Stand by for a dirtiest election ever held in Malaysia

Having done nothing whatsoever in four years as unelected prime minister, but lie through his teeth and squander public money hand over fist, Najib Abdul Razak still appears to believe that he’ll win the election he hasn’t yet had the gall to call.

And, let’s face it, there’s every chance that he will. Because the truth behind his fake ‘transformations’ of the nation and all the other wayang kulits he stages is that the electoral system remains as disastrously stacked in Umno/BN’s favour as ever.

If not more so, given that a ‘citizenship-for-votes’ scam just like the one in Sabah currently being ‘investigated’ by a royal commission of inquiry has also clearly been covertly operating in peninsular Malaysia.

And additionally, not one single demand by Bersih for clean and fair elections has been met. To be sure, the Election Commission has been playing for time by giving every appearance of action.

But the electoral rolls are still massively suspect, and electorates remain as massively gerrymandered as ever, varying in size as they do from as little as 5,000 voters to 150,000 or more, when in fact, they should be relatively equal.

And not only the Election Commission, but all the functionaries of the current Malaysian government – the defence forces, civil services, police, judiciary and ‘mainstream’ media – are in the pay of, or otherwise beholden to Umno/BN.

As can be witnessed by even a casual reading or viewing of the regime’s so-called ‘news’ media, if you’ve a strong enough stomach to survive the experience.

The latest, and by no means least nauseating example of this conspiracy of forces, was evident on the prime minister’s recent return from an allegedly ‘humanitarian’ side-trip to the Gaza Strip on the way home from last week’s World Economic Forum.

‘A show of sickening sycophancy’

Crowds of cheering ‘supporters’ (10,000 according to Bernama and 7,000 by Star Online) were gathered at KLIA – no doubt bussed-in at public expense – to cheer and wave banners bearing messages like “Welcome home the people’s champion“, “PM a national hero“, “We are proud of have (sic) a brave PM” and of course, the by now standard-issue “We love PM“.

In short, it was a show and a sandiwara of such sickening sycophancy as to put North Korea’s ridiculous dictatorship to shame.

And for what? To ‘celebrate’ the gigantic diplomatic boo-boo that Najib had, wittingly or otherwise, committed in visiting Gaza, which is controlled by hard-line Islamist Israel-haters Hamas, thus at one stroke both destroying his carefully-crafted moderate-Islam image and drawing the ire of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Abbas, whose peace-seeking Fatah party holds power on the West Bank and is recognised by the UN as the legitimate representative of Palestine, declared that he rejected and denounced Najib’s visit to Gaza on the grounds that “it enhances division and does not serve Palestinian interests.”

But such a stern public rebuff didn’t faze our hero, whose own 1Malaysia concept, after all, is a transparent front for activity that enhances division and does not serve Malaysian interests.

Never one to let reality spoil his party, however, Najib claimed to be “deeply touched” by the ‘unexpected welcome’, and said that it showed Malaysians’ “unwavering commitment to the Palestinian cause”.

He took the decision to visit Gaza, he reportedly explained, “to see for himself the plight of the people living there, and also to convey the support of the people of Malaysia for their cause to be free.”

What a pity then, that despite his ‘heroic’ efforts to promote freedom for the Palestinians, Najib shows so little enthusiasm for freeing Malaysians from five decades of repression, blunder and plunder by the Umno/BN regime that he currently heads.

In fact, he’s hell-bent on getting his Umno/BN cronies and himself another term in power by hook, or more likely, by crook.

He and his accomplices are apparently confident too, or at least frantically pretending to be, that their dirty and ferociously unfair electoral system will deliver Malaysia into their clutches for yet another five years of thieving.

Bold, and yet wary

In fact, according to the ubiquitous Bernama ‘news’ agency, one Umno/BN mouthpiece, Department of Special Affairs (Jasa) director-general Fuad Hassan, has boldly predicted that BN is capable of not just victory, but of regaining the two-thirds majority it so bitterly resents having lost in the 2008 general election.

But Deputy Transport Minister Abdul Rahim Bakri (right) is seemingly not so over-optimistic, still seeing the need to warn potential Umno/BN voters to be wary of “certain quarters” who are trying to destroy the people’s trust in the existing government, as well as in the legislative, judicial and election systems.

“These quarters are making optimal use of the alternative media,” Bernama quoted him as continuing, “hence, making it difficult for any actions to be taken against them. Most of them are using cyber-based attacks from a foreign land, so they are free to attack the government.”

As a foreigner long-dedicated to making cyber-based attacks on the Umno/BN regime, I’d love to be able to convince myself that Bakri was referring to me personally.

However, his use of that quaint term “certain quarters” was a dead give-away for the fact that he was more likely referring to the usual targets of the regime’s paranoid conspiracy theories, the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Israeli’s Institute of Intelligence and Special Operations (Mossad), or even, for all I know, Martians.

But let’s not be lulled by the idiocy of Umno/BN utterances into a false and dangerous sense of security. However stupid they’re happy to sound for the benefit of their more bodoh supporters, they’re as cunning as the proverbial shithouse rats.

And despite all their bare-faced lies about having cleaned up their electoral activities and enabled expatriate Malaysians to vote, the coming general election looks set to be the dirtiest ever.

So that if they’re finally to be rid of Umno/BN, Malaysians will have to vote for the opposition in absolutely overwhelming numbers. As I’m sure they will if they’re even half as fed-up with this rotten, crooked, lying regime as us cyber-based foreigners are.