Cyclones Nargis and Najib

Some international observers are suggesting that the Burmese generals’ callous disregard of their people’s plight in the wake of Cyclone Nargis could eventually prove the long-overdue death-blow to their calamitous regime.

Many Malaysians are sensing the winds of change too. They wonder whether the gust of disgust stirred-up by the use of sedition charges against those accusing deputy premier Nazib Abdul Razak of complicity in the Altantuya Shaariibuu murder will develop into a cyclone that finally sweeps Barisan Nasional (BN) out of office.

Unfortunately, however, both scenarios smack more of wishful thinking than of real or at least imminent possibility. Or do they?

It’s hard to imagine how the generals of the junta could be more hated by their people than they have become already for their illegal seizure of power in 1990 and subsequent savage crackdowns on minority groups and monks and other citizens calling for democracy.

But their response, or lack of it, to the death and destruction caused by Cyclone Nargis has discredited them, if possible, even further.

The few reports I’ve seen from journalists who have defied the regime’s media ban have described scenes of monks doing disaster work while soldiers stand around watching, and of soldiers competing with civilians for the little aid that has appeared.

Meanwhile, for an entire week since the disaster, the government has stalled international relief efforts by denying visas to outsiders or subjecting them to a two-week approval process that was further delayed when embassy and consular staff stopped work for, unbelievably in these desperate circumstances, a public holiday.

Worse even than the regime’s idleness and intransigence has been an attempt at a public relations exercise to try and cover up its disgraceful performance.

As reported by Associated Press , state television aired scenes of Senior General Than Shwe (photo) and his underlings handing out aid in boxes. One of these, the label ‘Aid from the Kingdom of Thailand’ had been over-written with the name of Lt-General Myint Swe, a rising star in the junta.

If any of the hapless Burmese people have been fooled by such contemptible propaganda, the rest of the world certainly hasn’t been. The UN and heads of nations around the world are calling with increasing urgency and anger for the generals to let aid workers in to help the people.

France has been advocating that the Burmese regime’s criminal neglect of its citizens be referred to the UN Security Council, but China and Indonesia have opposed this move on the grounds that the disaster “should not be politicised”.

Even US First Lady Laura Bush made an impassioned plea to the generals to show some mercy. But unfortunately her intervention only served to remind the world of how tardy and incompetent her husband’s administration had been with its relief effort back when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans a few years ago.

Speaking of hypocrisy, I’ve seen precious little if any mention of Asean in the international outcry for permission to come to the aid of Burma’s cyclone victims. But what more can anybody expect of an organisation that would accept the generals’ Burma as a member in the first place?

Blow ‘em away

In any case, the sorry saga still drags on as I write this, and a million or so hungry, bereaved and homeless people are left by their rulers to fend for themselves.

I only hope that when they’ve recovered they’ll find a way, at last, to treat their criminal oppressors to such a cyclone of civil and political defiance as to blow them away forever.

Much as I also hope happens to Malaysia’s BN government as a result of the storm of outrage it is causing by bringing sedition charges against Raja Petra Kamarudin and Syed Akbar Ali.

Despite winning a landslide election in 2004 on promises of reform, and retaining office in March by repeating the same promises and begging for more time to fulfill them, the BN regime has still done absolutely nothing to deliver.

After almost five years of Pak Lah’s windy rhetoric about fighting crime and corruption and forging a more equitable, open and just society, the nation is still as bedeviled as ever by a compromised judiciary, a rotten, politically-compliant police force and an administration that’s highly suspect at every level.

At every level up to and including that of deputy prime minister, if Raja Petra’s insinuations concerning the Altantuya murder are accurate. And if they’re not, Najib should sue him - and the many others who have made allegations of his complicity in not just the murder, but also in receiving ‘commissions’ on the purchase of submarines and jet fighters - for defamation.

But no. The machinery of the state is being selectively misused against his accusers as if they were attacking the system of government itself.

It’s not seditious to voice suspicions of sleazy politicians, it’s a duty. A duty in which Malaysia’s legal authorities and law enforcement agencies and media consistently and deliberately fail.

The longer they persist in dereliction of their duty, and the more they punish parties like Raja Petra and Syed Akbar, the more they bring themselves and Malaysia into disrepute, and the more the people despise and detest them.

The rakyat showed its resentment of BN-style government in the March 8 electoral “tsunami”. The deputy prime minister was already part of the problem back then. Now, BN is threatening to make him the next prime minister.

And by defending him with trumped-up sedition charges, letting him continue his dodgy, deadly National Service programme on the specious grounds that “many parties are involved” and showing him opening public events with an explosive plunger that eerily evokes images of the C4 destruction of Altantuya’s corpse, BN is sowing the wind that could prove the whirlwind of its own destruction: Cyclone Najib .