As often as I decry the fact that far too many otherwise honest and upstanding Malaysians are apathetic about the political plight they find themselves in, I can’t bring myself to altogether blame them.

Almost sixty years of misgovernment by larcenous, lunatic, lying Umno/BN regime would be enough to break the hearts and crush the spirits of all but the most courageous and resilient of citizens.

And thus my disappointment in those who have surrendered to apathy is vastly outweighed by my admiration for those millions of Malaysians who still have the guts to keep standing up for themselves in the face of all the odds.

Odds that seem to be getting even odder by the week. As witnessed last week, for example, by the opposition parties’ competing with each other for some of the seats in Sarawak elections, thus not only rendering their defeat more inevitable, but also fatally damaging their credibility.

Even odder, of course, is collaboration of at least some of the opposition parties with former head of the Umno/BN kleptocracy, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, in his self-interested efforts to save the regime from destruction at the hands of his current successor, Najib Abdul Razak.

As for Najib, the very personification of the Umno/BN system of larceny, lunacy and lies, he’s been off in London this week on some insane mission to tout Malaysia as an investment opportunity.

A proposition that struck many of us as at best highly dubious, for at least two reasons. Firstly, Najib’s personal involvement in the massive 1MDB and ‘donation’ scandals currently under investigation in several countries, and secondly Malaysia’s highly suspicious level of involvement in very expensive London real-estate.

Involvement including, according to the Wall Street Journal, a house purchased by Najib’s stepson, Riza Aziz, for 23 million pounds.

Most of us are hoping that US investigators will determine that this purchase by Riza, along with similarly lavish plunges on New York and Los Angeles real estate and the production of the movie ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’, were bankrolled by funds looted from 1MDB.

But meanwhile, Najib’s shameless promotion of Umno/BN’s corrupt, kleptocratic and suspiciously London-real-estate-owning Malaysia as a desirable investment right under the nose of UK PM David Cameron just the day after Cameron hosted an international anti-corruption conference might very well prove a bad move.

Industrial-scale laundry?

Everybody knows that London, like other global financial centres including New York, Zurich, Hong Kong and Singapore, and so-called ‘tax havens’, many of them UK-related, is a truly industrial-scale laundry for the proceeds of crime and corruption.

And thus the UK government, in its attempts to at least appear to be piously opposed to such massive money-laundering, may well feel the necessity to walk its talk.

In which case Najib, son-in-law Riza and sundry other members and cronies of the Umno/BN regime could well find their London investment properties somewhat less desirable than previously.

So far they are apparently free to visit their suspiciously-acquired investments, however, while simultaneously denying some other Malaysians the right to travel overseas for innocent purposes.

The latest act of lunacy by the Umno/BN larcenists has been to stop the head of Bersih, Maria Chin, from leaving Malaysia to receive an international award, and to try and justify this atrocity with the blatant lie that they are legally empowered to ban any citizen from leaving the country.

In rebuttal of this lie, the Malaysian Bar Council has stated that legal provisions for such travel bans are strictly limited by law, and that ‘it is also untenable for the immigration authorities to restrict an individual’s right to travel without giving any written reasons,’ as in the case of Maria Chin.

Also, the council stated, the government must “take concrete measures to promote open and constructive criticism of itself by others, safeguard each citizen’s right to unimpeded freedom of movement and freedom of expression, and adhere to basic principles of the rule of law and natural justice”.

Mention of the rule of law and natural justice in connection with the Umno/BN is, of course, ridiculous, in light of the fact the regime is not only illegitimate, having repeatedly retained power by means of allegedly rigged elections, but also a law unto itself.

Routinely breaking every statute in the book in its larcenous, lunatic, lying misrule of Malaysia, and denying justice to anybody daring to oppose it.

A prominent case in point being that of Teoh Beng Hock, whose notorious death in the custody of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) in 2009 has never been credibly resolved.

Ever since Najib’s initial promise that he would ‘leave no stone unturned’ in investigating Teoh’s killing, there has been one cover-up after another, and this week Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Nancy Shukri predictably announced that a special police task force has found that “no crime was committed by any member of the MACC”.

Yet another piece of evidence, as if any of us needed another, that Umno/BN is guilty of larceny of everything from massive quantities of public money to the people’s legal protections, and of telling ever-loonier lies to try and cover-up its criminality.

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’.