During the 22 years he spent creating the Umno/BN regime’s culture of larceny, corruption, secrecy and lies, former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad routinely fobbed-off overseas criticisms of him and his regime with the claim that foreigners were just jealous of the alleged fact that Malaysia was ‘the envy of the world.’

There was never a grain of truth in this story, of course, as clearly most of the world couldn’t have cared less about Malaysia, or even have located the country on the map, let alone have been so misguided as to be envious of the mess that Mahathir and his Umno/BN minions were making of it.

Even or in fact especially those of us who happened to be aware of Malaysia and admiring of those few aspects of the nation that Mahathir in particular and Umno/BN in general had not yet managed to ruin, like the spirit of those citizens who courageously and resolutely opposed him, far from envying the country and its people, felt enmity for those robbing and oppressing them.

And, at long last, it looks very much as though the formerly allegedly envious but actually indifferent wider world is starting to join in the enmity. Not, as I hasten to repeat, for the nation and the blameless majority of its citizens, but for the increasingly international infamy and impact of the deeds of its criminal regime.

As a long-time critic of this gang of lying crooks, I’m absolutely elated to see the enmity against the Umno/BN regime going global. With its latest massive fraud, the 1MDB fiasco, being exposed by media as diverse as The Wall Street Journal and Sarawak Report , and re-reported by countless other news organisations around the world.

And with the dodgy financial affairs of current 1MDB, Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak and others under investigation first in Switzerland and now Hong Kong , and the Swiss-based Bruno Manser Fund pressing for the investigation of Taib ‘The Termite’ Mahmud and his family for allegedly stripping Sarawak of its timber and laundering the proceeds in Canada, Australia and elsewhere.

Of course the most vivid and indeed vicious recent display of enmity against Malaysia’s ruling coterie of crooks was the one that occurred just a week or so ago in the very headquarters of the regime, Putrajaya, courtesy of many of the 1,000 delegates from 130 countries the 16th International Anti-Corruption Conference, which was almost immediately followed by the Bersih 4 march of Malaysians in KL and dozens of other cities around the world.

And just today there has emerged yet another dimension of international enmity against Umno/BN, the airing by Qatar-based television news network Al Jazeera of its latest reminder to the world of the murky Umno/BN-linked murder and dismemberment with C4 military-grade explosive of Mongolian Altantuya Shaariibuu.

Dark plots against poor little Umno/BN

As for how Najib and the rest of the Umno/BN gang are taking this, they seem to have abandoned the old ‘Malaysia is the envy of the world’ line, perhaps because that is identified with Mahathir, who has turned, for self-interested reasons, into one of its or at least Najib’s deepest-dyed enemies, but there has been lots of talk of dark plots by foreigners, Jews and all the other usual suspects against poor, embattled little Umno/BN.

In fact tireless and perennially clueless apologist for the regime, Federal Territories Minister Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor seemed incapable of identifying Umno/BN’s enemies at all in his claim that International Anti-Corruption Convention (IACC) critics of the Malaysian government were ‘ possessed by third parties’ hell-bent on wrecking the nation.

And the only counter the regime has been able to come up with to the recent Bersih 4 march urging the regime to clean-up its act, besides police harassment of selected Bersih 4 organisers and participants, has been to organise a counter-demonstration for Sept 16 by its own so-called red-shirts.

Though I have to confess that if Malaysiakini was a less respectable news portal I would have spelt the word ‘shirts’ in the previous sentence without the letter ‘r’, given that a great many of these people have been, or at least certainly will be, paid for their enmity to critics and opponents of the criminal Umno/BN regime, and thus nothing but political prostitutes.

As, of course, are the so-called ‘journalists’ of Malaysia’s Umno/BN-owned and/or dominated so-called ‘mainstream’ news media, which Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Zahid Hamidi, in a typically false and heavy-footed attempt to demonise anti-regime online media, recently declared to be ‘impartial’ .

In fact it is becoming as clear to the whole wide world, as it has been to me and presumably to you for years, that money, not the well-being of Malaysia and Malaysians, is all that the members, supporters and cronies of Umno/BN care about, and that massively corrupt misuse of public money is all that keeps them in power.

So that the investigation of their financial affairs in Switzerland, Hong Kong and hopefully far more global locations to come, is destined to hit them where it hurts most.

And similarly, the best way for honest Malaysians to express their enmity against these Umno/BN crooks, and gain the applause if not envy of the world, could be not just to march and otherwise protest, but to all get together to fund and bring a class action against them, both collectively and personally, for restitution of the countless billions they have looted from the country.

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’.