Here’s wishing all power to Universiti Malaya student Anis Syafiqah Mohd Yusof and her fellow activists in the Tangkap Malaysian Official One coalition, and every success with the Aug 27 TangkapMO1 rally in KL.

Though, as admiring of the courageous Anis Syafiqah and her colleagues as I am, I very much doubt that they will receive much support from the wider Malaysian public.

As I’ve mentioned before, Malaysians in general appear to prefer people cower to people power.

And Najib Abdul Razak, alias MO1, has the support of all of the national institutions that he and his rotten Umno/BN have corrupted and co-opted over the past five decades or so, from the police, judiciary and electoral system to the so-called ‘mainstream’ media.

Not to mention all the individual Malaysians whose silence or support Najib has bought with the proceeds of his and his accomplices’ countless and continuing alleged thefts from the public purse.

Like, most prominently, the ministers and other members of his grubby and gruesome government, who continue to unanimously support him in his denial of any wrongdoing in the massive 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) alleged fraud.

And like the most recent critics of Anis Syafiqah Mohd Yusof and other students involved in the TangkapMO1 rally, president of the alumni of Mahasiswa Aspirasi Malaysia, Mohd Shahar Abdullah, and Wanita Umno leader Shahrizat Abdul Jalil.

Shahrizat’s speech this week in which she urged students to focus on studies, not rallies was a copy-book exercise in hypocrisy, in light of her family’s notorious failure to focus on cattle-rearing, not real-estate.

As no reader can fail to recall, Shahrizat’s husband and children allegedly milked the rakyat of RM250 million for their National Feedlot Corporation, then allegedly creamed-off lots of the loan for high living, luxury company cars and expensive condominiums.

Then, when public scorn and outrage forced Umno/BN’s ‘legal’ authorities to charge the principal suspect in this scam with criminal breach of trust, a regime-friendly court chose not to even try the case, but simply to throw it out.

Yet, in criticising students for planning the TangkapMO1 rally, Shahrizat had the hide to claim that “for me, whatever you want to do in this country, we should adhere to the laws”.

But she quickly revealed that she wasn’t advocating adherence to all laws with her subsequent statement that “we have a responsible government, so we should follow laws... like the Peaceful Assembly Act”.

Willfully blind

In other words, like the rest of the Umno/BN gang, she’s bullish on laws against popular protest, but apparently has no beef against her relatives’ breaking of laws against embezzlement, and is wilfully blind to the breaking of laws against fraud, corruption, money-laundering and who knows what else by the alleged perpetrators of the 1MDB atrocity.

Meanwhile, while Shahrizat was busy trying to kid if not cow her audience into seeing her as the mother of all lawfulness, some group calling itself the alumni of Mahasiswa Aspirasi Malaysia was busy warning students against alleged efforts to “turn them into puppets of the opposition”.

In a speech that clearly revealed him and fellows as not just puppets of but outright pimps for the predatory and repressive Umno/BN regime, alumni president Mohd Shahar Abdullah claimed that the students organising the TangkapMO1 rally “are too gullible in believing the slander and propaganda of certain quarters against the leadership of Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak”.

Thus Mohd Shahar revealed himself as precisely the kind of dundergraduate that the Umno/BN regime’s system of dead-headucation in general and wackademic, looniversity system in particular is specifically designed to produce.

But Malaysia is not on its own in producing such idiots.

Khairy Jamaluddin, for example, is supposed to have studied at Oxford, though clearly to no good effect. And all Najib himself appears to have gained from his attendance at the University of Nottingham, the town historically closely associated with Robin Hood, is the entirely arse-about notion that it’s good to steal from the poor and give to the rich.

What a wonder it is, then, that the likes of Anis Syafiqah Mohd Yusof and lots and lots of other Malaysians, students and otherwise, and of every race and religion, have the smarts, strength and integrity to make it to adulthood with their wits very much about them and their senses of right and wrong unsullied.

Such clever and courageous citizens are Malaysia’s only hope in the nation’s life-and-death struggle against the forces of racism, religionism, corruption and criminality.

So here’s a hearty syabas! to them all, along with my hopes, however misplaced they may be, that every other honest, upstanding and intelligent inhabitant of Malaysia will join them in not just the TangkapMO1 rally, but every future effort to finally rid the nation of not just Najib, but the entire rotten Umno/BN regime.

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’.