Looking back over the list of pieces I've written for Malaysiakini , as I often do to try and avoid repeating myself more than absolutely necessary, I see that today is the fourth anniversary of my first appearance here.

I suppose I should derive some sense of achievement from this, and I guess I do up to a point. Four years of survival at my age is something of a feat in itself, so I feel I've earned a few points for persistence.

But having set out with high hopes of fighting the good fight on behalf of my Malaysian family, friends, colleagues and millions of their compatriots who deserve better than BN misgovernment, now, as I type my 191st effort, what I feel most is the sheer futility of it all.

NONE In my first Malaysiakini article, entitled ‘At last, an opposition', I applauded former Prime Minister Mahathir's ( left ) savage attack on his chosen successor, Abdullah Badawi as a hopeful sign that this might open the floodgates of criticism against BN.

Or as I wrote at the time with my tongue not entirely in my cheek, ‘maybe history would someday remember Dr M, not for the malice, mendacity, malfeasance, magniloquence and outright megalomania he all too often manifested in his years as prime minister, but as the man who, if only by default, brought true democracy to Malaysia.'

Not a notably accurate prediction as it turns out, as all Mahathir did was to eventually bring Badawi down in favour of Najib Abdul Razak and thus, as he did throughout his own premiership, caused the government and governance of Malaysia go, as I once wrote somewhere, ‘from Badawi to worse.'

Pathological liar

NONE Najib ( right ) has proven an even more pathological liar than Badawi or even Mahathir, if possible, and even more duplicitous in his dealings with the people. Mahathir at least engendered a measure of national pride and sense of achievement with grandiose schemes like the Petronas Twin Towers and the inspirational if impossibly aspirational slogan ‘Malaysia boleh.'

But Najib's ‘1Malaysia. People first. Performance now' is not about lifting the nation's spirits, as Mahathir's ‘Malaysia boleh' however cynically and self-servingly was, but a depressingly devious attempt to sell his disgraceful regime to an increasingly disbelieving and disenchanted populace.

‘1Malaysia' is an obvious lie in the face of BN's persistent efforts to retain its rule by keeping the races and religions as divided as possible through ploys like condoning pressure groups like Perkasa and pretences like re-labelling the New Economic Policy as the New Economic Model.

‘People first' is just as flagrant a fabrication in the light of BN claims that Malaysia can no longer afford to subsidise staples for the people, and its simultaneous squandering of public money on splendid new palaces, the proposed new Parliament house and other crony-enriching projects like the Port Klang Free Zone and the Bakun Dam.

‘Performance now' is a preposterous proposition in light of the fact that all these money-grabbing projects are awarded without any of the transparency or accountability that Najib endlessly promises.

Dirty dealings

And as if all these dirty dealings weren't enough to make obvious nonsense of Najib's claims to zero tolerance of corruption, he goes out on the campaign trail offering bribes to voters in elections.

A fact that serves to remind me how hopelessly over-optimistic I was to imagine that my column criticising BN bribery in the Machap poll back in 2007, ‘By-election or buy-election', would make the slightest difference to either the degree of electoral corruption or the tacit condoning of such offences by the politically-compliant electoral commission.

In fact the situation has deteriorated from Najib's showering goodies on the people of Machap with the comment that "one should repay favours when the time is right and the favour should be repaid by voting BN" to making his payment conditional on BN's winning the seat as he so notoriously did with his "You help me, I help you" offer prior to the recent Hulu Selangor buy-election.

If prime ministers and other politicians can't be trusted, however, as Najib and his BN colleagues clearly can't, at least the people have the protection of free and honest media.

Or should have, but unfortunately, despite the constitutional provision of a free press, the Malaysian ‘mainstream' media are firmly in the BN government's pocket. Which makes them, in my book, as culpable if not more so than the politicians themselves.

But all my criticism of these cronies and accomplices posing as editors and journalists, from ‘A NaSTy week in the news' back in 2006 through ‘Presstitution', ‘Newspapers should have no friends', ‘Pressing on against repression', ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little Star', ‘Malaysia's miserable media', ‘Dark days in journalism' and ‘Press Club propaganda awards' have utterly failed to stem the poisonous tide of mainstream media secrecy, lies and spin.

All my polemics against corrupt and homicidal elements in the police force have proven pathetically ineffectual too, from the second Malaysiakini piece I ever wrote, ‘The police farce' through ‘Grime and punishment', ‘Cops ‘n' robbers', ‘Getting away with murder' and such.

But my most comprehensive failure has resulted from my efforts to lampoon and lambast the two organisations ultimately to blame for the myriad evils besetting Malaysia, Umno and its coalition of bum-boys, BN.

I won't bore you or myself by listing all the attempts I've made over the years to get a rise or reaction out of these people, let alone provoke some semblance of reform.

Suffice to say that one of my personal favourites, ‘Dumno, Scumno and Chumno' (2007) certainly sank without a trace, as did countless subsequent efforts like ‘Umno's war against Malaysia', ‘BN blunders and plunders', ‘The BNality of evil', ‘BN's crooked bridges', ‘The fall of Umno/BN', ‘Backwards with the National Front' and ‘BN's booby prizes'.

But however much of a failure I feel, especially on this 4th anniversary of my first foray against the foes of all that's good about Malaysia, somehow I can't bear to stop.

Lots of people have been fighting the good fight far longer and more ferociously than I have, and faced far more failures in the process. And I figure that the least I can do it help them fail until they eventually - and inevitably - succeed.

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’.