Maybe I’m just a Scrooge at heart, but every Christmas, I find it harder than ever to avoid getting cross at the crassness of it all.

But the commercialism, fake jollity, and frantic festivities of the alcoholiday season – at least in nominally majority Christian Australia - are not nearly as dispiriting as the latest far-from-joyful tidings from Malaysia.

Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad kicked off the season of peace and goodwill to all men with a typically pernicious address at the Akademi Kenegaraan, alleging that Malay-dominated political parties have “had to become beggars” in asking the Chinese for political support.

And from that moment on, there has been such an outpouring of malice and mendacity from Malaysia’s racists and religionists as to literally beggar belief.

Mahathir’s own statements, for example, in a speech that meandered through a mélange of such deceitful if not outright mentally-deranged remarks as “by right, since the Malays make up 60 percent of the population, we should win the elections.”

Given that Umno/BN has “won” every federal election ever since independence, albeit with the considerable help of gerrymandering, roll-stacking, secret manipulation of postal votes and blatant voter bribery, not to mention the regime-compliant Chinese of the MCA, Mahathir’s claim that “be it Umno, PKR, PAS... they beg the Chinese, DAP, for their support.

“And since we (Malays) became beggars, we don’t have power any more,” was like an utterance by the Mad Hatter.

As was the subsequent remark by this master of monstrous mendacity that “the Chinese are successful because they lie”.

A typical whopper he followed up with the weird non-sequitur “but when we want to build a house, we call the Chinese because we know that the Malays cannot do it,” before asking his audience “is it true we don’t lie?”, then “jokingly” replying that “I think we do.”

Then, as if to provide further proof that he had entirely lost the plot, he went on with a rambling discourse containing such gems of creeping senile dementia as “in Islam, Muslims should be brothers, but are we? In Malaysia itself, we fight among ourselves.”

“In other countries, they behead others and view others as less Islamic. For us to be stronger, Muslims must be united,” he declared, before going on to lament that “Muslims prioritise the sayings of their leaders and tribes, although some may be against Islam.”

Sowing discord during Yuletide

There was much more in this mind-boggling vein, but let’s leave Mahathir and his load of incomprehensible ravings for now and turn to some other Yuletide utterances that similarly beggar belief.

Like the urging by one of the religio-racist pressure groups supported by the BN regime with public money, Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia (Isma), for Muslims to refrain from wishing their Christian fellow Malaysians “Merry Christmas” on the grounds that such greetings “would be tantamount to admitting that God had a son”.

Nothing I could say in contempt of this further attempt by the regime to sow racial and religious discord, despite its pious pretended aim of ‘1Malaysia’ could equal, let alone surpass, the scorn that has already been heaped on it.

Though not, of course, by the self-proclaimed ‘creator’ of the fraudulent ‘1Malaysia’ concept, Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, or indeed by the vast majority of his cabinet ministers and other collaborators, cronies and supporters.

But the single, solitary senior member of the regime that to my knowledge did speak out against Isma’s contemptible anti-Christmas urging, Housing, Local Government and Urban Well-Being Minister Abdul Rahman Dahlan ( right ), pretty well said it all.

“Not only do I wish Merry Christmas to all,” he said via Twitter, “I will host a bigger Christmas celebration this year in Kota Belud.”

And in a series of further posts, he defiantly declared that “Isma is not my voice. They don’t represent me and millions of Muslim Malaysians. Religious bigotry has no place in moderate Malaysia.”

“Isma will never understand the respect that people in Sabah give to non-Muslims,” he added, and should therefore just “butt out.”

Of course, this is precisely the message that should have come from the prime minister if he had the slightest genuine intention to honour his oft-stated and clearly lying intention to represent moderate Islam and thus govern for the good of all Malaysians.

Mass disgrace

But the sole public utterance I saw from him in the course of the Christmas season, apart from the typically insincere greetings he sent from his golfing jaunt to Hawaii, was his suggestion in a speech at a mass circumcision ceremony in his constituency Pekan, that Malaysian companies export circumcision technology to the wider world.

Apparently blissfully unaware that the concept of “mass” circumcision might be dangerously misunderstood by some as related to the Catholic celebration of “mass”, he waxed eloquent on the benefits of relatively painless and bloodless circumcision, in the process making the point that circumcision is “not only compulsory among Muslims, but also believers of other religions, such as Jews.”

In short, as more than one commentator has remarked before me, Najib made a total prick of himself as usual by dicking around with trivia before jetting off on his golfing jaunt and leaving others to deal with such major disasters as his regime’s racism and the east coast peninsula floods.

Sadly, however, and similarly beggaring of belief, was the fact that the Islamic party, allegedly in opposition to Najib’s criminal regime, also spent the Christmas period disgracing itself.

First by revealing through Kelantan deputy chief minister Mohd Amar Nik Abdullah ( left ) that PAS is determined to pursue its purpose to inflict the hoodoo of Islamic criminal law hudud on the people of his state and eventually all of Malaysia, even if it has to enlist the help of its “sworn enemy” Umno.

And then, as if to add injury to insult, admitting that, as Amar stated, “we have recently conducted workshops on how to implement the punishments of hudud. How to cut off hands, under what circumstances. These workshops were attended by law and medical experts from the whole of Malaysia.”

By inundation experts too, apparently, as PAS parliamentarian for Pasir Mas Nik Mohamad Abduh Nik Abdul Aziz has announced that the currently raging floods, reportedly the worst to hit peninsular Malaysia in history, are “ a sign from God that the hudud agenda must go on”.

Just one more sign, in case anybody had any doubts, that the self-styled “religious” of PAS are every bit as hell-bent on beggaring belief, and by extension ethically and economically beggaring the nation, as the sanctimonious thieves in the ruling regime are. And thus have no place in Pakatan Rakyat or any other honest opposition.

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’.