At last, some good news out of Malaysia. Amid seemingly endless doom and gloom about the 1MDB debt-bomb and the RM2.6-billion ‘donation’ debacle, boom! A truck driver strikes a blow for the public good by ramming a bunch of vehicles that were jamming him in.

I hope a public fund has been started to get him a top lawyer and pay his eventual fine, as this guy is an absolute hero. My hero, at least, as he’s done what I’ve so longed to do every time I’ve driven in Malaysia, and have never had the guts to.

To power through or (if possible) over all the vehicles whose drivers couldn’t give a hoot about disadvantaging the rest of us by double or even triple parking wherever they please, not to mention endangering our lives with all their other arrogant, idiotic antics.

Alas, I never got up the gumption to inflict so much as a scratch or dent on one of these offenders, so I feel a great deal of admiration - and not a little envy - for a guy with enough pluck and a big enough truck to take out a reported 22 cars and two motorcycles in one hit.

And the owners of these vehicles can’t even look forward to the satisfaction of seeing their attacker deprived of his driving licence, because it turns out he hasn’t had one for at least four trucking years.

But then again, lots of other Malaysian motorists don’t have licences either, and a great many more who have - by hook or by crook - contrived to acquire licences clearly should have been deprived of them long ago.

Unhappily, however, in Malaysia the worst drivers - not to mention the most wanton parkers - are free to drive the rest of us crazy forever, or at least as long as they survive, as there is no points-deduction system to force such serious and serial offenders against the traffic rules off the road.

And in any event, there is precious little enforcement of the traffic rules at all. Despite claims of occasional ‘ops’ by the cops - especially during highway-clogged festive seasons - the shocking toll of death and injury on Malaysian roads, already 10 or more times the rate in most properly-policed countries, continues to soar.

So much so, apparently, that the police have taken to agitating for sharp increases in fines for traffic offences.

Corrupt to the top?

A move that will arguably fail to make much (if any) difference as long as one of the best-known alleged traffic offences is committed by the police themselves, in their dealing-out of ‘discounts’ on fines for ‘on-the-spot’ cash payments.

Not that you can entirely blame the officers concerned, given how poorly paid they are, and given that the entire Umno-BN police and political machine in which ordinary cops are mere cogs is corrupt to the very top.

In fact, as long as we’re on the topic of traffic, this could well be the ruling regime’s operative word.

Just as some police officers obviously traffic in bribes extorted from offenders against the road rules, and others are clearly involved in trafficking every possible commodity from drugs to stolen goods, immigration officials, ‘agents’ and their political bosses use foreign workers as a pretext for people-trafficking, and ‘middle-men’ at every level traffic - in everything from party positions and political offices, to official purchases, toll rights, import licences, monopoly commodities and services, and of course massive ‘loans’ and alleged ‘donations’.

But let me get back to the bright side here. The longer this corrupt and criminal Umno-BN trafficking system persists, and the harder its creator, former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, pressures current successor Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak to step down, the more Malaysians will come to detest it.

And the more bad news about itself the regime tries to suppress, as currently in its blocking of news portal The Malaysian Insider and threats to further censor online news and comment, the worse and weaker it will look.

Especially if ongoing investigations in Switzerland, the US, Hong Kong and elsewhere into the 1MDB and RM2.6 billion ‘donation’ scandals, and in France into the Scorpene submarines affair, come up with damning evidence against or even indictments of top-level suspects.

So, come the 14th general election in not much over two years’ time, the powers-that-be might well be helpless to resist the passion of the rakyat to be rid of the entire gang of them.

In other words, like the 22 cars and two motorcycles my hero recently targeted with his Hino lorry, Umno-BN could very likely finally become the proverbial sitting duck in the path of the Malaysian people’s metaphorical truck.

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’.