Black to the future.

The huge and continuing black rallies against BN’s theft of the 13^th general election are a brilliant sign of Malaysians’ undying determination to emerge from the dark ages imposed on them by this dim and shady regime.

And the fact that the forces of darkness are fighting back with the same fly-by-night tactics for which the people have come to so loathe them is only serving to make prospects of the new dawn brighter.

Faced with election results rejecting of his fraudulent 1Malaysia as nothing but UnMalaysia, UnPrime Minister Najib Abdul Razak immediately started making dark accusations against the Chinese.

How people comprising little more than 20 per cent of the population could be responsible for a 53 per cent vote against Najib’s corrupt and criminal government he didn’t and of course couldn’t say.

But his cry has been taken up by the regime’s murky media, most notably Utusan Malaysia with its headline “What more do the Chinese want?”

And now Utusan and another BN partner-in-grime, Berita Harian, have taken to supporting Najib in his attempt to darken the mood of Malays against the Chinese as well as against the black rallies protesting his electoral fraud.

Utusan has headlined claims that “Young Chinese monopolise illegal rallies” and “DAP continues to trigger provocation.” While Berita Harian has pulled-out all the stops with a 12-page ‘report’ alleging violence at the rallies by means of pictures taken long ago at a Bersih demonstration.

Though Berita focused less on demonizing the Chinese and more on smearing the name of Anwar Ibrahim, alleging that “he continues to be the mastermind of street demonstrations in this country,” and adding that “the rakyat is fed (sic) with all kinds of sedition and slander through social media to give a negative picture about the general election.”

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. What the rakyat or at least the majority of it is actually sick of is the kind of sedition and slander with which Berita Harian, Utusan Malaysia and all the rest of BN’s mainstream media have been poisoning the people’s minds all these years.

In fact, of all BN’s accomplices in its betrayal of the rakyat during all the dark and dreary decades of its rule, the ‘mainstream’ media arguably have the blackest record.

The sole purpose of news organisations, after all, is to be ‘watchdogs’ to warn and guard the people against crimes and injustices committed against them by their institutions of government.

But instead, pleading the provisions of BN’s pernicious, anti-constitutional Printing, Presses and Publications Act (PPPA), the mainstream media and the thousands of fake editors and journalists who infest them have been nothing but regime stooges.

Systematically keeping silent on BN crimes, corruptions and deceptions, and stridently attacking regime critics and opponents with steady streams of lies.

This monstrous betrayal of the people has been equalled, if possible, only by a judiciary so regime-compliant that the people not only have no watchdog, but no legal protection against such atrocities as the rigged recent election.

Yet, according to Malaysiakini, former Court of Appeal Judge Mohd Noor Abdullah has had the arrogance to join in Najib’s racist blame-game for his losing campaign with the assertion that “Chinese Malaysians must be prepared for a backlash from the Malay community for their “betrayal” in the general election.

“For the Malays, the pantang larang (taboo) is to be betrayed,” he declared, “because when they are betrayed, they will react, and when they react, their dendam kesumat tidak tersudah-sudah (wrath will be endless).”

This racist rant brings us back to the black rallies, which are the most promising sign in living memory that not just Malays but Malaysians of all races are enraged at being betrayed by BN, and that their wrath against the regime will indeed be endless.

The endlessly opportunistic Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin seems dimly aware of this, and is desperately trying to present himself as good cop in contrast with other BN operatives’ bad cops.

According to the BN Bernama, BN’s lead rakyat-betraying ‘news’ agency Bernama, he said in ‘Hello Malaysia’ on Bernama TV that BN must conduct an in-depth study and analysis on its “trust deficit” if it wants to restore voter trust and confidence within the next five years.

“For instance, the issue about Bangladeshi voters, the blackout during vote-counting in Bentong, ballot boxes brought in suddenly…these must be explained quickly,” he said.

Of course he failed to mention a great many other irregularities that also urgently call for ‘explanation’, like the electoral commission’s collusion with BN in massive gerrymandering and roll-stacking, as well as its turning of a blind eye to the regime’s wholesale bribery of voters.

