Brain-death blues

Sitting down to write a column, all I seem to be able to think of is mourning. The deaths of untold numbers of our fellow human beings in the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. The deaths and the dying hopes of countless brave fighters for liberty in Libya. And for me, on an individual level, the sudden death last week of one of my brothers.

I’ve found this latter loss the most brain-deadening of all, of course, as it has been the closest and most personally saddening, and also the starkest and most chilling reminder of the reality of my own mortality.

It also required a mind-numbing drive of 1,000km from Sydney to my home town of Melbourne for the funeral and then back, plus the intervening confusion and stress of socialising with friends and relatives, many of whom I could barely remember or had never before met at all.

But at least on this journey I had the consoling and sustaining company of my last surviving brother and youngest sister, so it proved as happy an experience as possible given the mournful mission we were on.

Now I’m back home, however, and with my wife out at work and my daughter at school, alone with the BBC World News and its endless images of doom and gloom, I’ve been feeling as brain-dead as can be.

But not so brain-dead, I now realise after a quick scan of Malaysiakini, that news of the BN regime’s latest atrocities can’t render my state of mind a great deal worse.

First and most immediately depressingly topical in light of the ongoing death and destruction in Japan is tidings of a cartoon in BN-controlled newspaper Berita Harian, apparently making fun or at least light of the Japanese people’s plight.

Then there’s the development in the royal commission of inquiry into the death of Teoh Beng Hock in which an officer of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) has admitted to rewriting his case notes seven months after the event.

This naturally recalls a previous claim that a suicide note was found in a pocket of the victim’s jacket an entire year after he mysteriously died in MACC custody. And the surreal finding by a year-long inquest that Teoh’s death was due to neither suicide nor homicide.

Another mind-boggler is the seemingly endless trial of Anwar Ibrahim, in which the court’s latest deliberations are focused on the whole issue of DNA.

And now apparently the opposition parties are going on the road to turn public perception of DNA from genetics to a new significance as the initials of the phrase ‘Datuk Najib Altantuya’.

And why not? In all the decades in which the BN regime has striven to render the Malaysian people brain-dead, the Altantuya Shaariibuu murder could well be its darkest achievement.

This crime, from its investigation to the trial and its aftermath to this day, is riddled with so many mind-boggling mysteries and inconsistencies that it’s almost impossible to recall them all.

Just a few that stick in my memory are the early declaration by the prosecution that there were definitely only three suspects; the quick and easy acquittal of Abdul Razak Baginda on an accessory charge; the failure, indeed refusal, to call Najib Abdul Razak as a witness; the hiding of the faces of the two accused and eventually convicted of murder; the erasure of the victim’s name from immigration records; and the two conflicting statutory declarations by private investigator P Balasubramaniam.

The list goes on and on, and the mystery only grows. Where is Balasubramaniam today and who is paying him to stay there?

Whatever has become of the two who were convicted of the killing and sentenced to death? Are they still in prison awaiting execution or pending appeal against their sentence? Or were they, as many of us have always believed, selected fake fall-guys who have since been secretly released or paid to go live somewhere safe?

Delusion all round

I’m personally delighted that the opposition has chosen to resurrect this case, as it has the BN regime’s DNA all over it, and will forever remain a deadly threat to Najib and his consort Rosmah Mansor.

Neither of them are any slouches in the brain-death department. Najib doggedly persists in peddling his idiotic 1Malaysia slogan and attempting, against an overwhelming body of evidence to the contrary, as a moderate, progressive reformer.

And Rosmah seems even more deluded, if possible, in her campaign to sell herself as ‘First Lady of Malaysia’ (FLOM), or what seems to be a bizarre composite of Imelda Marcos, Mother Theresa, Indira Gandhi and Evita Peron.

However, the populace is apparently showing sufficient signs of resenting her rise to prominence and power to provoke that tireless apologist for BN brainlessness, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz, to claim that Rosmah has neither an official position nor full-time staff in Putrajaya.

Of course the same kind of brazen, brain-dead denial and falsehood characterises BN’s every word and deed, from its failure to investigate spectacular cases of alleged corruption like that of Sarawak Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud and countless other members, supporters and cronies of the regime, to its employment of the MACC, police, judiciary, Election Commission and media as its political proxies.

Into the bargain, to better foster brain death in future generations, there’s a system of education featuring textbooks promoting racism and teaching re-written history.

And in case there are any Malays remaining with enough functional neurons left to think for themselves, the profane powers-that-be are forbidding the importation of the Malay-language Bible.

Having made a slow and sluggish start on this column, I suddenly realise that my indignation at the criminal conspiracy posing as the governing coalition of Malaysia has so far inspired me to almost 1,000 words, and I feel I could go on all day.

But I won’t, as you’ll be relieved to learn. Better I leave you in peace to get back to observing BN for yourself, as their real-life actions and lies speak louder against them than any number of my brain-dead words.

And the more Malaysians who realise how much damage BN has done to their brain cells, the sooner the culprits are liable to end up in jail cells.

---

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