The majority of them may not be Christians, but you have to hand it to the boys and girls of BN. They’re so generous with gifts for themselves, their cronies and supporters that they seem to celebrate Christmas every day of the year.

For decades they’ve been giving themselves all the goodies they could get their claws on, feasting on the fat of the land and generally having a merry old time at the expense of the very people they treat like turkeys, the long-suffering rakyat .

christmas2006 merry christmas 2006 It’s always Christmas in the tree trade for the BN’s clique of timber tycoons; the cash never stops jingling into the coffers of BN’s favourite builders of concrete jungles; it’s forever ho, ho, ho for BN in the judiciary and civil service. And, though there’s not a reindeer in sight, BN’s so-called law enforcement agencies keep routinely slaying ‘suspects’.

Given Malaysia’s hot and humid climate, even BN, with all the rakyat’s cash at its command, can’t dream of a classic white Christmas.

But it does do a massive snow-job on itself by means of monopolistic mainstream media all dedicated to blanketing awareness, criticism and opposition with blizzards of disinformation - so that most of BN’s gifts to themselves remain a total mystery to the actual givers, the ever-generous Malaysian people, and news of others manages to escape only years later.

Take the news that just emerged of the ‘disappearance’ of a RM50 million F-5E fighter jet engine from the Matra 1 warehouse at Sungei Besi Airbase back in 2007. The story goes, apparently, that Royal Malaysia Air Force investigators and police probed the matter at the time, and, despite the unaccountable loss of the engine, declared the RMAF’s logistics system to be “foolproof”.

ahmad zahid hamidi Foolproof or otherwise, however, Defence Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi claims that the armed forces have reorganised their systems since the loss, and that more frequent monitoring of procedures, inventory and control of assets has been put in place.

Despite the subsequent claim by Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, who was defence minister at the time of the engine disappearance, that “there was no cover-up at all”, the story in the mainstream media suspiciously keeps changing.

Ahmad Zahid at first conjectured that “the shady activity might have been carried out by staff in the lower rungs in cahoots with outsiders”, and the BN newspapers reported that police had arrested four individuals, including RMAF officers.

Then, on the same day that Najib declared that “the ministry will wait for relevant authorities to wrap up their investigations before any action is taken against the wrongdoers”, the mainstream press reported that a brigadier-general and 40 other armed forces personnel were sacked last year over their involvement in the theft, but that the brigadier-general had retained his pension.

Of course the RMAF jet engine is just a trinket, and the confusion surrounding its cover-up a mere trifle, compared with the lavishness of the gifts and the massive efforts, allegedly including the C4 murder of Altantuya Shaariibuu, involved in Scorpene submarine, Sorkoi fighters and other deals done while Najib was defence minister.

Environmental atrocities

And now, not satisfied with his performance as Santa Claws on the domestic scene, Najib’s gone global in a bid to make Christmas 2009 BN’s biggest bonanza yet.

Having never previously paid any more than lip-service to environmental concerns, he seized on the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen as a golden opportunity to turn carbon into cash.

Making the utterly unfounded commitment that Malaysia would reduce its carbon dioxide emissions to 40 percent of 2005 levels by 2020, he immediately homed-in on the cash with the disclaimer that his government’s climate-control efforts would be “conditional upon receiving transfer of technology and adequate financing from the developed world”.

NONE Rejecting the US$10 billion (RM34 billion) fast-track funding for developing nations as “too small”, he “suggested a US$200 billion (RM680 billion) fund be set up first before it later goes above US$800 billion (RM2.7 trillion).

What a Christmas bonus a cut of that sort of cash would be for the robber-barons of BN!

And what a windfall on top of the estimated RM100 billion squandered going by Barry Wain's calculation - or US$100 billion if you go with Morgan Stanley in Singapore - courtesy of the rakyat .

Now BN’s Malaysia has the perfect rationale for failing in its long-stated aim to be a developed nation by 2020. In fact it can keep going backwards and be paid for its lack of progress.

No plan for cutting exhaust emissions - and increasingly horrific traffic jams - by investing public money into proper public transportation systems instead of using it to line BN pockets. No interest in stopping BN-connected timber tycoons from raping and pillaging rainforests everywhere from Malaysia to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands.

In fact the more environmental atrocities BN and its cronies continue to permit and commit, as Najib must reason, the more the ‘devloped world’ will pay.

If I was Najib, however, I wouldn’t break out the streamers and tinsel and start celebrating this windfall just yet.

There are dozens of countries competing for carbon-reduction cash that are far, far poorer than Malaysia. And even more poorly-governed, as hard as it is to imagine a regime even ghastlier and more grasping than BN.

Najib’s new best friend communist China, for example, is clearly counting on grabbing the lion’s share of an goodies on offer for greenhouse gas reduction. Then, in competition for the rest of the spoils, there’s India, the whole of Africa, most of South America and a good many of Malaysia’s fellow members of Asean.

luxury cars So if I was a member of BN I wouldn’t order my new Mercedes, or draw up plans for my new mansion, or open a new Swiss bank account on the strength of Najib’s pre-Christmas jaunt to Copenhagen.

He might have made a bit of a hero of himself out in the BN land, where there are still people who believe what they see on BN TV and what they read - or don’t get to read - in the BN press.

But every Christmas that goes by, more and more Malaysians are sick of BN’s posing as the nation’s Santa Claus, and increasingly determined to escape the grip of this greedy coalition’s grasping claws.

DEAN JOHNS, after many years in Asia, currently lives with his Malaysian-born wife and daughter in Sydney, where he mentors creative writing groups. Soon to be published in Kuala Lumpur is a third book of his columns for Malaysiakini , following earlier collections 'Mad about Malaysia' and 'Even Madder about Malaysia'.