Here’s wishing all men, women and children of goodwill, Chinese and non-Chinese alike, a happy, healthy and prosperous Lunar New Year of the Horse.

Though as a Horse person myself, I have mixed feelings about my own prospects in the course of the next 12 months.

For example, while this is officially a Year of the Wood Horse, I can’t help ruefully thinking of it as my personal year of the hoarse Horse.

After all, I’ve been nagging Malaysians about the evils of their ever-ruling Barisan Nasional regime in this Malaysiakini column for almost eight years on the trot now, and seem to have nothing to show for my pains but a figurative frog in my throat.

Or, to put this another way, I’ve appear to have achieved zero beyond the realisation that for the rest of us this may well be the Year of the Horse, but for BN and its members, cronies and supporters it’s always and forever the Year of the whores.

Political whores prepared to stoop to anything and stop at nothing to indulge their lusts for power and plunder. Happily perverting the electoral process to get themselves re-elected, then swearing perjured oaths of office and proceeding to use parliament as their house of ill-repute.

Plus spending public money to employ their own pimps and panders in their prostitution of the nation’s formerly respectable civil institutions, and for the promotion of popular racial and religious paranoia for their own obscene purposes.

Then there are the regime’s police and ‘anti-corruption’ whores, paid with public money to blatantly and shamelessly service the regime’s demands for protection, even to the extent of killing trouble-makers like Altantuya Shaariibuu, Teoh Beng Hock and countless others, and sufficient law whores to ensure themselves immunity from prosecution for such crimes.

And last but by no means least essential to the survival of the political brothel into which BN has progressively turned Malaysia are the scores of mainstream media whores posing as journalists who sell themselves for the purpose of if possible denying, and if necessary deliberately and systematically lying about, the whole disgusting mess.

In fact such is the scope and scale of whoring by the members, cronies and supporters of the BN regime that it’s enough to give the good old-fashioned profession of prostitution a bad name.

A slight that I take personally, having formerly practiced various versions of it myself. In a long career as an advertising copywriter and later creative director, I effectively prostituted whatever talents for communication that I have in the promotion of various commercial goods and services rather than, as now as a Malaysiakini columnist, what I know or at least sincerely believe to be the absolute truth.

My only excuse for thus selling-out, advertisingwise, being that it was at least open, honest salesmanship of legitimate stuff that people could freely either decide or decline to buy.

And thus far less reprehensible than the sneaky peddling of propaganda on behalf of everything from products to political parties by means of the kind of unacknowledged paid advertorials, fake news and skewed views produced by the industry that euphemises itself with terms like ‘spin-doctoring’ and ‘public relations’.

Brief stint in paid public relations

But having avoided knowing or willingly sinking so low as to practice public relations, in the interests of truth, which, after all, is the reason I write for and presumably why you read Malaysiakini, I have to admit to a brief stint in paid pubic relations.

Many years ago now, when I was even shorter of cash than usual, and still youthful enough in appearance to appeal to the more mature female market, I moonlighted for a few months as a paid ‘escort’.

Or, in other words, as a gigolo or male prostitute. As work experiences go, this was hard if by no means difficult, if you know what I mean. And it apparently did no harm to either me, my clients or indeed to my relationship with my female partner at the time.

In fact on occasion she happily assisted me on special assignments, and on her own account also spent a few weeks working as an operative at phone-sex line, or in other words as a phoney prostitute.

Not that I consider my own or anyone else’s sexual as distinct from political whoring a cause for shame or regret.

Despite the oldest profession’s traditionally being frowned-upon by hypocritically sanctimonious authorities, including, of course, the holier-than-thou BN harlot-regime, ‘sex work’ is now legal in civilised societies.

And, with the proviso that it is properly conducted between freely consenting adults, and not, as in Malaysia and elsewhere, as a ‘secret’ enterprise for the enrichment of criminals like people-traffickers, pimps and corrupt police and politicians, so it should be.

But in any case, considering that I’m now in my sixth Horse cycle and thus 72nd calendar year and can no longer expect to attract fillies for love nor money, it’s probably time I was put out to pasture.

Not that age seems to have put an end to the career of Malaysia’s whoremaster-in-chief, Mahathir Mohamad, who is still labouring as lustily as ever to screw Malaysia and its honest citizens for his own and BN’s benefit.

On the one hand employing his rent-boys in Perkasa and sundry other oxymoronically government-sponsored NGOs to sustain the traditional BN divide-and-rule strategy by stirring-up racial and religious strife, and on the other posing as a paragon of peace and harmony.

As Malaysiakini reported recently, Mahathir is still striving mightily to preserve the status quo in the bordello he was most instrumental in making of the nation’s government with urgings to bring back the ISA for dissenters.

The disease posing as the doctor

In other words, as ever he’s the disease posing as the doctor with the secret of how to cure it.

“Taking advantage of liberalisation and the weakened BN government, the conflict between the races has heated up,” the great panjandrum of Malaysian racio-political prostitution thundered just the other day.

“Malaysians by and large are not violent people. But for how long can Malaysia remain stable in the face of persistent violation of the good understanding and the sharing of power among the races?”

The word “stable” buried in that pile of typical Mahathir-style manure reminds me of the original point of this column, which you will recall was to send greetings for Chinese New Year, and that I’m fast running out of space to do it.

So, without further ado, here once again, is wishing all people of goodwill a heartfelt Gong Xi Fa Cai, Gong Hey Fat Choy or any other approximate English transliteration of the traditional Chinese greeting for this Lunar New Year of the Horse.

And here’s wishing members, cronies and supporters of the Malaysia’s BN and other regimes of similar ilk around the world a most sincerely sarcastic Kangkung Xi Fa Cai/Hey Fat Choy for another Loony New Year of the Whores.

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', ‘1Malaysia.con’ and ‘Malaysia Mania’.