Malignancies are very much on my mind as I write this, as my beloved youngest sister, Mercia, was only on Thursday diagnosed as having one that was massive but possibly hadn’t yet metastasised, and thus was rushed into surgery in the hope that it could be removed before it could become life-threatening by growing even bigger, or spreading out of control, or both.

And now, following an apparently successful operation to remove this growth, it’s a matter of waiting and watching to see if the surgeons really did manage to cut it out in the nick of time.

But meanwhile, comforted by the fact that my she is under the most expert possible surgical, medical and nursing care in hospital, and in any case still too semi-conscious from the anaesthetic to be allowed phone calls or visitors, I’ve been passing the time while I wait for news of or from her by thinking about malignancy in many of its manifestations.

Not in its medical manifestations, of course, as currently afflicting my sister and countless other cancer-sufferers around the world, as I’m far from qualified to so, but in some of its moral, political and other forms I’m more familiar with.

This project, of course, inevitably puts me in mind of Malaysia, which is notoriously so allegedly riddled with the cancer of corruption as to boggle the mind, due to its chronic infestation by a gang of malignancies posing as Magnificencies claiming that they have been chosen by Allah to lead the nation.

When in fact these human tumors, from Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak and his Umno/BN-regime cabinet ministers on down to their millions of allegedly illegally public-money-supported minions in the mainstream media, Muslim ‘religious’ authorities and all the so-called civil services, are steadily draining the very life-force out of Malaysia and its populace.

And there are no apparent protections against the depredations of these high-and-mighty malignancies, let alone a remedy for ridding the nation of them for once and for all, as the very agencies supposed to act as antigens against them, like, most obviously, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), are allegedly actually on the malignancies’ side.

So that Malaysians’ hopes of relief from this sick situation, aside from foreign help that seems forever possible but never actually arrives, seem to be pretty well nil. In fact the only course of action available to the people in their never-ending plight is, apparently, at least according to one of the very malignancies they’re afflicted with, to get over it and ‘move on’.

In the process of arrogantly advocating this course of action to the Malaysians in an interview with French news agency AFP just this week, Trade and Industry Minister Mustapa Mohamed claimed that Malaysia “must move on” from the 1MDB scandal, adding that “we’ve learned many lessons and are moving forward.”

“Essentially we have to move on and have confidence that a number of issues that came to the limelight as a result of 1MDB will at some point be behind us.”

Whatever that was supposed to mean, except that Mustapa had forgotten to take, or else taken too much of and overdosed on, his psychiatric medication, is anybody’s guess.

But at least he had the clarity of mind to then tell the alleged outright lie that “we have the authorities to go after those responsible for creating the mess. The law is taking its course.”

The law, at least as far as Malaysia is concerned, is doing nothing of the kind, of course, as the magnificent malignancy responsible for creating the mess has long ago arranged to have himself and his accomplices declared entirely innocent of anything whatever.

And as for the idea of ‘moving on’ in general, most of us critics and opponents of Umno/BN malignancies all the way back to the premiership of Dr M for malignant Mahathir, have no intention whatever of forgiving, forgetting, getting over or moving on from any of the regime’s literally countless financial scams, or indeed any other related scandals like the murder of Altantuya Shaariibuu or the deeply-suspicious death of Teoh Beng Hock while in MACC custody.

Nor are any of us planning to ‘get over’ the ever-malignant, ever-ruling, ever-drooling-for-more-loot regime’s latest financial atrocity, the multi-faceted alleged rip-off of Felda settlers, or, for that matter, even slightly impressed by Felda chairperson Shahrir Samad’s lame attempt to euphemise massive thefts from Felda as “leakages”.