into disrepute on the international stage”, Berita Harian quoted Taib as telling a crowd of villagers in Kampung Lintang. “All kinds of issues were raised, about Sarawak’s rainforest being cleared, that none is left. But we all know this is not true,” Taib added, before complaining that “Whatever BN does is wrong, only what he (Anwar) does is right.”
As Mahathir-style sarcastic as Taib was so lamely trying to be here, he only succeeded in reminding most of us that yes, whatever BN does is either by accident or design so inevitably wrong as to make Anwar or anyone else look right.
‘Anwar’s behind Project IC…’
But somehow, at the same time, we’re supposed to believe that Anwar is actually responsible for making BN look bad. As in the intrusion by Sulu terrorists in Lahad Datu, Sabah, for example, which BN tried, and is still trying, in a desperate attempt to contain criticism of its incompetent handling of the situation, to suggest that Anwar secretly organised.
BN has also made strenuous attempts to pin Mahathir’s stacking of the Sabah voting rolls with Muslim foreigners in “Project IC” on Anwar.
In fact BN is so desperate to stave-off its richly-deserved destruction that I wouldn’t be surprised if it blamed Anwar Ibrahim for any or all of its countless other crimes and incompetence that have made its name mud in Malaysia and around the world.
Just as former finance minister Daim Zainuddin (left) has been enlisted by BN ‘newspaper’ The Star to declare that Anwar is “not fit to be prime minister” due to his “mishandling” of the Asian financial crisis in 1997, perhaps a ‘witness’ can be found to implicate Anwar in the Scorpene submarines scandal and the related murder of Altantuya Shaariibuu.
Or maybe Anwar could be ‘discovered’ to be a silent partner in the RM12 billion Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) fraud, or in the RM250 million National Feedlot Corporation (NFC) affair.
And speaking of affairs, I wouldn’t put it past a gang of lying crooks like BN to come out with the claim that Anwar master-minded false charges of sodomy and released fake sex-tapes of himself to blacken the regime’s reputation.
Hishammuddin the great pretender
Certainly, Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein is doing his damndest to blame Anwar and the rest of the opposition for the trouble that has been caused at pre-election ceremah sessions by BN-sponsored thugs and rowdies.
Expressing – or rather pretending to express – concern that such disruptions may become more frequent as the election nears, he recently warned the opposition against “creating provocation such as insulting the police who would in fact be responsible for their safety”.
This is in direct contradiction of the well-established fact that police routinely stand by and do nothing to quell unrest by BN supporters, or make any move to arrest them. Yet here was Hishammuddin (right) announcing that he has insufficient police to keep the peace during the election, and thus intends to deploy Rela and the Civil Defence Department to ‘help’.
Telling his BN audience that “if we want to create chaos, if we want to demonstrate, we could have long shaken the Selangor government,” Hishammuddin then proceeded to the ludicrously false proposition that “if we wanted to create lies or play on racial issues, we could easily have done it, but that is not our way”.
The plain fact of the matter, of course, is that, in its campaign to retain the power to steal at will from the rakyat, BN does nothing but create lies and play on racial issues.
Behind fig-leaves like Najib’s “1Malaysia” concept, so eerily reminiscent of the Nazis’ “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer (one people, one empire, one leader), is a rabidly racist campaign of anti-Semitism and Malay supremacy, spearheaded by BN organisations like Perkasa and ‘newspapers’ like Utusan Malaysia.
And as for creating lies, every single word BN members and spokespersons utter is blatantly false, as so aptly symbolised and exemplified by the so-called Election Integrity Pledge recently signed by Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak.
According to this document, the four principles that BN leaders would observe in contesting the forthcoming general election are:
- Truth, integrity, ethical conduct and accountability, including not accepting or giving bribes or being involved in corrupt practices in way;
- Upholding and giving priority to the interests of the rakyat as a whole;
- Good governance and transparency; and
- Compliance with all the applicable laws and regulations of Malaysia.
Najib and his accomplices have never abided by any of these or indeed any other principle of good government, and have no intention whatever of ever doing so. So, however fraudulent the coming election may be despite Najib’s lying pledge, the BN must be destroyed for once and for all.
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’.
