Every week it seems to me that the antics of Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak and his Umno/BN partners in crime get so far beyond a joke as to defy description, criticism and even satire.

So, as a constant critic of these crooks, but something of a dud in the satire department, I’m continually gobsmacked by the ability of the gang at fakemalaysianews.com to keep on coming up with even more ludicrous stories than even members of the lying, looting regime and its media are capable of.

As just this week with its hilarious fake news item headed ‘Najib Quashes Succession Rumours By Appointing Himself Deputy PM.’

I seriously contemplated quoting the whole story here, but on second thoughts decided to suggest you click across to see it in its original form on the FMN site, as there it is accompanied by a picture of Najib that is even less flattering than the one that one of the regime’s own TV channels was recently punished for using on a news telecast.

Of course it’s possible that you will be disappointed when you read the full fake story, as the prospect of Najib’s appointing himself as his own deputy could strike you, as it does me, as possibly less ridiculous than the current dire situation, in which Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi is Deputy Prime Minister.

After all, Najib is the devil we know, and has not to my knowledge ever claimed to be divinely-appointed, whereas Zahid is so deranged as to have publicly declared that his recent rise to his present position of prominence was ‘fated by Allah’.

Then there is the fact that Najib routinely promises to ‘leave no stone unturned’ in resolving such scandals as the still-unresolved killing of Teoh Beng Hock and others in Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) custody, thus at least attempting to give the impression that he gives a damn even though we all know he’s lying.

But Zahid apparently can’t even manage to pretend to give a damn, as when asked recently by a reporter for his comment on the finding by the Enforcement Agencies Integrity Commission (EAIC) that 13 members of his ‘Royal’ Malaysian Police had beaten ‘suspect’ Syed Mohd Azlan Mohamed Nur ( photo ) to death in a Pengerang lock-up in 2014, all he could think of to reply was ‘never mind’ .

Then came the ultimate proof that Najib is far better qualified to deputise for and thus possibly succeed himself, in the form of Zahid’s zinger to the effect that Putrajaya has detected alleged efforts to topple the government .

Where, one has to wonder, has this gibbering goon been these past few weeks and months, if not years? Surely has it been evident to everybody, including even the willfully delusional Najib, that millions of us, Malaysians and otherwise, have been striving mightily to topple the government throughout living memory.

Tired old trick

Of course what Zahid is clumsily attempting to pull with this ‘shock’ allegation is the tired old regime trick of deliberately confusing Malaysia’s system of government, to which nobody has any objection, with the incumbent government and perennial criminal curse on the nation, the Umno/BN regime.

And typically, in attempting to thus confuse the issue for his audience, Zahid succeeded only in confusing himself in raving on that “the government views very seriously any effort to topple the legitimate government chosen by the people by undemocratic means”.

Huh? What did this dimwit mean to say, exactly? That “the government views very seriously any effort to topple the legitimate government... by undemocractic means”? Or that the allegedly “legitimate government” was “chosen by the people by undemocratic means”?

Whatever he intended in the confusion of his Allah-inspired mind, the fact is the Umno/BN government is not ‘legitimate’ for the very reason that in the most recent general election it was chosen by only a minority of the people, but retained a majority of parliamentary seats by the most undemocratic of means - gerrymandering of electoral boundaries so outrageous as to make a total mockery of the ‘one person, one vote’ principal of democratic polling, plus preposterous degrees of pork-barreling and outright bribery of voters with money misappropriated from the public purse.

In other words, it is not the opposition parties or other opponents of the criminal Umno/BN regime that are threatening to topple Malaysia’s constitutionally-specified democratic system of government, but the very regime on whose behalf Zahid so stupidly and deceptively presumes to speak.

And the ‘loyal’ opposition, as the alternative parties of coalition are properly and accurately called in the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, has not only the right but the duty to try and topple a government that has so lost its constitutional legitimacy and the confidence of the people

Let us unite, then, more concertedly than ever, to rid Malaysia of the curse of the terminally crooked and corrupt Umno/BN regime, by any possible legitimate means. Including, of course, by laughing it to scorn the way fakemalaysianews.com and all its satirical ilk are so hilariously hell-bent on doing.

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’.