As if Malaysians needed more evidence of the fact that their nation is going further to the dogs than ever under the criminal Umno/BN regime, the current so-called ‘election’ in Sarawak provides it in plenty.

Because all the atrocities I lampooned in my Malaysiakini column on the 2011 Sarawak elections, ‘Sarawakakakaka’, are being repeated this time around, only worse.

‘Worse’ is only relative, of course, but the word ‘relative’ serves to highlight the way the Umno/BN regime, in its time-tested nepotistic fashion, has tried to trick the people into believing that Abdul ‘The Termite’ Taib Mahmud is no longer pulling the political strings in Sarawak by replacing him with brother-in-law Adenan Satem.

In other words, the current allegedly ‘Mr Clean’ and ‘Mr Independent’ chief minister of Sarawak is allegedly nothing but a proxy for his politically poxy relative, and by extension for the even more pathologically poxy Umno/BN.

This latter gang of crooks is of course up to all the same dirty tricks in this election as it was in the previous one, and in fact has been in every election it has ‘contested’ in living memory.

From the alleged gerrymandering of electoral boundaries by the blatantly regime-biased Electoral Commission, to bribery in every possible fashion from pork-barreling promises of projects to outright cash handouts.

But this time around the odds have been tilted even more illicitly in favour of the incumbent state government by the imposition of restrictions on the presence of opposition-party leaders from peninsular Malaysia, and in some cases outright exclusions, while Umno/BN bigwigs have been welcomed with open arms.

And, as suspicious as these regime personages were back in 2011, they are even more so five years later.

Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, of course, being the prime case in point, as in the interim he has not only presided over possibly the most spectacular alleged theft of public money in the entire sordid history of Umno/BN’s Malaysia, the 1MDB scandal, but has spent countless unaccounted-for millions on personal shopping sprees, both domestic and international, and been allegedly caught with at least RM2.6 billion in his personal bank account(s).

Whether this latter sum was a ‘donation’ from a Middle-Eastern benefactor as he claims, or, as many if not most of us suspect, part of the proceeds from the IMDB scam, he clearly spent a good deal of it on buying himself and his Umno/BN accomplices a ‘win’ in the 2013 general election.

Breathtaking hypocrisy

Yet so breathtaking is Najib’s hypocrisy that in the run-up to this Sarawak state election he took to preaching to the people against selling their votes.

As reported by the Umno/BN mouthpiece ‘news’ agency Bernama, he declared in a speech at the Jegai Anak Jawa longhouse in Kampung Purai, an Iban village in Undop, that voters should not sell their rights for money, but retain their votes as a ‘priced’ possession that can be used to decide their future.

Whether the use of the term ‘priced’ in place of ‘prized’ here was a typically Freudian slip of the lip by Najib, or just incompetence on the part of Bernama, is impossible to tell, but there does seem to be some confusion as to the price Umno/BN is paying, with several attendees at a subsequent Rela event complaining they only received RM30 instead of a promised RM50.

Whatever standard amount the regime is offering, though, and however much of it the middle-men skim-off for themselves before paying the voters, Najib was apparently unperturbed.

“Votes are the rights of the people to determine their future by choosing the right candidates to ensure development in their area and not be duped by those who are out to buy their way to fame,” he went on.

“They must think of long-term development in their areas and not look for short-term gains by selling their votes to those willing to offer money,” he said, before handing-over RM200,000 to the people of the Jegai longhouse.

Meanwhile, his deputy was also out and about dispensing money hand over fist. Which brings us to the point that his deputy back in the 2011 Sarawak election was Muhyiddin Yassin, a man widely believed to be about the worst Malaysia could get as a potential successor to Najib.

But Muhyiddin, however much largesse he dispensed in return for votes, in retrospect seems almost harmless in comparison with the thuggish replacement Najib has since found for him, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi.

Addressing members of the General Operations Force (GPA) in their Kuching camp just the day before these police were to cast their advance votes in the current election, Zahid promised a total of RM250,000 on the condition that his audience voted the ‘right’ way.

And Zahid and Najib have both made much bigger financial promises to many other groups on the same ‘I help you, you help me’ basis.

All of which goes to show that this 2016 Sarawak election is an even bigger and Sarawackier Sarawank than the 2011 event was, and that the members, supporters and cronies of the Umno/BN regime have learned absolutely nothing in the past five years.

And thus their ultimate lesson, whether it comes from international investigations currently under way into 1MDB, or the eventual revolt of the Malaysian people against the regime and all it stands for, is even more overdue than ever.

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’.