Criticism of what I write for Malaysiakini is fine by me. In fact I take it as an outright compliment when it comes from those who are clearly not genuine readers but paid Umno/BN propagandists.

I'm happy to do whatever I can to tempt these cyberwhores to reveal their own and their employers' cupidity and stupidity.

But when my column draws calumny from apparently genuine, sincere and well-intentioned critics, rather than simply ignoring or dismissing their comments I feel it's only fair to engage in some perhaps salutary self-assessment.

So, I've been thinking about the occasional accusation that I'm not only hopelessly biased against the Umno/BN regime, but boringly so. And, at the same time, unduly uncritical of Anwar Ibrahim in particular and the opposition at large.

And yes, having examined my conscience and carefully weighed-up the evidence, I find myself guilty as sin on all counts. But, with all due respect to my well-meaning critics, like Umno/BN, I have no intention whatever of turning over a new leaf.

Or to put my lack of repentance another way, I'm happy to sentence myself to a lifetime, or else as long as it takes for Malaysia to exorcise itself of the curse of Umno/BN, of bloody-mindedly repeating my biased and boring offences. Because my confessed bias is not a matter of prejudice or partisanship for or against any political party or persuasion.

I'm perfectly prepared to accept as fact the proposition that any of the two or more factions striving for supremacy in a democratic system of government is at least theoretically capable of ruling justly and honestly.

Incurably biased against such evils as corruption, theft

But I'm deeply biased against the kind of chicanery and outright cheating it takes to keep one side or the other in power perpetually, or even for the 54 years that Umno/BN has contrived to keep Malaysia in its increasingly gruesome grip.

I'm also totally and incurably biased against such evils as corruption, theft, embezzlement, fraud, nepotism, lying, repression and indeed all the others in the catalogue of crimes that Umno/BN has committed, and continues to commit, against the people of Malaysia.

I'm even more biased, if possible, against the destruction of the people's safeguards and protections against the crimes of its governors and their cronies through deliberate subversion and perversion of the system of justice and the rule of law.

And I'm biased to the point of biliousness against any regime's ruthless rendering of the news media truthless for the purpose of keeping the people as ignorant as possible of how comprehensively they're being robbed of their riches, rights and opportunities, not to mention, in some cases, their lives.

In short, even though I have no reason whatever to be biased against Umno/BN in theory, in practice I'm as biased and one-eyed in my criticism of this crooked and incompetent coalition as anyone who's not wilfully or selectively blind could be.

And boringly biased into the bargain. But how to be anything but boring, when nothing that I or anyone else writes or says makes the slightest difference? Umno/BN is not only unwilling to clean-up its act, but utterly unable to even consider reforming, so mired are its members and supporters in collective guilt for its crimes.

Unlike the threat to the governing faction in any genuine democracy, the alternative for Malaysia's misgoverning Umno/BN coalition isn't just a term or two in opposition, but in prison.

So any ‘reforms' that this gang of jailbirds-to-be starts promising for electoral purposes, like ‘repeal' of the very mechanisms that keep them so preposterously, prosperously in power, like the Internal Security Act and the Printing Presses and Publications Act, are, indeed have to be, fraudulent.

Go on endlessly playing the same old dirty tricks

In other words, in order to remain free to commit the same old crimes against Malaysia and Malaysians, and to avoid paying the penalty for them, they have to go on endlessly playing the same old dirty tricks and telling and selling the same old filthy falsehoods.

It stands to reason, therefore, that my criticism of these crooks has to be as tiresomely repetitive and predictable as their behaviour is. And if this strikes some people as boring, too bad. In any case, as I long ago remarked in a column entitled "The BNality of evil", endlessly writing about Umno/BN is far more boring than reading about it could possibly be.

If not, as I console myself from a safe distance down here in Sydney, as stupefyingly, depressingly boring as actually living in Umno/BN's Malaysia and being drip-fed daily doses of the regime's deadly dreary propaganda.

Mention of which brings me to my rationale for seldom criticising Anwar Ibrahim or the rest of the opposition. Given the endless, iniquitous persecution of Anwar by Umno/BN's fake ‘justice' system, and the ceaseless trumpeting on behalf of the regime and against its critics and opponents by the strumpets of the ‘mainstream' news media and their fellow politico-prostitutes in cyberspace, why in the hell should I be anti-opposition?

As far as I'm concerned, virtually any opposition is preferable to the prospect of yet more years, let alone decades, of bullying, blunder and plunder by the unspeakable Umno/BN.

Not that I imagine for a moment that Pakatan Rakyat or any other potential replacement for the criminal conspiracy currently controlling the country could possibly prove perfect.

Human nature, being as susceptible as it is to corruption by power and privilege, any new administration, however much of an improvement on the present one, would be bound to have its own share of crazies, crooks and incompetents.

But at least, it might repeal Umno/BN's repressive media and other laws and restore independence and respectability to the police and judiciary, thereby making it possible, or even likely, that official rottenness would be progressively revealed and removed.

Or so we would all hope. But as I've written in my admittedly rare columns criticising Pakatan Rakyat, the fact that it still refuses, or at least fails to specify a shadow cabinet or concrete set of policies, leaves us lamentably short of reliable insight into both its intentions and its ability to achieve them.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here, in my reluctance to face the awful fact that it could take years of more tedious criticism and tireless activism from us all to finally rid Malaysia of this biased, boring, bloody-minded and red-handed Umno/BN regime.

 

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’.