“There is no magic pill to redeem our credibility in just one day,” he conceded, “but if we are sincere in the transformation and keep our promises, I believe the voters will eventually come to our side. But we have to do it quickly. We have to respond to the allegations fanned by Anwar.”

As far as I’m concerned, Khairy can talk such pious nonsense as this until he’s black in the face, but nothing he or any other BN mouthpiece can say will help the regime.

Because far from just Anwar fanning allegations, it’s a fact that most Malaysians have made their own minds up that they’re no longer prepared to tolerate BN’s lying and stealing, especially when it comes to stealing elections.

Several major inquiries have been instigated into the fraudulent conduct of the recent election, and more grassroots organisations than ever before in Malaysian history, not to mention countless individuals, are on a mission to rid the nation of the criminal curse of BN.

The latest such initiative I’ve seen in this cause is my old friend Zunar’s launching of the Cartoonists Against Election Fraud (CAEF) Movement. This is not just an array of great talent, but a roll-call of names that totally gives the lie to any assertion that the Chinese are in the forefront of opposition to BN: Nor Azlin Ngah, Johnny Ong, Amir Hakim, Lawrence Jeyarj, Abdullah Jones, Amier Hamzah Hashim, Azhar Saad, Azlan Isa, Sham Saimum Ezil, Megat, Firdaus and Baba.

What an indelible contribution this team will make compared with BN with all its double-talk, delible ink and dubious ‘news’ media. Just as hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens decked-out in black will continue to signal the continuing doom of the BN regime, and the coming dawn of a brilliant new era for their beloved Malaysia.

 

Good and Bad News for BN.

While BN basks in the good news that it has ‘won’ the 13^th general election, I’m delighted to see how much bad news this crooked, lying regime has to face in its moment of ‘triumph’.

In other words, though my hopes have been dashed that some kind of miracle might occur to rid Malaysia of this chronic curse this time around, I’m absolutely elated at the fact that it was such a pyrrhic victory for Najib Abdul Razak and his gang of nasties.

Survival with seven less federal seats than Abdullah Badawi achieved in the ‘tsunami’ of 2008 is absolutely pathetic considering the fraudulence of the electoral system, the countless billions thrown around in pork-barreling and bribery, and the combined might of the mendacious mainstream media.

And way beyond pathetic is Najib’s immediate blaming of the Chinese for his failure to steal back the two-thirds majority he and his accomplices so desperately craved.

In achieving over 50 per cent of the vote, Pakatan Rakyat clearly attracted a great deal of support from Malaysians of every race and creed, especially in most of the relatively enlightened and prosperous urban centres.

Paradoxically, it was the very people who BN has systematically contrived to keep poor, ignorant and thus grateful for peanuts in hand-outs who voted them back into office.

That portion of the population still innocent or ignorant enough to believe that selling their votes for cash is some kind of entrepreneurial coup, and that the pack of lies they’re fed by BN’s ‘mainstream’ media could possibly be true.

While, no thanks to BN but rather over its dead body, urban Malaysians now have access to genuine news online, it is an absolute disgrace to the regime’s claims of progress that there are millions of Malaysians to whom the Net is still just the thing you sleep under to keep the nyamuk² from biting you in the night.

No wonder such deliberately-disadvantaged people neither know nor care that for decades they’ve been fed false promises and pacified with chicken-feed while BN has systematically looted the nation’s treasury and resources and destroyed its civil institutions.

What’s great news for the rest of us, however, and very bad news for BN, is that urban Malaysians are abandoning the regime in overwhelming numbers.

Thus rendering Najib’s ‘victory’ as hollow possible by depriving him of the prizes he so dearly, indeed desperately wanted. Selangor, for a start, where BN has been even more comprehensively slaughtered this time around than back in 2008, and Penang where the regime has suffered a similar fate.

Then there are all the triumphs that Pakatan Rakyat scored on an individual level. It was fantastic to see Nurul Izzah prevail despite the regime’s throwing everything at her; to see Lim Kit Siang not only win but achieve a landslide in a seat in Johor; and to witness the well-deserved wipe-outs of the Malacca Chief minister Mohd Ali Rustam and the candidates fielded by Perkasa.

