Catching up on the few days that I missed through having the flu last week, I see that in my absence things have been as cuckoo as ever in Malaysia. Or, to put it another way, the kooks and crooks and who rule the roost in this country have been busy parroting their usual ridiculous lies.

The most vivid recent instance of this, apparently, has been a speech by Home Minister Hishamuddin Hussein ( below ) calling for people to to ‘defend, not demonise’ the police following their latest fatal shooting of a ‘suspect’ in highly suspicious circumstances.

‘Instead of constantly attacking the police,’ he reportedly told a gathering of Malaysian students in London, ‘the public must support the force as it was one of the institutional pillars that formed the spine of the country.’

umno general assembly day five 171106 hishamuddin He then continued his spineless attempt to justify continued crimes by the police against the populace by claiming that ‘the morale of the police also has to be safeguarded and balanced.’

Having firmly placed police morale above morals, he then proceeded to explain that ‘Malaysia is in transition. In times of change, there is always a tendency to demonise institutions (like the police and judiciary) without basis, without study, discussion and understanding.’

What he meant by words like ‘transition’ and ‘change’ is a bit of a mystery, as if there’s one thing that characterises the seemingly endless rule of Barisan Nasional is that nothing ever changes except for the worse.

And his claim that critics of the BN regime tend to ‘demonise’ the institutions of justice is just an obvious attempt to deflect attention from the fact that BN has done and continues to do its damndest to demolish these and most of Malaysia’s other civil institutions.

Having tried this diversionary tactic, he then switched to the sob-story that the public has no sympathy for police who get shot. Asking ‘just because he is a policeman does this mean he does not deserve sympathy?’, he added ‘so let’s not get emotional.’

Ejected from office

Certainly there seems no sign of any official emotion like sadness, regret or intention to reform following countless deaths in police ‘shoot-outs’ and in custody. Nor, despite Hishammuddin’s assurance that there will be ‘no cover-up’ in the most recent police shootings, is there any indication that there ever has been or ever will be a credible investigation of any such incident.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, however, Hishammuddin claimed that he does not ‘condone something that works above the law,’ while at the same time asserting that ‘institutions needed to be built’ and that there were ‘no immediate solutions.’

Institutions need to be built, alright, or rather rebuilt following their systematic destruction by BN. And there is indeed an immediate solution to the prevailing situation, which is for Barisan Nasional to be ejected from office.

In fact Hishammuddin spoke volumes earlier this year when, defending Inspector-General of Police Musa Hassan’s claim that he didn’t have the manpower to protect Christian churches from a wave of firebombings, he said that ‘If I am dissatisfied with them (the police) I should also not be satisfied with myself as their minister.’

musa hassan police igp force In fact he should have resigned or been fired then, just as he should resign or be fired now. But no, instead he’s hell-bent on staying, claiming in his defence that the Malaysian police rate a ‘perfect 10' in areas that ‘you will never see, you will never hear, you will never know’ – thanks, I assume to BN’s tireless deployment of the Official Secrets Act (OSA) – but conceding that there is room for improvement in the policing of street crime.

However, he couldn’t resist also proposing that the level of street crime in Malaysia is exaggerated by the public chatter. ‘Most victims are women,’ he remarked, then asked ‘What do women do? They go to the hairdressers, they chit-chat and suddenly it is everywhere and causes people to fear.’

What causes a great many Malaysians to fear, of course, is not female chit-chat at the hairdresser’s, but the thought of the country’s being run by a bunch of self-serving air-heads given to making hare-brained false speeches and statements.

Like the recent outrageous remark by director-general of broadcasting Ibrahim Yahya, according to a Malaysiakini report, that ‘RTM is free from political meddling when it comes to making decisions on shows for any of its channels.’

Voter bribery

Attempting to rebut producer Chou Z Lam’s charge that RTM had dumped his series on the scandalous Bakun Dam project because of its possible impact on the forthcoming Sibu by-election, Yahya claimed that ‘RTM, specifically the current affairs department, has never stopped its staff doing their jobs creatively and effectively.’

He further ‘explained’ that RTM is steadfast in holding to the ‘responsible journalism’ principle, broadcasting facts that will ‘encourage unity and harmony’. This load of nonsense from one of BN’s media minions was given the lie by Deputy Information, Communications and Culture Minister Heng Seai Kie, who said that the documentary was axed because it focused on the problems of the local native community and failed to present the views of the state government and dam builder.

azlan In other words, it didn’t follow the official line as all organs of the mainstream media are bound to do to ‘encourage unity and harmony’ for the benefit of BN and its cronies at the expense of the people and their right to know the truth.

Truth in the electoral system took another beating last week too, with Electoral Commission deputy chairperson Wan Ahmad Wan Omar’s declaration that there is no need for independent observers at the May 16 Sibu by-election.

‘The voters or candidates need not worry,’ he said. ‘We have done 12 general elections and 300 by-elections so far and we have been regularly fine-tuning our system.’

Given that it would be difficult to fine-tune a system biased more heavily in favour of BN, with everything from heavy gerrymandering of electorates to meddling with electoral rolls and closing an eye to voter bribery, I guess Omar has a point in a crazy kind of way.

All of which makes me thankful that, having recovered in less than a week from a virus that may or may not have been H1N1, at least I haven’t yet caught the dreaded BN1Malaysia bug, which apparently sends its victims totally and incurably cuckoo.

DEAN JOHNS, after many years in Asia, currently lives with his Malaysian-born wife and daughter in Sydney, where he mentors creative writing groups. Already published in Kuala Lumpur is a third book of his columns for Malaysiakini , following earlier collections ‘Mad about Malaysia’ and ‘Even Madder about Malaysia’.