Judging by the comments that regime cybercreeps occasionally make on my columns, the only ‘argument’ they can come up with to counter my mantra that BN must be destroyed is that what happens in Malaysia is none of my business.

Though such obvious remarks hardly deserve a response, they do raise a couple of points worthy of remark. The first being that what happens to any of us, anywhere, is everybody’s business. As Donplaypuks and many other prominent pro-democracy bloggers keep reminding us, we’re all members of one race, the human race.

However different we look and whatever patch of Planet Earth we inhabit, we’re all related in our common ancestry – all equally entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – and all bound by a common duty to treat others as well as we would wish for ourselves.

Equally, each of us has not just the right, but the responsibility to decry crimes against our fellows, whether they be committed by individuals, groups or governments.

In other words, far from it being none of my business to declare that a criminal regime like Malaysia’s Barisan Nasional must be destroyed – along with dozens of its inhumane or outright anti-human counterparts in China, Russia, Syria, Iran, Central Asia, Africa and South America – it’s my actual obligation.

And an increasingly pressing obligation, in the case of Malaysia, as the BN government must soon run out of time or excuses or both for further delaying its date with potential destruction.

Not that it intends to go quietly, or cleanly, or fairly. Any chance of the clean and fair election for which Bersih and its supporters have been pushing so hard for, has long ago disappeared.

The blatantly BN-biased Malaysian Election Commission has clearly done nothing to clean up its comprehensively compromised electoral rolls, but instead airily declared them some time ago to be “the cleanest in the world.”

Gruesomely gerrymandered electorates

And nothing whatever has been done to equalise numbers in Malaysia’s electorates, that they remain so gruesomely gerrymandered that opposition candidates would need up to 30 times as many votes to win office as BN candidates need for ‘victory’ in small, regime-safe seats.

The long-awaited 13th general election is already, in advance, as far from clean and fair as BN has been able to make it.

But even so, as shown by his desperation to buy as much time and as many votes as possible, Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak knows it’s very likely to result in his relegation to no-job Abdul Razak.

If he leads the regime to victory but fails to regain the two-thirds majority that former premier Abdullah Ahmad Badawi lost BN in 2008, it’s virtually certain that Dr Mahathir Mohamad will make a move to replace him with Muhyiddin Yassin, with a junior Mahathir as his deputy.

But if, as I and millions of Malaysians fondly hope, the opposition triumphs against all dirty tricks and unfair odds, the entire BN gang will be history. Destroyed, demolished, defunct, and good riddance.

They clearly don’t intend to lose lightly, or go quietly if they do. However, threats of violence are already in the air. These incidences have been in the air, in fact, since the Umno general assembly in 2010 when Najib notoriously called the party faithful to “defend Putrajaya at all costs”, even if “bodies are crushed and lives lost”.

And now that the electoral crunch is coming, and there have already been ugly disruptions of opposition events by BN goons, the regime and its enforcers are becoming more openly threatening.

Not directly, of course, but in their characteristically snide, sneaky blame-the-victim style. Having already announced that he hasn’t enough police officers to ensure order during the elections and is thus calling on BN vigilante groups like the Civil Defence Department Malaysia (JPAM) and Rela (People’s Volunteer Corps) for assistance, Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein has now taken to warning the opposition not to make trouble.

Using as his pretext a highly dubious claim by Malaysian Seni Silat Gayong Organisation president Adiwijaya Abdullah that the opposition has plans to “create tension and commotion” at some polling stations during the general election, Hishammuddin recently vowed that his forces would take “stern action” in such cases.

BN’s rule of ‘us’ over ‘them’

“We want to ensure that a fair and independent election will persist in this country,” he added, in bare-faced denial of the unfairness and illegality of BN’s electoral system.

“We don’t want any quarters to create chaos. We have to defend our democracy system,” he said.

What he means by “our democracy”, of course, is the rule of “us” in BN over “them”, the dumb and subservient rakyat. And another notorious defender of this squalid system, Shahrizat Abdul Jalil of Cowgate-scandal fame, has announced that she is forming a special task force of Wanita Umno to help counter election chaos.

“The special task force will ensure all voters, especially BN voters, are able to cast their vote peacefully,” she declared, and then on the following day issued a warning to female and elderly voters that “certain people” will try and trick them into pre-election marking of their fingers with indelible ink.

But nothing that Hishammuddin, Shahrizat (left) or any other BN bigwig can say or do will overcome the regime’s indelible stink, especially in light of its last-minute announcement of its intention to purchase 18 jet fighters for RM4.2 billion, a deal that reeks of opportunity for typical Scorpene-submarine-style corruption.

A fact that brings us to another reason why BN and its crimes have become very much not only my business, but that of any other foreigner who can be bothered to take an interest – Concerted attempts by the regime to refurbish its rotten international image by buying the support of corrupt overseas ‘journalists’.

But doing this so incompetently, and through an Israeli-owned PR consultancy distinguished only by the disreputability of its clients, that the net result is that more of us than ever out in the wide world are joining the majority of Malaysians in the belief that finally, for once and for all and forever, BN must be destroyed.

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’.