And speaking of wipe-outs, it was an absolute joy to witness the eagerly-anticipated near-annihilation of Umno’s ever-compliant partners in the BN crime syndicate, the MCA, MIC and Gerakan.

While these parties have at least thus far been quite humble or at least fatalistic in defeat, however, Mohd Ali Rustam has been loudly lamenting the ingratitude of the voters who deserted him in such droves.

According to BN ‘news’ agency Bernama, he “lamented” that “voters, especially the Chinese, did not appreciate all the services and efforts undertaken by the BN government in developing the state and safeguarding the welfare of the rakyat.”

What Mohd Ali failed to mention, of course, was the possibility that the voters, both Chinese and otherwise, had recalled how little they appreciated the arrogant contempt he demonstrated for their welfare on the occasion of his elder son’s marriage some months ago.

As you’ll remember, and as the voters of Malacca surely did, Mohd Ali invited so many guests that he claimed it was a Malaysian if not world record for a wedding crowd, and had the bills for the entire affair sent to the state government.

Another sore loser for whom it is hard to feel a shred of sympathy is Johor BN chairman Abdul Ghani Othman. Smarting from his crushing 14,762-vote defeat in Gelang Patah parliamentary seat by DAP advisor Lim Kit Siang, he blamed people who had “cast their votes based on their emotions.”

How the voters are expected to remain unemotional in the face of one massive BN scandal after another, he didn’t attempt to explain. But whatever, emotions are still running very high indeed among Pakatan Rakyat members and supporters at the outrageous illegalities committed by the regime before and during the general election, and blithely condoned by the crooked election commission.

Blatant gerrymandering has delivered BN about 60 per cent of parliamentary seats with less than 50 per cent of the popular vote. And even this minority of votes for BN was achieved with a blend of bribery, fraud and rigging of the electoral rolls and postal votes.

What Malaysians can or will do about being thus robbed of the change of government they so clearly craved is anybody’s guess. Challenge the result in the BN-biased courts? Stage Bersih-style public rallies in support of demands for a re-run, in defiance of the BN-biased police?

Meanwhile, we all wait to hear the possible ultimate bad news for Najib Abdul Razak if not BN in general, from the eternal and ever-malicious PM-behind-the-scenes Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

As gratified as he surely must be by the success of son Mirzan in the general election, and as relieved to be spared facing justice at the hands of a PR government, he’s likely to be very unimpressed indeed by Najib’s abject failure to win back BN’s cherished two-thirds majority.

So BN and its supporters had better enjoy the good news while it lasts, because they have so much bad news coming to them, from both inside and outside their ranks, that they’ll wonder why they ever bothered engineering this fake ‘win’, and may even come to regret it.

 

 

Buy, buy and bye bye, BN.

Has BN bought enough votes to ‘win’ this coming Sunday’s so-called ‘election’? Or to put the question another way, are there still enough Malaysians so moronic, masochistic and morally-bankrupt as to stand for this criminal regime’s attempt to bribe them yet again with their own money?

I very much doubt it. In fact I think enough Malaysians are finally convinced, as I’ve been for years and have recently been repeating until I reached the lucky 8^th time, that BN must be destroyed.

In its efforts to turn this election into an elauction by bidding-up the bribery to ever-dizzier heights, I hope and trust that the regime has finally sealed its own long-awaited and well-deserved doom.

Of course I realize that here in Malaysiakini I’m preaching to the converted, and that there are still plenty of others that BN has profoundly if not permanently perverted.

But even with some of these the proverbial penny has started to drop that they’re selling-out on the cheap. According to Dr Bridget Welch, Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak has splashed-out more than RM58 billion in public money over the past four years to try and buy his regime one more term. But that’s chicken-feed compared with the hundreds of billions that BN and its cronies have stolen and salted-away for themselves.

Or as a commenter on a recent Malaysiakini story brilliantly expressed this thought, it’s like BN has hijacked your car and stolen your cash, then ‘generously’ given you back some of your own small change so you’ll be ‘grateful’ to be able to pay your bus-fare home.

Meanwhile BN billionaires like Abdul ‘The Termite’ Taib Mahmud, Mirzan Mahathir and all the rest ride high on the hog and immune from investigation of their murky affairs, and 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), over which Najib Abdul Razak has control, has allegedly salted-away RM7 billion in a secret account in the Cayman Islands.

