In Ipoh to mourn the death last week of my beloved father-in-law Tham, the grief I share with his family and friends is mixed with relief that, after a mercifully brief illness, he’s finally resting in peace.

Plus, of course, enjoying immortality in the hearts and minds of his devoted wife of almost 46 years, of his children and grandchildren who are so fortunate to inherit the spirit that sustained him through 90 long years of life, and in the esteem of his countless friends and former colleagues.

But as relieved as I am for Tham that his pain is over, I also regret that, like other recently-deceased and sorely-missed Malaysians including Irene Fernandez, Bernard Khoo and Karpal Singh, he didn’t live to see the end of Malaysia’s sufferings at the hands of its contemptible so-called leaders.

Not that there appears to be any end in sight. In the year this month since a majority of Malaysians voted to put the BN regime out of its misery, this criminal cartel posing as a political coalition has apparently had a new lease on life.

Simply shrugging-off the fact that it ‘won’ the 13th general election by means of blatant boundary manipulation, roll-stacking, postal-vote fraud and outright bribery, it has striven to revive its waning powers with a virulent campaign of racial and religious divisiveness.

And as if that wasn’t depressing enough for Malaysians fated to face another five years of BN robbery, jobbery, deception and repression, now one of the principal opposition parties, PAS, has decided to resurrect its ridiculous proposal for hudud.

In other words, PAS apparently prefers having the power to play God by punishing erring ordinary citizens with amputation or worse to honestly and progressively uniting with its Pakatan Rakyat partners DAP and PKR in helping long-suffering Malaysians give the gangrenous BN government the chop.

But admittedly PAS is not alone in cutting off its nose to spite its face. The BN regime itself seems to be similarly displaying a self-destructive streak, if not an outright death-wish, most notably in its (mis)handling of the disappearance of MAS Flight MH370 and its unfortunate passengers and crew.

A recent survey revealed that BN’s response to the MH370 tragedy is trusted by a pitifully small minority of Malaysians, and I’d be willing to bet that most of these dupes are also either supporters of hudud or readers of Utusan Malaysia, or both.

Or else some of the few surviving fans of the mediaeval and medi-evil former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, who recently tried pinning the blame for the MH370 fiasco on Boeing and proclaiming MAS in particular and Malaysia to be innocent.

The BN government is of course still repeating its by now tired old “unprecedented” proposition, but all the bad acting by “acting transport minister” Hishammuddin Hussein ( centre in photo ) and his boss and cousin Najib Abdul Razak, and all the regime’s attempts to divert world attention from MH370 with everything from religio-racist antics to a flying visit from the US president doesn’t change the facts.

Confused and conflicting

The families and friends of 239 missing people will never cease their demands for truth and justice on behalf of their loved-ones. The initial response by Malaysian authorities to the aircraft’s disappearance was unforgivably slow and confused. The official story was confused and conflicting. Police claims that all the passengers were cleared of suspicion are simply ridiculous, given the countries many of them came from.

And most suspicious of all is the cargo, first stated as just mangosteens, then admitted after two weeks to include lithium-ion batteries, but, despite this week’s release of a sketchy and self-serving five-page ‘report’, still actually shrouded in BN-style secrecy.

As is the fact, at least in the regime-owned and dominated Malaysian mainstream media, that one of the messages delivered by President Obama during his recent, uncomfortable visit was that it is high time for BN to come clean on the entire MH370 affair.

Japan has already withdrawn from the wild goose chase searchers were sent on in the southern Indian Ocean, and the US is showing strong signs of frustration, too.

But if Najib, Hishammuddin and the rest of the BN gang imagine such impatience is a signal that the world is about to forget the MH370 atrocity, let alone forgive it, they’re kidding themselves.

Nobody has forgotten or forgiven this lying, thieving regime for the shocking murder and dismemberment with C4 explosive of the Mongolian translator involved in the Scorpene submarines scandal back when Najib was defence minister.

And nobody has forgotten or forgiven the fact that the ‘trial’ of the alleged actual perpetrators of this atrocity was a typical BN farce, or that, to add insult to injury, the convicted murders have since been acquitted and released.

Neither forgotten nor forgiven

Similarly, nobody has forgotten nor forgiven the ‘neither homicide nor suicide’ suspicious death of Teoh Beng Hock at the hands of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), or the dozens if not hundreds of others who have suspiciously died in MACC and police custody or fake ‘shoot-outs’.

But unfortunately a great many Malaysians seem to forget, and I suppose by extension to forgive, that the appalling toll of life and limb on Malaysia’s roads can largely if not entirely be attributed to the utter failure of BN regime’s corrupt police to enforce traffic regulations.

In short, the BN regime couldn’t give a damn about human life as long as it has enough police, media and judges in its pocket to save its members from just retribution for their countless crimes against the nation and its own and other citizens.

So who do these thieves and killers think they are to presume to lord it over ‘ordinary’ Malaysians, many of whom are by comparison with their trumped-up ‘leaders’ actually quite extraordinary?

Like, for example, the doctors and nurses - of every apparent race and creed - who lavished such loving and cheerful care and professional skill on my now late father-in-law while he was in in Ipoh’s Pantai and public hospitals.

And the humble and unassuming hospital ustaz, who was the very soul of gentleness and respect in the way he led family members in washing and wrapping Tham’s body for burial.

By stark contrast, as you’ll no doubt recall, Najib announced that flight MH370 had “ended” in the southern Indian Ocean, then casually left it to other countries to do the searching. And instead of paying his respects to the late, great Karpal Singh recently, he joined in a fun-run designed to highlight his fake ‘fight’ against corruption.

That a dead-head like Najib can pretend to be a fitting leader for millions of extraordinary “ordinary” Malaysians while heading a regime devoted to plundering such people of their rightful livelihoods, liberties and even their lives is an absolute outrage.

And all the incentive many of us need to spend the rest of our days recalling our lost loved ones, not in endless days and nights of sorrow and mourning, but in celebrating their memory by working tirelessly for a new, BN-free Malaysian morning.

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’.