For three days last week, from the morning of Friday, Jan 3, to the evening of Sunday, Feb 1, I went absent from my home and usual haunts and even from access to the Net.

jamaluddin mat radzi and osman jailu perak pkr So you can imagine my surprise to discover, on firing-up the PC when I returned, what an uproar Malaysia was in at the disappearance of two Perak exco members, Jamaluddin Mat Radzi and Osman Mohd Jailu.

And how disappointed I felt that my absence had apparently gone unnoticed, or at least unremarked, while that of the two politicians had generated a storm of conjecture and comment that so far shows no sign of abating.

The headlines on Malaysiakini alone shows what a cause célèbre these politicos’ disappearance has become:

• 2 Perak excos ‘missing’, PKR fears defection

• Missing PKR excos: Perak Pakatan to lodge report

• Perak deputy speaker found, denies defection

• Duo have resigned, says Perak speaker

• Anwar prepares for new by-elections

• Perak speaker informs EC of vacant seats

• Who will win Perak by-elections?

• Resignation letters can be challenged in court

• Perak DAP chief Ngeh: quit letters valid

• Duo says it again, we’ve not quit

And I’m sure we can look forward to days if not weeks more of similar claims and counter-claims before this circus plays itself out.

money ringgit malaysia wang duit currency It leaves me to wonder what I’ve done, or failed to do, to go so ignored, un-missed and unsuspected. Have my anti-government columnies and calumnies gone unnoticed?

Can my vitriol be so lacking in venom that nobody can imagine Barisan Nasional slinging me a paltry few million ringgit (or even one million? OK, what about a thousand?) to quit Malaysiakini and jump over to join the pro-BN print and air media?

What a sad loss of face for anyone who’d like to fancy himself as a hard-hitting critic.

To hell with the excos

But at least I can console myself that the trip nobody appears to notice I took, and which earned me not a sen in BN bribery or even expenses, was at least on Malaysian business.

Well, not so much business as pleasure, actually, but the Malaysian part is true. My wife, daughter and I took some family members visiting from KL on a tour of some of our favourite attractions.

And anyone suspecting that this is just a cover-story to conceal a politically-sponsored jaunt can check it out with any number of no doubt reliable witnesses.

Like the nice ladies in the op shop at The Entrance, for example, where some of our party picked-up some bargain garments and books. Or the waitress in the café on the waterfront who told us no, it wasn’t okay to smoke while we drank our coffee, even in the outdoor seating.

Other people who may recall us as innocent (and entirely self-funded) tourists include a friendly woman named Di, who met us and gave us the keys to the apartment we rented for a couple of nights at Soldier’s Point, and any number of members of staff at coffee shops and wineries around the Hunter Valley.

dean johns It’s no use checking my whereabouts or activities with the police, however, as I managed to avoid all contact with them by driving carefully, especially in the vicinity of speed cameras.

Not that the cops here would have demanded duit kopi or taken me to the station on suspicion and beaten me to death, you understand. They’re quite well paid, trained and disciplined, and the inevitable minority of rotten apples are rounded-up and jailed by regular royal commissions.

But a traffic ticket, I grant you, would have lent documentary weight to my claims of innocence of consorting with elements from BN, as none of its bigwigs would be seen dead in my elderly Mitsubishi.

Nor, for that matter, would any members of my family be seen in BN company, as they seem to loathe corrupt scum as much as I do, and in any case the aforesaid Mitsubishi proved barely big enough to accommodate the five of us, let alone fat-cats.

I do have to admit, however, that as innocently intended as our trip may have been, it wasn’t entirely free of conversations about defection. In fact our guests were so impressed by some aspects of Australia that they started discussing the possibility of defecting from not their political affiliations, whatever they may be, but from Malaysia altogether.

My wife, who herself defected years ago, is so eager for them to come join us here that she’s been scouring the Net in search of jobs and houses for her sister and brother-in-law ever since we got back from our trip.

tourism malaysia I’d love their company in Sydney too, of course, but I’m not so crazy about encouraging them to give up on Malaysia. It’s a beautiful country, let’s face it, rich in resources, fabulous food, fascinating culture and mostly honest, smart and friendly people.

And if only more of its politicians would disappear, along with almost all of its police, most of its ‘journalists’, many of its judges and all of its corruption, it would be a veritable paradise on earth.

Which brings us back to the disappearing Perak excos. If BN can buy them, I say to hell with these people. And if they turn out not to have been bought after all, all the better.

One thing’s for good and sure: if they have gone over to the dark side, they certainly won’t be missed. And by-elections - if called - should deliver yet more proof that a growing majority of Malaysians are dying for BN and all its works to go missing for once and for all.