But everyone’s been aware of BN’s record of financial plunder for decades, without ever getting up the gumption to do anything about it but sit around coffeeshops complaining.

Until recently, that is, when the National Feedlot Corporation (NFC) scandal appeared to especially excite public scorn and protest. And of course the spectre of the earlier Scorpene submarines ‘commission’ scandal and the associated murder of Mongolian translator Altantuya Shaariibuu has also continued to haunt BN in general and Najib Abdul Razak himself specifically.

Haunted but undaunted, however, Najib goes on and on with his spending-spree, splurging public money on buying himself and his partners-in-crime more time.

And time is what the whole gang of them deserve. Not time in government, however, but in jail. Though the regime claims that every single one of its candidates in the up-coming election have been vetted and declared ‘clean’ by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), I’ll wager not one of them would survive an honest, professional tax audit or forensic investigation.

As I’ve said many times before, this is not a political coalition as it may once have been; it’s an organized crime syndicate. And its cronies and sycophants in the police force, judiciary and ‘mainstream’ media are accomplices in or accessories to its countless offences.

Even this ‘election’ is itself is a crime, or whole complex of crimes on BN’s part, from its unconstitutional and otherwise illegal gerrymandering of electoral boundaries and stacking of the electoral rolls, to its monopoly of the print and air media and the plundering of public money for ruling-party campaign funds and outright voter bribery.

Last week Najib was having a wonderful time joking that Anwar Ibrahim’s campaign jingle Madu dan Racun, which likens Pakatan Rakyat to honey and BN to poison, actually meant that “opposition promises are like poisonous honey.”

Thus leading many of us to observe that it’s not Anwar’s poisonous honey that the rakyat has good reason to be afraid of, but Najib’s poisonous money.

Poisonous to Najib and his BN regime, that is, as everybody knows it is public money, and thus not only bleeding the rakyat to death, but dangerously blowing-out Malaysia’s national debt.

Lest you start imagining I’m as obsessed with money as Najib and his BN conies, however, let me say that the most compelling of all reasons why BN must and I trust will be destroyed this May 5 is what this robber-regime has cost Malaysia in what no amount of money can buy.

The lives of dozens if not hundreds of people killed in conflict with and in the custody of its police and MACC, for a start. No amount of money, public or otherwise, can repay these people or their surviving relatives for the fact that most of these people have never been accorded any respect by BN, let alone the justice of proper investigations of their deaths or punishment for their killers.

Then there have been the deaths in the custody of former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad and his successors of Malaysia’s formerly admirable justice and education systems, excellent and efficient civil services and free, independent media.

In short, BN owes Malaysia and Malaysians a monumental if not insurmountable debt in terms of not only stolen cash, land, timber and countless other commodities, but also in terms of death and the destruction of civil liberties and protections.

And no amount more stolen public money given out as ‘election gifts’ will save Najib and his current regime, including the apparently immortal Dr Mahathir, from finally paying the price.

BN must be destroyed. Now, this Sunday May 5, 2013. Not by and by, and not delayed by another day, let alone another five years. Both despite and in defiance of Najib’s corrupt attempts to buy, buy this election, now is the time for Malaysia to bid him and BN bye bye.

 

BN must be destroyed 8.

In little more than a week from now, Najib Abdul Razak will be faced with the fact that he and his phoney 1Malaysia have finally lost Malaysia, and the vast majority of Malaysians will be congratulating themselves on having won their beloved country back.

Because even if BN manages to steal back into power by hook or its customary crook, it will be living on borrowed – or rather bought – time, and surviving only in fear and dread of how even more urgently than ever the people will want to see it destroyed.

But on balance I’m betting that the people are disgusted and determined enough to seize their long-awaited chance to make this May 5 their D-day. D for the destruction of the dumb, despotic, deceitful, double-dealing and altogether despicable BN regime; D for the decent democracy most have dreamed of and been denied for decades.

