All those bright-yellow Bersih 4 T-shirts on the streets of KL and dozens of other cities around the world last weekend were an absolutely brilliant sight. And not just for the way they so vividly symbolised the unquenchable spirit of so many Malaysians in their seemingly hopeless quest to rescue their beloved country from the clutches of its larcenous, lying, ever-ruling regime.

The flood of Bersih yellow also served to highlight the fact that, behind all its bullying and bluster, Umno/BN is as yellow-bellied as can be.

First it hid behind its anti-constitutional Printing Presses and Publications Act to declare the wearing of Bersih yellow and even the words ‘Bersih 4' as illegal. A move that the cynic in me saw as possibly not just a typically sneaky scare tactic by Umno/BN, but a fit of pique at the thought of having missed out on the same sort of monopoly on supplying, printing and distributing the shirts as it manages for itself on almost everything else.

But whatever, then came the all-too-predictable misreports of the Bersih 4 rally courtesy of the craven so-called ‘mainstream’ media, with Utusan Malaysia featuring the lying accusation ‘Haram, haram, haram’ so blatantly in it banner headline that it looked for all the world like it was commenting on itself.

And next there were all the customary wild underestimates of numbers at the rally by various regime spokespersons attempting to calm their own nerves and those of their cronies and supporters at the alarming thought of their possible fate in the face of massive people power.

Most petrified of all, of course, in the light of all the corruption charges besetting him, was Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak. Too yellow, as ever, to admit to any wrongdoing and relinquish his precious power and perks, he seized on Bersih 4 as a golden opportunity to divert attention from his crimes to mount a lying, chicken-livered attack on the protesters.

Accusing them of being “shallow and poor in their patriotism” by staging the rally so close to Merdeka Day. Using the word ‘poor’ here was a bit rich, I thought, in light of the fact that the protest was at least partly inspired by the suspicious wealth he has allegedly amassed at public expense.

And as for ‘patriotism’, which he and his Umno/BN accomplices clearly define as something like ‘loving your country so dearly that you can’t resist stealing as much of it for yourself as possible’, who did he think he was kidding?

But apparently emboldened by his own oratory, he then went on to declare that instead of protesting “they should mark the National Day by flying the jalur gemilang as an appreciation of the country’s freedom fighters, who freed the motherland from the clutches of colonialism.

“Don’t they understand,” he went on, “that they are shallow and poor in their patriotism and love for their motherland? Don’t they understand the country was built on the blood and sweat of our freedom fighters?”

The so-called freedom fighters he was referring to were a myth, of course, as everybody knows, despite incessant regime claims to the contrary, that after defeating the actual fighters for independence, the trade unions and communists, the British handed independence to the original incarnation of Umno/BN, the Alliance, without further struggle.

In other words, the yellow-bellied eternally ruling regime that Najib the bogus Bugis so disgracefully currently heads, has never shed a drop of its own members’ blood on behalf of Malaysia.

Blood of those who got in its way

And in fact the only blood that has been shed has been that of those who got in its way, like Mongolian Altantuya Shaariibuu, murdered in the murky Najib-related Scorpene submarines scandal; like Teoh Beng Hock and others who fell foul of Umno/BN’s tame Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission; and like countless others who have suspiciously died in police ‘shoot-outs’ and custody.

But never mind the truth, as Najib is totally terrified of it. And so he went on to propound another pack of lies, claiming that Bersih 4 “was seen as deliberately trying to discredit Malaysia’s image at the international level”.

“Those who wear this yellow attire, who are they, they want to discredit our good name, scribble black coal on Malaysia’s face to the outside world,” he ranted, failing to predict, apparently, that just a day or two later he would himself once again discredit and outright disgrace Malaysia.

This time by being too yellow-bellied to turn up to the four-day 16th International Anti-Corruption Conference that he was supposed to be hosting in his own capital, Putrajaya.

And lucky for him that his courage so failed him in what he had no doubt intended as an appearance on the world stage to give the impression that he and his regime were dedicated to fighting corruption, as the president of Transparency International Jose Ugaz ( photo ) and others used the conference to flay Najib and his regime unmercifully.

So it seems that courageous and resolute Bersih yellow has achieved yet another massive moral victory over cowardly, corrupt regime yellow, and that the whole wide world has finally started yelling the same anti-Umno/BN message.

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’.