The furore created this week by Sharifah Zohra Jabeen Syed Shah Miskin's demand at a university forum in December that law student KS Bawani shut up and "listen, listen, listen, listen" was a most welcome sign that intelligent Malaysians are no longer ready to tolerate, let alone believe, the BN regime's pathological lying.

In fact, this gang of thieves is literally dying of lying, but even in the face of its approaching doom it just can't seem to stop.

According to that notorious fount of official falsehood, the BN "news" agency Bernama, Minister for Higher Education Mohamed Khaled Nordin claimed that the organisation Sharifah Zohra represents, Suara Wanita 1Malaysia (SW1M), had nothing to do with his department, let alone the government.

And Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin Abu Bakar persisted with Sharifah Zohra's "listen" theme in first tweeting "Please listen to me: this Jabeen lady does not represent BN. Period" and later adding that "no one has even heard of her or SW1M."

That this disclaimer was a pack of the usual BN lies was quickly revealed by Malaysiakini, which reported that Sharifah Zohra is a former deputy Wanita chief of Kimma, a party that claims to represent the interests of the Indian Muslim community, and was praised by Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak in his speech at the opening of its annual general assembly in October last year as "a close and loyal friend of BN".

NONEBut even though now scornfully dubbed ‘Kak Listen' for her ludicrous pro-BN and anti-opposition antics, Sharifah Zohra is persisting in adding fantasy to fiction by claiming that her nemesis, Bawani (right), "may have been planted" in the forum audience "to create provocation".

She has also claimed that the video of her confrontation with Bawani, which has gone viral on YouTube, has been "creatively spun" to gather support "for an opposition party".

But these days no spin, creative or otherwise, is required to portray the BN regime and its inveterate liars in their true ugly light.

Shameless and arrogant lying

Even such hardcore accomplices in BN, such as the MCA Youth, are aghast, if too little and way too late, at the damage that the regime's shameless and arrogant lying has done and continues to do to its credibility and chances of continued survival.

According to Malaysiakini, MCA Youth education bureau chief Chong Sin Woon has stated that Sharifah Zohra's continued defiance clearly shows that "she still misses the point on why the public is put off by her manner and method of leveraging on ‘might is right' to patronise and belittle Bawani before an audience of 2,300 undergraduates with rhetoric that lacked substance".

Chong continued: "Sharifah's latest reaction will not in any way help the 1Malaysia cause and spirit. We urge Sharifah to reflect and recognise citizen outrage."

In another equally belated and thus equally ill-fated MCA attempt to deflect citizen outrage at itself and all the other liars and spinners on behalf of BN, the editor-in-chief of The Star, Wong Chun Wai, penned a typically hypocritical piece in The Sunday Star, decrying the sad state of political debate in Malaysia.

In a column entitled "The lost middle ground", Chun Wai laments that "we are incapable of articulating our points in a persuasive and rational manner, preferring to shout as in a ceramah, or to talk down, in the ‘big brother knows best' attitude".

As CL Tang wrote of this piece in The Malaysian Insider, Wong Chun Wai's own newspaper has been star performer in the process of lying and spin that has cost BN every shred of its credibility.

Incessantly lying

Along with other such disgraces to the very idea of journalism, the New Straits Times, Utusan Malaysia and indeed all of Malaysia's so-called "mainstream" media, The Star has been incessantly lying on behalf of BN and against the opposition in big-brother-knows-best fashion for the past several decades.

In fact, the rot has gone so far beyond the kind of "persuasive and rational" discourse that Chun Wai pretends and presumes to propose that the situation has devolved from the political to the criminal.

Where, I wonder, does Chun Wai imagine the "middle ground" might be in a discussion of the BN regime's multifarious robberies, corruptions and other crimes?

The very suggestion that there could be some kind of "middle ground" in such issues as the murders of Altantuya Shaariibuu, Teoh Beng Hock and a multitude of other victims of BN's fake version of "law and order", or of the theft of countless billions of ringgit in public funds, land and resources, is absolutely preposterous.

In fact, the only appropriate public reaction to BN criminality and the lying and spin that the likes of Chun Wai employ to try and cover it up, if possible, or justify it if necessary, is not public discussion but public disgust.

Precisely the kind of public disgust that has been so justly aroused by the shameless arrogance being displayed by Sharifah Zohra Jabeen Syed Shah Miskin, and the lies of her BN apologists.

Let's face it, you'd have to be delusional, or outright deranged, to listen to, let alone believe a word that any BN spokesperson or supporter utters or writes.

NONEOr else as desperate as that monster of mendacity, former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who is currently trying to deny the illegality of his citizenship-for-votes scam in Sabah, or else spin it as no worse than Tunku Abdul Rahman's agreement with Britain to grant foreign-born inhabitants their rightful citizenship in independent Malaysia.

Nobody but hardcore BN criminals, racist rabble and Bible-burners like Ibrahim Ali believe a word that Mahathir, Najib Abdul Razak or any of their accomplices, collaborators and cronies say or write any more.

And the more time and public money they keep spending on insulting the people's intelligence with their incredible lies and stupid spins, the less Malaysians are listening, let alone likely to contemplate tolerating them for another term in misgovernment.

DEAN JOHNS, after many years in Asia, currently lives with his Malaysian-born wife and daughter in Sydney, where he coaches and mentors writers and authors and practises as a writing therapist. Published books of his columns for Malaysiakini include ‘Mad about Malaysia', ‘Even Madder about Malaysia', ‘Missing Malaysia', ‘1Malaysia.con' and ‘Malaysia Mania'.