And will be denied for many more decades to come, if BN is ever again allowed to have its way. As it is absolutely desperate to do, and thus is trying every dastardly dodge it can think of, from denying the disgraceful degree of gerrymandering, roll-stacking and outright bribery with public money that so tips elections in its favour as to make a total mockery of its dacing symbol, to illegally demanding the support of government servants.

Possibly the most blatant case of such illicit solicitation thus far has been that by Umno vice-president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, who according to Malaysiakini employed his position as caretaker defence minister to tell an audience of 600 army personnel at an official event in a camp in Johor Baru that “I’m not asking for your support, I’m not campaigning. No, I merely ask for your votes, that’s it.”

And he was so arrogant in his committal of this outrage that he actually went on to turn to journalists covering the event and ‘joke’: “The press, don’t write this, ya!”

Apparently confident that the press, or at least the miserable BN-owned and dominated ‘mainstream’ sector of it, wouldn’t dream of writing a word against its masters, he then on to try and dispel what he called “rumours” that the ballots of defence personnel are marked in favour of BN by their superior officers.

Claiming that “the secrecy and transparency of army votes will be protected with the unprecedented implementation of advanced voting for security-forces personnel in this general election,” he then went on to urge his audience to “go ahead and cross whatever you want, as long as you cross BN”.

Cross BN off the list, more like it. As I hope most Malaysians of Indian descent have finally decided to join those of other ethnicities in doing in light of the way Hindraf’s disgraceful recent double-cross of their community.

Against all its previously-stated principles, Hindraf did what it called the “unthinkable” in signing a memorandum of understanding (MoF) with caretaker Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak and throwing its support behind the BN regime’s bid to retain power, and if possible regain the two-thirds majority it lost in 2008

Hysterical attempts by P. Waythamoorthy and his Hindraf henchmen to justify this “historic” act of treachery have been enough to make long-time BN stooge in charge of suckering while pretending to succor the Indian community, the vile and ever-venal Samy Vellu.

Waythamoorthy had the hide to declare that “it doesn’t matter whether Malaysia is ruled by Ravana (the demon of Hindu mythology) or Rama (the god) as long as disadvantaged Indians are finally taken care of.

Taken care of economically, that is, revealing that Hindraf’s concern is as exclusively about money as BN’s has long been. As Hindraf advisor N Ganesan later admitted, according to Malaysiakini, the group had to drop demands pertaining to human rights and the issue of Indian deaths in custody in making its financial deal with the devil.

How the hell the Hindraf head honchos managed to convince themselves that Najib would honour the agreement that he so gleefully signed with them is anybody’s guess.

But it doesn’t seem that they’ve been able to convince anyone else, as the rest of us are aware that behind Najib’s claims to be the nation’s great transformer, he’s shown himself to be nothing but an incorrigible misinformer.

And thus that he is as little likely to deliver on his promises to Hindraf as he has been to keep the promises he made to all Malaysians in his so-called Election Integrity Pledge.

Here, by way of a timely pre-election reminder, are the ‘principles’ that Najib promised that he and other BN leaders would uphold in contesting the now-imminent general election:

• Truth, integrity, ethical conduct and accountability, including not accepting or giving bribes or being involved in corrupt practices in any 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.

As everybody very well knows, Najib and his BN accomplices have broken every single word of this alleged pledge, and clearly never had the slightest intention of adhering to it in the first place.

Thus only proving for the umpteenth time that their capacity for pathological lying and perjury is surpassed only by their appetite for plunder.

Not to mention their perversion of justice for the purpose of escaping punishment for the countless billions they and their cronies have picked from Malaysians’ pockets, as well as for all the lives they have callously taken in the process.

Hindraf may prefer ringgit above human rights and lives, but millions of other Malaysians will be going to the polls on May 5 determined to both regain their stolen rights and to avenge BN the likes of Altantuya Shaariibuu, Teoh Beng Hock, A Kugan and the hundreds of other BN victims.

For these and its countless other crimes and corruptions, BN must finally and for once and for all be destroyed. And after all these decades of domination and depradation by this detestable regime, every honest, sentient and upstanding Malaysian deserves the satisfaction of sharing in its destruction.

 

BN must be destroyed 7.

