Claims that Bersih 3.0 was not a call for clean and fair elections but an attempted coup against the government have only served to underscore Malaysians’ belief that the regime has no intention whatever of reforming the rotten electoral system.
And popular suspicion that BN has no intention of relinquishing power even if defeated in the next general election has been further aroused by regime-sponsored attacks on Bersih leaders and opposition ceramahs.
Many see these attacks as just a foretaste of Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s notoriously stated determination to defend Putrajaya even at the expense of crushed bodies and lost lives.
And a reminder of the fact that, like his father, Abdul Razak Hussein, long suspected of fomenting the May 13, 1969 riots to wrest the prime ministership from Tunku Abdul Rahman, the allegedly “moderate” Najib has already presided over crushed bodies and lost lives.
The
murder of Mongolian translator Altantuya Shaariibuu by two of his
bodyguards still continues to haunt Najib, as does the still-unresolved
suspicious death of the witness to alleged opposition corruption, Teoh
Beng Hock, at the hands of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission
(MACC).Yet following the Bersih 3.0 rally, the same discredited MACC has had the effrontery to offer its services to determine the cleanliness or otherwise of opposition candidates in the next general election.
And as if to highlight the complete failure by the MACC to investigate the Scorpene submarines scandal that involved the murder of Altantuya, Malaysia’s current defence minister has crowed that he, Najib and other BN figures are safe from subpoena by French authorities currently examining this sordid affair.
Meanwhile, the widely-suspected beneficiary of the billion-ringgit “commission” on the Scorpene submarines purchase, Najib himself, has been busily spending untold millions of public money in a desperate bid buy himself and his rotten regime out of trouble.
Obsessed with the concept of millions
In fact he seems to be obsessed with the concept of millions, having recently spent countless numbers of them on a ridiculous event devised to demonstrate his popularity, a five-day so-called “Millions of Youths” gathering at the very venue he vows to defend, if necessary, with crushed bodies and lost lives, Putrajaya.
Billed as a celebration of National Youth Day and hyped as one of the world’s top 10 festivals, this blatant attempt to outshine and outnumber the Bersih 3.0 rally provided Najib a golden opportunity to showcase his principal talents: perversion of the truth and pathetic self-praise.
Professing himself “overwhelmed” with the turnout, he urged a crowd decked-out in free “I love PM” T-shirts not to let a “handful of youths,” by which of course he meant the massive Bersih 3.0 rally, “hijack the country’s agenda and image.”
“Do not let them seize power,” he went on, falsely accusing Bersih attendees of “street riots, hurling stones and kicking policemen”, and calling on his captive audience not to “fall prey to instigation and slanders posted on the Internet and speeches of irresponsible people who incite us.”
He
then interrupted this litany of lies to deliver one of his trademark
Freudian slips, evoking recollections of his wife’s multi-million-dollar
diamond ring with the bizarre remark that “we should know how to choose
between diamonds and gems”.And having thus strayed onto the topic of his widely-despised spouse, he pressed on with the self-adoring observation that he hoped that all the T-shirts and signs bearing the message “I love PM” and “We love PM” would “not make my wife jealous as this expression of love reflects the respect and love of the leader.”
Next, as if this load of hogwash hadn’t been enough to convince a majority of Malaysians of their fast-fading love and respect for his so-called leadership, Najib addressed a crowd of petty traders purpose-assembled at Dataran Merdeka in a clear studied insult to Bersih 3.0.
Standing on the very site from which Bersih 3.0 participants were so unjustly excluded, he lamented that the April 28 rally had cost petty traders “millions” in losses before declaring that “this group must be protected and the BN government will continue to defend them.”
Apparently it didn’t occur to Najib that the “millions” he falsely claimed that his minions had lost due to Bersih 3.0 would only serve to remind the rest of us, as if we needed reminding, of the billions that Malaysia has lost through the fraud, theft and incompetence of BN and its cronies.
But such an obvious fact didn’t deter him from typically promising to throwing even more public money away on one of his trademark “You help me, I help you” exercises: the slashing of traders’ licence fees, a 50 percent discount on fines for such infractions as late renewal of licences, and the possibility of some kind of social security initiative for traders.
Money-mad to the point of mania
And in case anybody in Malaysia retains a shred of doubt that Najib and his accomplices are money-mad to the point of mania, the regime has brought a civil suit against selected Bersih leaders for the cost of alleged damages to police equipment in the course of the recent rally.
Of course Najib hasn’t been alone in digging ever deeper into the depths of the hole he’s in. All the usual suspects like Dr Mahathir Mohamad and the rest of the crew have been out there shovelling for all they’re worth.
Ably assisted, as ever, by Bernama and the rest of the ‘mainstream’ media who never tire in their efforts to bolster the regime’s terminally soiled reputation while simultaneously throwing dirt on the opposition.
But though these media’s names are mud and they know it, and so are those of their masters, they clearly can’t help go on digging the hole that will bury them. And the rest of us can hardly wait to see the crater collapse.
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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