It’s incredible, in light of the fact that awareness of the criminality of the Umno/BN regime is reaching critical mass around the world, that this gang of crooks is still desperately trying to fake some kind of respectability.

As most ridiculously in the proposed rally today by the regime’s so-called red-shirts, allegedly in protest against Petaling Street traders selling counterfeit goods.

Talk about fakery run riot. A bunch of fake ‘patriots’ paid by the fake government to fake an anti-Chinese protest against the sale of fake goods that the regime’s fake police force corruptly fakes attempting to prevent.

Meanwhile, the fake prime minister currently responsible for this laughably fake state of affairs, not to mention massive multinational frauds involving 1MDB and a RM2.6 billion personal ‘donation’ from an anonymous benefactor in the Middle East, is off at the United Nations trying to fake it as a world-class statesman.

According to the regime’s fake ‘news’ agency, Bernama , Najib has a ‘busy schedule’ attending ‘high-level meetings’ at this, the 70th annual general session of the UN.

He will certainly have his work cut out to fake any interest in or relevance to the theme of this year’s session, ‘The UN at 70: The Road Ahead for Peace, Security and Human Rights’, given his regime’s undying antagonism to human rights and utter lack of interest in peace and security except as a pretext on which to condemn Israel.

And even Bernama , as long-practised and totally shameless as it is in striving to glorify Najib’s non-achievements, clearly had trouble ascribing some sense of significance to Najib’s participation in various UN events.

Reading between the lines of the carefully-crafted if not substantially fake Bernama story, Najib is clearly there just to make up the numbers in the ‘High-Level Roundtable on South-South Cooperation’ and the ‘United Nations Summit for the Adoption of the Post-2015 Development Agenda’, whatever these gabfests might be actually about, if anything.

And he or his minions have somehow arranged for him to be given one of those fake ‘honours’ that Najib, and usually his spouse as well, seems somehow to manage to score on his travels.

This time around, apparently, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), whatever that may be, is giving Najib an award for ‘his contribution towards harnessing the potential of information and communications technologies for sustainable development’.

Master of conmunications

Huh, or rather WTF? When Najib is the absolute master of nothing but disinformation, misinformation and outright deception or, to put it mildly, conmunications?

What could such a clearly fake award be actually a reward for? The lying, self-serving tweets he sends out when in hiding from his latest scandal? And what on earth is ‘sustainable development’ supposed to mean in this context? Sustaining himself in office and developing his personal bank balance?

But the award is not the end of Najib’s fakery on this trip to New York, as, at least according to Bernama, he is also scheduled to chair something called the 5th Global Science and Innovation Advisory Council (GSIAC) meeting. And the only science of which Najib appears to have the slightest grasp is that of winning federal elections with a minority of the national vote.

On the other hand, he arguably has quite a lot to offer in his appearance at a subsequent UN event, the Leader’s Summit on Countering IS and Violent Extremism.

As the whole world is aware by now, he allegedly received his infamous RM2.6 billion personal donation as a reward for his efforts to oppose IS, after earlier commending the IS spirit to his supporters, and he has been fomenting violent extremism by his aforementioned red shirts and others against his critics and opponents back in Malaysia.

He should be able to fake a modicum of expertise in another forum he is scheduled to appear in, too, the Global Leaders’ Meeting on Gender Equality and Women’s empowerment.

He has evidently learned at least a limited amount about gender equality, and a great deal about at least one woman’s empowerment, not to mention enrichment, from his redoubtable self-described ‘First Lady’, Rosmah Mansor.

Who will herself, even as he is speaking, will most likely be off splurging some of her own savings and her share of Najib’s ill-gotten riches on loads of the far-from-fake merchandise in the pricier Fifth-Avenue fashion and jewellery boutiques.

And even if she doesn’t get quite everything she needs or at least wants in New York, she has another chance to do a bit more shopping in Milan, where she and Najib are reportedly next headed for what Bernama has euphemistically termed a ‘working visit’ on the way home from the US.

All in all, then, it is clear that the only response that Najib and his Umno/BN accomplices can think of in the face of very real and gathering global threats to their criminal misgovernment of Malaysia, is yet more of their trademark fakery and fraud. But as most of us are delighted to see, it’s going down worse and worse at home, and, despite the great showing Najib imagines he’s making at the UN, like the proverbial lead balloon abroad.

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’.