Dean Johns
1:31PM Oct 27, 2011
1:31PM Oct 27, 2011
Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak speaks with such a forked tongue that he’s almost as deadly a snake-in-the-grass as Malaysia’s most notoriously venomous lurker in the lalang, Mahathir Mohamad.
There he was in China the other day, slithering around the international stage in his role of moderate Muslim statesman, urging the people of Libya to “unite to create a new era for the country” following the death of Muammar Gaddafi.
“What is important after this is for the people of Libya to open a new era which can promise prosperity to the people, seeing Libya is rich in oil while its population is small,” he continued.
Such ‘support’ of the Libyans in their freedom from the 40-year rule of an oil-funded dictatorship was a bit rich, I thought, coming from the current head of a 54-year kleptocracy that has so generously supported itself on the proceeds of its own nation’s oil-producer, Petronas.
Despite the Malaysian government’s and thus the Malaysian people’s ownership of Petronas, its finances have been kept so shrouded in secrecy, and thus so prone to pilferage by the powers-that-be, that it has long served as the Umno/BN regime’s prime cash-cow, or, as it’s more popularly called, piggy bank.
There he was in China the other day, slithering around the international stage in his role of moderate Muslim statesman, urging the people of Libya to “unite to create a new era for the country” following the death of Muammar Gaddafi.
“What is important after this is for the people of Libya to open a new era which can promise prosperity to the people, seeing Libya is rich in oil while its population is small,” he continued.
Such ‘support’ of the Libyans in their freedom from the 40-year rule of an oil-funded dictatorship was a bit rich, I thought, coming from the current head of a 54-year kleptocracy that has so generously supported itself on the proceeds of its own nation’s oil-producer, Petronas.
Despite the Malaysian government’s and thus the Malaysian people’s ownership of Petronas, its finances have been kept so shrouded in secrecy, and thus so prone to pilferage by the powers-that-be, that it has long served as the Umno/BN regime’s prime cash-cow, or, as it’s more popularly called, piggy bank.
But despite this breathtaking hypocrisy in his oily remarks about Libya, Najib’s subsequent comment that he had “expected the ending for Gaddafi” as the late Libyan leader “had stated that he would defend his rule to the last and was prepared to face any possibilities” came as the real killer for me.Because at last year’s Umno general assembly Najib loudly and proudly declared to his supporters and cronies in chillingly similar Gaddafian terms that “even if our bodies are crushed and our lives lost, brothers and sisters, whatever happens, we must defend Putrajaya.”
A statement that, in light of the Mad Dog of Libya’s recent demise, must surely now have Najib and his fellow Unmo/BN low-lifes in Putrajaya, or more aptly Putridjaya, nervously scouting around for convenient concrete storm-water pipes in which to take refuge when their day of reckoning finally and inevitably arrives.
Meanwhile Putridjaya’s putrid putras are doing everything in their power to wriggle out of being seen as how similar they are to other corrupt and dictatorial Muslim regimes slated for slaughter at the hands of their umma, like those of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya have already suffered, and Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Algeria, Morocco and many others surely will.
One interesting ploy in this desperate attempt to distance the Malaysian regime from fall-out from the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ was the extraordinary claim by Perak Mufti Harussani Zakaria the other day that Malays are special because all of them are Muslims, unlike Arabs who are not all Muslims even though the Prophet Muhammad was “descended among them”.“The Malay race is special from other races because they are related to Islam, where the Malays are Islam,” he said, referring to the outrageous fact that under the Umno/BN system, in clear contravention of both the Quran and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Malaysian Malays are compelled to be and remain Muslims.
Merely Najib’s mouthpieces
Such forked-tongued ‘religious’ officials are, of course, along with the serpents of the mainstream media and Umno/BN’s Internet cyber-creeps, merely Najib’s mouthpieces in his snakey campaign to convince Malays and other Muslims of a Christian conspiracy to take over Malaysia.
And Malaysia’s sultans, who one might imagine could see their way to asserting their nobility, leadership and influence on the side of truth and reason, are, publicly at least, as silent on this issue.
But in any event the plot to set Muslims against Christians is meeting with a marked lack of success, if the turnout of just a few thousand to the recent Himpunan Sejuta Umat (Congregation of a Million) anti-apostasy rally at Shah Alam Stadium is any indication.
All that has been achieved, apparently, is fierce criticism and resistance by such honest, honorable and highly-educated Malay Muslims as Universiti Islam Antarabangsa (UIA) law professor Abdul Aziz Bari and Monash University academic and chairman of the Islamic Renaissance Front, Ahmad Farouk Musa.Musa’s current Malaysiakini column entitled “Of Muslim Bigots and Malay Zealots” is the most stinging possible rebuttal of the racial and religious hate campaign that Najib Razak continues to sponsor and support under cover of his fraudulent “1Malaysia” slogan.
Trapped in the serpentine coils that his low cunning has got him into, however, all Najib could manage on the topic of the failed Congregation of a Million was to flick his forked tongue in its praise and seize on it as a pretext for baring his fangs at the movement he most fears, Bersih.
As he and his supporters and cronies all know, a truly clean electoral system and corruption-free general election would spell political death to him and the rest of Umno/BN.
Or, even more unthinkable thought, the next rally by Bersih could well turn into massive, nationwide, Arab-Spring-style protests that could test his “crushed bodies and lost lives” to Tunisian, Egyptian or Libyan-scale limits.
So he lied, as ever, praising the organisers of the anti-apostasy Himpun rally for its orderliness compared with the “chaos” of the July 9 Bersih 2.0 march calling for clean and fair elections, while failing to mention that his cousin and Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein had declared Bersih an outlaw organisation, paralysed KL with police roadblocks for days in advance of its rally, and then sent out the riot police to attack its peaceful supporters.As I said up front, despite all his fake promises of ‘reform’ and other twists and turns to convince Malaysians and the world that he’s shed his old skin, underneath Najib Razak is and will always be the same old ular, lah.
And hateful enough - along with a spouse so puffed-up with greed for power and loot that she looks as though she swallows her prey whole, python-fashion - to provoke Malaysians to relegate the entire nest of Umno/BN vipers to hisssssstory where they belong.
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’.
