Does Najib Abdul Razak truly believe that Malaysians are so dumb as to believe that the RM2.6 billion reportedly paid into his personal bank account was a political donation from some anonymous Middle-Eastern benefactor? And that he used it all for legitimate purposes?

Of course not. In fact he doesn’t give a damn whether most Malaysians are wise to his wiles or not as long as he has enough funds to pay his partners in crime to play dumb and help him keep the peasants quiet and too comprehensively cowed to riot.

For years the vast majority of Malaysians have been aware that he is not so much a prime minister as crime minister, and that the Barisan Nasional gang of which he’s thief-in-chief is not the political coalition it pretends to be, but a criminal cartel.

 A criminal cartel that, at least since the malevolent Mahathir Mohamad’s time in office, if not before, has robbed Malaysians of not just untold billions of their nation’s wealth, but of every proper protection against such plunder.

The so-called ‘Royal’ Malaysian Police, far from the protectors of the people that they are supposed to be, are security guards and enforcers for the criminal ruling regime. As, of course, is the laughably mis-titled Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, which, as routinely ineffectual as it has been, now appears to be a target of police attack in the current turf war sparked by revelations of Najib’s receipt of the RM2.6 billion, be it from the alleged sovereign ‘wealth’ fund but actually theft-by-stealth fund 1MDB, or some magical mystery donor.

Then there’s the fact that the judiciary, with pitifully few exceptions, has ever since its crippling my Mahathir back in the 1980s been corruptly complicit in regime criminality. As, of course, have those ‘watchdogs’ of the people’s rights, Malaysia’s mongrel ‘mainstream’ media.

And by way of ensuring that the people have no power to change this deplorable state of affairs, even by way of the ballot-box, the Election Commission has been so corrupted as to be prepared to stop at nothing in its efforts to keep BN in power, be it gerrymandering, roll-stacking or turning a blind eye to blatant voter bribery.

The last of these activities being what Najib seems to be claiming his RM2.6 billion windfall was spent on in his loss of the popular vote but ‘victory’ in the comprehensively rigged 13th general election.

With such a bunch of criminal clowns running and steadily ruining things, no wonder Malaysia looks like such a d’oh nation. Especially when the criminality of the ruling regime is augmented by its astonishing incompetence, as most memorably on the global scene in the ‘loss’ of MAS flight MH370, about which Najib occasionally pontificates in an attempt to look to the world like a real, honest-to-God prime minister.

Staging prayer sessions

And speaking of the Almighty, this criminal clown has the effrontery amid all the scandals swirling around him, his spouse, accomplices, accessories and paid ‘supporters’ to stage prayer sessions for the salvation of the very Malaysia that he, his spouse, accomplices, accessories and paid ‘supporters’ have done, and continue to do, so much to destroy.

But however Najib and the BN gang see Malaysia, be it as a d’oh nation or an endless-source-of-stolen-dough nation, and however quiet they contrive to keep Malaysians, thank goodness that, as the old proverb reminds us, money talks. And right now the sinking ringgit seems to be saying very loudly indeed that it’s high time to get the wrong gits out of government and into jail where they so justly belong.

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’.