This column is dedicated to the bright spark who came up with the idea of having opposition MPs hold up those placards in the Malaysian Parliament on the day that ‘Crime Minister’ Najib Abdul Razak delivered his 2016 Budget.

What a great way of confronting Najib with the burning question he keeps refusing to answer, and defying the blatantly biased Umno/BN speaker who routinely denies opposition members their right, in fact duty, to interrogate the so-called government on behalf of the people.

Plus, of course lampooning the regime for illegally spending public money on those ‘I love PM’ placards that no so long ago crowds of idiots used to wave to massage Najib’s massive ego every time he deigned to make a public appearance.

By rights there should be people out there making a killing selling ‘Where is the RM6 billion?’ T-shirts, but of course that would trigger a tsunami of police reports and arrests on allegations of sedition or whatever, as the wearing of yellow Bersih shirts regularly does.

But such police action, illegal and unconstitutional as it is, only works if there are only individuals or small groups of ‘culprits’.

And if all or even most Malaysians simultaneously wore such allegedly objectionable garments, the police would find themselves hopelessly outnumbered and thus powerless to punish enough people to prevent the others from persisting.

Thus the populace could express its people-power without disrupting their daily lives by taking time off to unite in public rallies.

They needn’t restrict themselves to sporting the ‘Where is the RM6 billion?’ message, either. In fact everyone could amass an entire wardrobe of T-shirts, each bearing one of the countless burning questions confronting Najib and rest of the Umno/BN gang.

Just a few queries that spring to mind with very little thought include everything from the blindingly obvious ‘Who really killed Altantuya?’, ‘Who got the Scorpene kickback?’, ‘Where is the PKFZ RM12 billion?’, ‘When will Najib stop lying?’ and ‘When will Umno/BN get lost?’, and so on.

And of course the messages don’t have to be questions. One of the most popular T-shirts in Australia until our recent change of prime minister rendered the sentiment pretty well redundant proclaimed the simple declarative message ‘F... Tony Abbott’.

Obviously there is almost infinite scope in Malaysia for rip-offs of this line featuring the names of Najib and his entire collection of dud cabinet ministers, not to mention a multitude of their accomplices and cronies that the nation could, to put it mildly, f...ing well do without.

Oodles of alternative messages

And for any or all of those Malaysians who couldn’t see themselves wearing obscenities or vulgarities on their chests, there are oodles of alternative messages to choose from.

Like, for example, in no particular order of precedence, ‘I loathe PM’, ‘Charge Teoh Beng Hock’s killers’, ‘Free Anwar’, ‘Fix the 1MDB fiasco’, ‘Stop sponsoring people-trafficking’, ‘Clean-up the police force’, ‘Jail corrupt judges’, ‘No road tolls for cronies’, and so on and on and on.

As of course every reader of this has realised by now, there is a fortune to be made by an entrepreneur prepared to take the considerable risk involved in T-shirt manufacture and printing on such a massive national scale.

Let’s see - a potential market of well over 20 million message T-shirts at a very affordable price like RM10 or even RM20 per piece adds up to a potential RM200 to RM400 million in gross sales.

Admittedly this sum is far less gross than the RM2.6 billion that arrived in Najib’s personal bank account by courtesy, or so he incredibly and insultingly claims, of some anonymous Arab donor.

But RM200 to RM400 million in gross sales would still represent a tidy net profit. And of course the public would profit immensely from this enterprise if and when the shirts helped to finally rid Malaysia of the entire pack of Umno/BN thieves, parasites and embezzlers.

Of course there is no possibility whatever that this concerted anti-regime t-shirts project will ever happen. Most people, let’s face it, would be just as loath to go along with it as the PAS members were with the DAP and PKR opposition parties’ ‘Where is the RM2.6 billion’ protest in parliament.

Just as, as I’ve said countless times before, about a third of Malaysians who are eligible to vote are too apathetic or outright pathetic to register, and roughly a third of those registered can’t be bothered turning up to their local polling stations come election time.

Then there’s the fact that many of those who do register, turn up and actually vote only bother to do so because Umno/BN pays or in other words bribes them to.

With money stolen for this express purpose from the public purse, of course, rather than a share of the massive ‘donation’ that so mysteriously arrived in and quickly departed from Najib’s personal bank account. A thought that takes us right back to where this column started - the question that’s on everybody’s lips, and which Najib utterly refuses to open his pink lips and answer. Where is the RM2.6 billion?

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’.