A bankrupt government

While the BN government may or may not be sending Malaysia broke, it is certainly showing itself to be as morally, ethically and intellectually bankrupt as ever.

This past week there have been so many moronic remarks by BN spokespersons that I’m rendered almost witless trying to recall them all and rank them in order of brainlessness.

One of the most ridiculous, in these times of calls for austerity on the part of the people, was former PM Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s (right) demand that Najib Abdul Razak adopt his favourite brain-child, the so-called ‘crooked’ bridge between Malaysia and Singapore.

In a blog that was chillingly reminiscent of his 2006 attack on Abdullah Ahmad Badawi for abandoning this crooked project, Mahathir wrote that “the question which many have posed to me – and I’m confident the majority of the public is asking – is why Najib as the all-powerful prime minister, is unwilling to continue with the project?”

Considering the damage he inflicted on Abdullah’s premiership, surely another brainstorm from Mahathir is the last thing that Najib and BN need given all the other issues that are exercising their minds these days.

Parliament scatterbrains

Like the public outcry over the proposed expenditure of RM800 million on a new Parliament building, a project which BN’s de facto legal genius Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz subsequently denied was in the works, giving Parliament the lame excuse that one of his officers had been confused.

According to a Malaysiakini report, Nazri ‘explained’ that the discrepancy arose because one of his officers sent the written answer to Parliament without checking with him.

“It all depends on the interpretations of the Parliament officers, and the officer in question interpreted that the decision was made, despite it being only discussed in cabinet,” he reportedly added.

This statement only suggests that parliamentary officers are as scatterbrained as their masters.

But surely they’re not as outright batty as former PKR Youth Chief and now BN Senator Ezam Mohd Nor, who called on the Home Ministry to investigate Malaysiakini and Star for running stories alleging that many of the 1,000 foreign workers on the RM800-million new palace had not been paid for up to three months.

Far from using his apparently meager reserves of grey matter to inquire into the plight of the poor, unfortunate workers, Ezam accused Malaysiakini and Star of “devious motives to undermine the royal institution”.

“The information in the reports is wrong,” he was quoted as claiming, and adding that therefore “their reports are anti-Malay and anti-istana. The reports (portrayed) the palace as if it was being built on the tears of the people.”

Which, of course, is precisely the case. But Ezam (right) , like the rest of the BN brains-trust, hasn’t a thought in his head for the welfare of the people, or anything else but preserving the coalition’s control of power, privilege and plunder.

But the storm of scorn that greeted his initial half-witted remarks apparently didn’t bring him back to his senses, as he has since blogged further to the effect that Malaysiakini and Star are “evil manipulative elements, out to destroy the country’s institutions”.

Admittedly the MCA-owned Star arguably qualifies for this kind of opprobrium as it – just like the rest of Malaysia’s mainstream media – customarily follows the government line on spinning, minimising or failing to mention BN misdeeds.

BN’s buddy Bernama

Though out of all the mainstream media, the one that strikes me as paramount in misreporting the BN regime’s destruction of the country and its institutions is the official ‘news’ agency Bernama .

As much as I deplore Bernama for its evil, manipulative intent, however, I’m in two minds as to its efficacy in brain-washing its audience.

Certainly it does its best – or worst – to sell the BN agenda. But in the process it goes totally overboard, accurately quoting the asinine utterances of BN spokespersons, word for lying word, thus making them appear as laughable as Zunar’s banned cartoons could possibly do.

This week, for example, Bernama reported that at the Batu Pahat Umno meeting Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin (left) “lashed out at Malays who questioned government policies,” saying that “such actions could pose a threat to the struggles of Umno and Barisan Nasional”.

“The Malays should be united under one umbrella to ensure the agenda to develop them is achieved,” he added, later telling a press conference that “Anwar (Ibrahim) is causing the split among the Malays”.

The reality of the situation, of course, is that Umno itself has split the Malays with its attacks on Anwar and other Malay opposition leaders, plus the frauds that the putras of Umno/BN continue to perpetrate against their bumi bretheren.

Undaunted by such evident facts, however, Bernama also reported this week that Umno vice-president and Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein has declared that in advance of the 13th general election, “the time has come for the BN, particularly Umno, to prove hat their past weaknesses and mistakes have been successfully overcome”.

Precisely which, if any, of the weaknesses and mistakes of Umno/BN have been successfully overcome, neither Hishammuddin nor Bernama actually specified.

Intellectual bankruptcy

One of countless highly significant weaknesses that hasn’t been overcome is that of the Election Commission, which oversees a system riddled with gerrymandering of electorates, suspect electoral rolls and blatant voter bribery.

But EC chairperson Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof played dumb on this score, protesting that “the EC is not Superman” but claiming that “current laws, cooperation and ‘smart partnership’ with external enforcement units are good enough now to tackle allegations” of electoral irregularities.

As for the current mastermind of this mess, Najib, Bernama had the gall to quote him this week as urging Malaysians not to trust his sworn nemesis, the self-exiled Raja Petra Kamarudin, because the latter “is funded by the opposition (and thus) his statements are politically motivated”.

When in fact, as everybody with half a brain knows, Najib and his BN regime are motivated by nothing but the kind of corruption they euphemise as ‘money politics’.

And they’re also utterly bankrupt of the integrity, intelligence, ideas and ideals required to run a successful nation.

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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’.