Best wishes to all those who’ve done something - anything - in 2016 to deserve a happy New Year of 2017. And worst possible wishes to all the others for the decidedly unhappy New Year that they’re due for having deliberately done wrong or else failed in their duty to do right by their fellows over the past 12 months, or in many cases far longer, and have no intention of changing their ways.

Of course in the former category I include a whole spectrum of people ranging from those who’ve strenuously striven to be outstanding human beings in their ordinary, everyday lives on the one hand, to heroic humanitarians and ferocious fighters for justice and human rights on the other.

I’m conscious that I should be careful in naming any of the people or organisations I have in mind here, lest I cause offence to some by forgetting or not having sufficient space to include them, or else embarrass or endanger them through public exposure.

Suffice to mention, then, by way of example, such friends and former colleagues as ‘Chemical’ Ali, Alice and her husband Stephen; fellow-travellers in the quest for truth, integrity and transparency in government, like the management, staff and most of the readers of Malaysiakini; literally countless fellow pro-democracy writers and bloggers like Azly, Din, Mariam, KJ, S Thayaparan and Zan; and, last but as far as possible from least, the inimitable and unquenchable anti-regime cartoonist and lampoonist, Zunar.

Some of the similarly countless organisations I can’t help thinking of as well-and-truly due the happiest-possible wishes for this and every other New Year include Malaysia’s Sisters in Islam, Sarawak Report and now sadly inactive Saya Anak Bangsa Malaysia (SABM), France’s Médicins Sans Frontières, Reporteurs Sans Frontières, Syria’s non-government civilian volunteer rescue workers, the White Helmets, and the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent.

As for all those who are not due a New Year at all, let alone wishes for a happy one, the first lot I can think of, as long as I’m concentrating on Malaysia for this column, are the members, cronies and supporters of the ever-ruling Umno/BN regime.

As of 2017, this cartel of ‘criminals’ posing as a coalition government has enjoyed an unbroken run of 60 years of allegedly happily robbing Malaysians of their rights, freedoms and protections and their nation of its natural resources. Thus these political ‘predators’ deserve to rot for years in prison, not to be wished, let alone allowed another happy year in power at the public’s expense.

All the signs are there, however, that they have every intention of celebrating in 2017 as happily for themselves and as unhappily for the people as they did in 2016 and for decades before.