It’s absolutely tragic that there are still some Malaysians so bodoh or bent or both that they’re prepared to deny that BN must be destroyed. Because it’s not a matter of my or anybody else’s opinion, but an absolute, forensic fact.

Murder, theft and fraud are crimes in every country on the planet. And every man, woman and child in Malaysia is aware that BN is guilty of all of them and more on a massive scale. Everybody is also vividly aware that for at least 20 or 30 years BN has been corrupting justice, the media and all possible other civil and religious institutions for the express purposes of escaping punishment for its crimes and buying time to continue committing more.

So BN and the moronic, meretricious, mendacious and above all megalomanic mentality that motivate its monstrous crimes against Malaysia must not only be destroyed, but destroyed before it does the nation even more damage than it has already.

Even the regime itself knows how richly it deserves destruction. But desperate to endlessly delay its karmic destiny, it’s determined to stop at nothing to steal the coming general election, and thus seize the prize of another five years of power and plunder.

Thus it not only utterly refuses to admit any flaw in its fraudulent electoral system, complete with flagrant gerrymandering, riotous roll-stacking and corrupt campaigning, but has actually requested silence on the subject.

As you’ll no doubt recall from his speech announcing the recent dissolution of parliament, current head of the BN gang, Najib Abdul Razak, had the unmitigated gall to “urge all parties to remain responsible and not seed any doubts about the integrity of the election process in this country.”

This was almost as breathtakingly hypocritical as his earlier signing of a so-called Election Integrity Pledge committing himself to a host of high-sounding principles including truth, ethical conduct, good governance, avoidance of bribery and corruption, and compliance with all the applicable laws and regulations of Malaysia.

As many of us have since commented on this, Najib and his BN accomplices have never so much as aspired to such high ideals, let alone contemplated practicing them, and will continue to flagrantly flout them at every opportunity.

And sure enough, Najib has been has been busily lying and handing-out electoral bribes ever since, and this week his Information, Communication and Culture Minister, Rais Yatim, was falsely defending BN’s flagrant breaching of ethical conduct, good governance and Malaysian laws and regulations.

Defending BN’s employment of his department’s machinery and manpower for electioneering purposes, he lied that there is “nothing wrong” with this because “BN is considered the caretaker government until nomination day.”

But this was just a warm-up for Rais, who then proceeded to try and justify his support of BN’s culture of misinformation and miscommunication by means of the regime’s tame ‘mainstream’ media.

In clear contravention of, and typical BN-style contempt for, Malaysians’ constitutional right to a freedom of news and information, the BN regime has for decades employed its notorious Printing, Presses and Publications Act(PPPA)to refuse licences to any truly independent print or broadcast organisations.

The resultant overwhelming weight of propaganda in the ‘mainstream’ media for BN, combined with a thunder of silence about its crimes and scandals and minimal but invariably negative coverage of regime critics or opposition parties, personalities and issues, is an absolute outrage.

And the government’s ‘concession’ to permit Pakatan Rakyat to present its manifesto on regime-owned Radio Television Malaysia(RTM)once only with a limit of a mere 10 minutes of airtime only adds insult to injury.

But according to Malaysiakini, Rais declared that the solo 10-minute slot would give Pakatan plenty of time to present its manifesto, claiming that “I have conducted tests and in 10 minutes we could read at least five pages of A4 papers with a one-line space between sentences”, and adding that the opposition’s refusal of the offer “was only an attempt to mock RTM.”

Since this exercise in mockery of democracy, there has been a new move to muffle if not muzzle the only media in Malaysia that provide independent coverage of political affairs, online news portals.

Malaysiakini, KiniTV and The Malaysia Insider were refused permission to cover Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s recent announcement of the list of BN general-election candidates on what a member of the Umno secretariat claimed to be “orders from the top”.

Attempts have also been been made in recent times to jam the signals of independent radio stations operating in Sarawak and elsewhere, and if past experiences are any indication, online news portals can expect attempts to bring them down with distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks as the general election nears.

Meanwhile BN’s mongrel ‘mainstream’ media are working themselves into their customary frenzies of fulsome praise and adoring support for the regime, though I hope and trust with diminishing effect.

