Sorry about the repetition of the ass-embly theme here. I originally planned to come up with something entirely new and uniquely hilarious this week, but gave up all hopes of that when I saw Zunar’s latest series of cartoons.

His turning of the sarcastic suggestion to him by the inspector-general of police to stop lampooning the prime minister and instead “draw Donald Duck” into depicting ‘Najib Abdul Razak as Donald Dedak’ was a stroke of genius that I can’t possibly hope to emulate.

So instead I have to concede defeat and console myself by repeating the rather obvious joke I made in last week’s column about how Umno had, for the umpteenth year in a row, made an ‘ass’ of itself in its recent annual general ‘assembly’.

In any event, by last Friday, when I made this point and gave examples of stupid statements and speeches by such personages as the prime minister, deputy prime minister and the head of Wanita Umno, the party apparently wasn’t finished with its asinine antics.

Because on top of all the previous idiocies came the claim by Federal Territories Umno delegate Rizuan Abd Hamid that “Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak has done Malaysia proud in the eyes of the Muslim world, which is why the Arabs donated money to him.”

Never mind that this ‘donation’ story itself has been comprehensively revealed as a total falsehood, Rizuan’s ‘justification’ for this alleged largesse on the part of a ‘Saudi Arabian prince’ was entirely different from the motive that Umno has promoted previously.

Until now, as you’ll doubtless recall, the appearance of billions of ringgit in Najib’s personal bank accounts has been billed as a token of recognition of some mysterious services he had performed in opposition to Islamic State.

But now, according to Rizuan, it was because “Malaysia is known in the eyes of the world as a leading promoter of the halal industry.”

“Malaysia’s achievements in the area show how great the country is in the eyes of the world,” he continued, before rhetorically asking “why?” and responding to his own question with the deeply questionable answer “because it is led by Najib as prime minister. Muslims around the world respect our prime minister.”

A statement that inevitably provokes the further question as to why on earth anybody, Muslim or otherwise, would respect Najib for his services to the halal industry when everything he and his criminal accomplices do in their misgovernment of Malaysia, and the lies they allegedly systematically tell in attempts to conceal their corruptions and multitudinous other crimes, is so utterly and hopelessly haram.