Though it is still very far from sure that Umno/BN can be prevented from stealing the much-anticipated 13th general election, there are already early signs that this diseased regime has intimations of its impending doom.
The clearest symptom of this has been the June 13 blog post “My fears” by the man presumably best-qualified to feel the pulse of the body politic and deliver such a dire prognosis, former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
Of course it’s entirely possible that, given his long-evident conviction that the survival of his perverted version of Malaysia depends on him personally, he’s confusing his own inevitably impending mortality with that of his pack of accomplices, protégés and supporters.
But on the other hand, he’s also clearly petrified that his political powers will pre-decease him, thus exposing him in his remaining years to prosecution, imprisonment or even worse by a victorious and vengeful opposition.
Or so he claimed in his 18-point “My fears” post, of which the first point dubiously stated that “Lim Kit Siang is reported to have said that I am working hard to ensure the opposition will not win because I am afraid when the opposition government is in place, it will act against all my ‘misdeeds’ when I was prime minister.”
Point
two expanded on this with the hyperbolic if not hysterical proposition
that “no doubt he (Kit Siang) is inspired by what happened to Gaddafi
and Mubarak. He would love to see me dragged to the courts and sentenced
to death or at least to a life sentence. Maybe like Gaddafi I would be
murdered.”“He is right. I am afraid,” Mahathir continued in this paranoid vein in points three and four, “I am afraid of of the kind of abuse of power that has already been shown by one of Pakatan’s great leaders,” in presumed reference to Anwar Ibrahim.
“I am afraid of the fabrication of charges so as to put me behind bars. That I am innocent would be irrelevant. What is important is Kit Siang’s satisfaction at seeing me behind bars and more.”
Then, having vilified the opposition for his own invention of its intention to victimise him in the event of a victory over Umno/BN, he devoted the next 12 points of his “My fears” post to denying his notorious record of nepotism, cronyism, corruption and repression before claiming that “I am ready to go when my time comes. I am conscious that all that I have will not accompany me to the grave.”
‘Evil people and crooks’
But unfortunately for Mahathir’s portrayal of himself as an innocent senior statesman serenely facing possible political defeat, persecution and even death, he couldn’t resist destroying all the pathos he’d laboured so hard to create by injecting a dose of his notorious venom into his 18th and final point: “But for as long as I can I will work hard to prevent evil people and crooks from destroying this country that I love.”
His attempt to smear the opposition as “evil people and crooks” simply serves to remind us all that the truly evil people and crooks that the people of Malaysia are dying to see the end of are him and his whole regime.
But the prospect of vengeful prosecution that Mahathir claims he fears for the purpose of portraying himself as a martyr in advance of a possible or even probably opposition victory appears to be a figment of his malicious imagination.
Or perhaps even more likely a ploy to arouse popular sympathy for the amnesty that he and the Umnasties and BNazis are sure to start calling for as soon as they realise that they’ll soon face defeat.
Not
that the opposition or the people will be stupid enough to grant them
an amnesty, I trust. While I agree entirely with Ambiga Sreenevasan’s (right)
recent contention that there should be “no witchhunt” in a spirit of
vengeance or payback, it is also unthinkable that political criminals
and their cronies should simply evade or avoid legal action.One of the principal benefits to Malaysia of the overthrow of the Umno/BN regime in favour of a respectable government, it seems to me, will be the restoration of the principle that all citizens are equal under the law.
So, with all due respect to Ambiga as a senior lawyer, and similar due regard to my utter lack of legal training, I can’t agree with her proposal, recently echoed by William de Cruz, for some kind of selective amnesty for those who have so flagrantly flouted the law as Umno/BN politicians and their accomplices have.
Justice must be seen to be done
Certainly I agree with Ambiga that justice could be served by confessions of guilt and restitution of ill-gotten gains by those charged with theft and corruption, rather than their imprisonment.
But I believe that they should be charged and brought to court so that justice is both publicly done and transparently seen to be done in cases of those who have committed financial and property crimes, as well as those to whom Ambiga herself states that Amnesty should definitely be denied: those suspected of killing and other violent crimes against persons.
But talk of amnesty or otherwise is only academic at this stage, I’m afraid, as, despite Dr Mahathir’s fears of their forthcoming defeat and his own imagined ensuing maltreatment, the suspects are for the time being still in power.
And just as Dr M is still devoting himself to staving off the evil day that the forces of virtue prevail with tear-jerking blogs like “My fears” and his usual statements calling allegations of electoral bias “pure nonsense” and decrying civil reforms as liable to “spark unrest”, lots of his regime colleagues and their collaborators are still telling their crooked stories.
Raja Muda of Perak Raja Nazrin Shah has complained that “civil society is becoming uncivil” despite his entirely erroneous claim that Malaysia’s laws “have been updated to reflect contemporary society and international norms.”
Foreign Affairs Minister Anifah Aman has outrageously declared the allegedly murder-involved billion-ringgit Scorpene submarines scandal linked to the Prime Minister to be “not a serious matter”.
And the de facto law minister has made the ludicrous statement that “a government that does not enjoy the support of the people can be toppled with water bottles.”
All outstanding evidence for the fact that, amnesty or no amnesty for the Umnasties when the crunch finally comes, it’ll certainly be a great relief to finally be rid of such a bunch of Umnutters.
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' and ‘1Malaysia.con'.
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