Certainly all the Malaysians I know have long abandoned any belief in what they read, view or hear on or in the BN media, and one of them that I regularly see in Sydney recently took the trouble to send me a big envelope-full of stories he’d clipped from mainstream newspapers while on a visit back home, to remind me what a joke they are.

But still the regime keeps feeding these clownish media with comic material, like Najib’s recent reminder to Malaysians that they have BN to thank for nation’s infrastructure. A claim that seemed to evoke not the smug, satisfied smiles he intended from a grateful populace, but scornful laughter at the reality that BN infrastructure projects, like major BN-regime defence and other purchases, are primarily intended not for the people’s benefit, but to provide BN and its cronies with opportunities for profit and plunder.

And while we’re on the topic of corruption, as is all-too-tediously inevitable in any discussion of BN, what about the text for the Friday khutbah (sermon) that was issued by the Malaysian Islamic Development Department (Jakim) last week for delivery in mosques across the Federal Territory?

As noted by Malaysiakini, the title of the khutbah was the same as that of the BN election manifesto, ‘Menepati Janji, Membawa Harapan’ (Fulfilling Promise, Bringing Hope), and the theme stressed believers’ duty to show “loyalty to the country’s government of today, which has proven to always defend Islam.”   “Look and defend what has been done by the country’s government,” it went on, “for the sake of the purity of religion, life, intellect, pride, ancestry and also property.”

But on the contrary, surely such shameless employment of its ‘religious’ stooges to justify the regime’s spectacularly un-Islamic record of crimes against life, intellect, pride, ancestry and property does more to alienate honest, sincere Muslims than attract them.

And in the process provides Malaysians of all religions and races with yet another in an endless list of reasons why BN must be destroyed.

BN must be destroyed 6.

I keep wondering whether this “must be destroyed” mantra is working. If it is, let’s hope it will be effective much faster than it was for its originator, Roman senator Cato the Elder, who had to wait for 29 years to see his “Carthage must be destroyed” curse come to fruition.

Whereas the next best chance for Malaysians to put an end to BN, the looming general election, is more like a mere 29 days away. But no worries. The well-known RAHMAN prophecy and the fact that it’s also BN’s unlucky 13^th general election could prove more decisive than any “must be destroyed” or other mantra.

And even more encouraging is how hell-bent BN appears to be on engineering its own destruction. Still trotting-out its tired old carrot-and-stick act, for example.

With Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak dangling the carrot, and the emphasis as always on the second syllable ‘rot’, as in both the rubbish he talks and the corruption he both condones and commits.

Doling-out ‘gifts’ of public money as if it was out of his own and BN’s pocket in a brazen and blatant attempt to buy Malaysians’ forgetfulness of or forgiveness for his regime’s robbing the nation of countless billions in cash, land and natural resources, and thus buy his way back into office.

And in case RM500 per head in bribery euphemized as BR1M hasn’t yet swung him enough votes in his favour, now, in his tawdry, trademark “you help me, I help you” fashion, he’s promising to double it if he’s successful.

But in case Malaysian voters turn out not to be such donkeys as to go for Najib’s rotten carrots, all the usual suspects are out there waving the stick.

Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein has been making dark threats against “certain parties” who are plotting to cause electoral chaos, and preparing his police and vigilantes to take up their cudgels against opposition “troublemakers”.

Former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad is as ever brandishing his twin weapons of race and religion, and proclaiming that there should be more Malay-supremacy clubs like Ibrahim Ali’s pernicious Perkasa.

And the moment that parliament was dissolved to make way for the election, Defence Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi went straight into attack mode, tweeting to BN members and supporters that “we shall move to the warzone to kill all adverse political intruders.”

Not to be outdone, however, Najib has since combined both the carrot and the stick by giving 22,000 free (as in paid for with public money, of course) BN- and 1M4U-branded motorcycle helmets to members of a “youth brigade” recruited to tout for BN in Selangor.

As cunning a move as Najib and his advisors must have considered this to be, however, it was as riddled with symbolism as dire for BN on the streets as ‘13’ and ‘RAHMAN’ may turn out to be in the election.

Considering Mahathir’s now famous remark that Malaysians should vote for BN as “the devil they know” in combination with the terrible toll of life and limb motorcyclists face on Malaysia’s roads, it’s hard not to think of these helmets as hell-mets. And even more fatally, unless I’m very much mistaken in my understanding of Chinese numerology, the numbers 1 and 4 as in the 1M4U logo signify the message “forever die”.

But as dire as everything that BN members and their minions are saying and doing may be, even more self-destructive is their dumb insolence in the face of public disgust at their rampant corruption and countless other notorious crimes.

A perennial case in point being that of Abdul Taib Mahmud, who has parlayed his 30-odd – very odd – years as the modestly-salaried Chief Minister of Sarawak into a family timber, plantation and real-estate empire allegedly worth US$14 billion.

The shocking extent to which he has stripped Sarawak of its timber resources is there for anyone with access to Google Earth to see, and the astonishing scale of his and his relatives’ and cronies’ international property investments is a matter of public record.

Yet so overweaning is his assumption of immunity from official investigation, let alone prosecution, that he recently responded to suggestions that the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission should inquire into a video shot by NGO Global Witness apparently revealing close associates detailing corrupt practices, by scornfully dismissing the very idea.

Claiming “victimization”, he scoffed that the MACC doesn’t deserve his co-operation, as it has been “naughty and dishonest,” then proceeded to claim that in any case such an investigation would have little impact on Sarawakians’ support for him and BN in the coming election as “it is out of tune with local sentiments.”

While I entirely agree with Taib that BN’s tame MACC has been and remains “naughty and dishonest” to say the very least, considering the deaths of Teoh Beng Hock and others in its custody and its utter failure to investigate regime corruption, I fancy that his touching faith in local sentiments may well be misplaced.

As misplaced, in fact, as the confidence that self-titled First Lady of Malaysia, Rosmah Mansor apparently has that the populace will believe this week’s claim by her New York jewelers Jacob & Co that the US$24-million diamond ring they sent her two years ago was actually intended for her daughter’s mother-in-law-to-be, the unlovely Maira Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan.

Thanks to such arrogant denials and “elegant silences” on these and the rest of the endless series of scandals surrounding BN figures, and collusion in these attempted cover-ups by its accomplices and accessories in the police, judiciary and ‘mainstream’ media, the regime is increasingly despised and detested.

Terminally despised and detested, I hope and trust, and as now caretaker Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak seems to have started to become dimly aware.

Hence his groveling televised speech earlier this week in which he promised more transparency in government and more action against corruption if the BN regime is re-elected.

“My sincere apologies to all Malaysians if we have done anything wrong,” he whined, adding that “at the end of the day, we are ordinary humans. If we are given a strong mandate, I can assure you that we will do better in the next five years.”

What? “If we have done anything wrong”?? Who does this pathological liar and pathetic apology for a human being think he’s kidding??? As every Malaysian with half a brain knows by now, he and his BN accomplices have done nothing but wrong in living memory.

Yet he has the bare-faced gall to pretend that he intends to reform while simultaneously committing blatant voter bribery and presiding over an electoral system so criminally skewed in his regime’s favour, and thus in such crying need of reform that he felt the need in his speech announcing the dissolution of parliament to “urge all parties to remain responsible and not seed any doubts about the integrity of the election process in this country.”

What a joke. What an insult to the people of Malaysia. And what a compelling reason, as if we needed yet another one, why BN must be destroyed.

BN must be destroyed 5.

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 its 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 long ago disappeared.

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

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

So that the long-awaited 13^th 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 Abdullah Badawi lost BN in 2008, it’s virtually certain that Mahathir will make a move to replace him with Muhyddin, 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, and threats of violence are already in the air. Have been in the air, in fact, since the 2010 Umno National Assembly, 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 to ensure order during the elections and is thus calling on BN vigilante groups like Rela and JPAM 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 are would take “stern action” in such cases.

“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.”

What he means by “our democracy”, of course, is the rule of “us” in BN over “dem”, the dumb and subservient rakyat. And another other 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 or any other BN bigwig can say or do can 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 taking 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 out in the wide world than ever are joining the majority of Malaysians in the belief that finally, for once and for all and forever, BN must be destroyed.