The Umno/BN regime has been a total fraud for decades. Systematically ripping-off the rakyat with an endless series of financial frauds. Escaping exposure of most of these frauds by the employment of fake ‘journalists’ and ‘news’ media. Evading retribution for the few frauds revealed by opposition figures and the international media by means of its fraudulent forces of ‘law and order’.

And of course perpetuating this farcical situation by means of fraudulent ‘democratic’ elections.

But these days it is apparently feeling so threatened by local and international awareness of its fraudulence that it has taken to defending its frauds with more frauds, even outright fictitious ones.

Like, for example, the fairy-tale allegedly fabricated a couple of weeks ago by Home Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi that there had been a plot last year by Islamic State, aka Daesh, to kidnap Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak and some of his henchmen and to commit other acts of mayhem in Malaysia.

This fantasy was clearly intended to defraud Malaysians into believing at least two other fraudulent propositions - that the RM2.6 billion discovered in Najib’s personal bank account must truly have been a ‘donation’ in recognition of his alleged efforts to combat IS, and not, as the whole world strongly believes, proceeds from Malaysia’s currently most massive fraud, 1MDB; and that Umno/BN’s so-called ‘security’ forces, which can’t even secure the state of Sabah, can be trusted to keep Malaysians safe from terrorism.

Or at least from foreign terrorism, given that Malaysians have far more to fear from their own fraudulent Umno/BN ruling regime, whose reign of terror is evident everywhere from the repeated jailings of Anwar Ibrahim on fraudulent sodomy charges, through a raft of illegal laws repressing political reporting and protest, to extra-judicial killings by the police and the fraudulent ‘anti-corruption’ authorities.

That Umno/BN has still utterly failed to take appropriate action against the alleged killers of Teoh Beng Hock when he was in the custody of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) continues to evidence the fraudulence of Najib’s claim at the time that he would ‘leave no stone unturned’ to bring the culprits to justice.

And speaking of uncovering culprits, the case of the murder and dismemberment of the Mongolian woman involved in the Scorpene submarines fraud, Altantuya Shaariibuu, complete with the compromised ‘trial’ of her alleged killers and the ‘escape’ of one of them following their conviction, continues to serve as a symbol of the festering fraudulence of Malaysia’s alleged judicial system.

Fraudulent misappropriation

To return to my theme of the regime’s concealing fraud by double or even multiple fraud, however, there could be no more vivid an example of this than the current machinations surrounding the ‘discovery’ of the fraudulent misappropriation of RM100 million by senior officers of the Youth and Sports Ministry.

That Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin could possibly expect us to believe his feigned shock and horror at this is as ridiculous as his claim that he had no idea that the stealing had been going on for years. And his further claim that he takes responsibility for his department’s failure in this case is rendered fraudulent by the evident reality that he has no intention of resigning from his post or otherwise paying the slightest price for his incompetence.

So far from it, in fact, that the entire affair smacks of a similar double fraud to the one Zahid Hamidi is still attempting, albeit with spectacular lack of success arising from his zero credibility, by sticking to his IS-kidnap-plot story.

Khairy must figure that, by pretending to welcome the blowing of the whistle on this fraud committed by his own departmental officers in advance of revelations of the scandal by the opposition or the online news media, he has a chance to not only distance himself from suspicions of personal involvement in or profit from it, but also to promote a few fraudulent propositions on behalf of both the regime in general and Najib in particular.

By trying to convey the impression that this latest financial atrocity is peculiar to his own department, for example, he clearly hopes to imply that such massive frauds and thefts of public money are the exception rather than the Umno/BN rule.

When in fact, as is well and truly known by everybody who has ever read the endless litany of embezzlements and other ‘leakages’ listed every year by the auditor-general, and witnessed the subsequent failure of officialdom to take any significant action whatever against the culprits, every activity in which the Umno/BN gang and its accomplices are involved is characterised by rapacious, ceaseless and never-punished plunder.

But perhaps the most pressing motivation for Khairy’s sanctimonious attempt to pose as that ultimate contradiction in terms, an Umno/BN Mr Clean, is to give his supreme leader and most fraudulent of frauds, Najib Abdul Razak, an opportunity to fake a show of outraged honesty.

A show or sandiwara that is predictably not going down well with a populace that, already appalled by his lying and thieving, is further alienated, if possible, by such outrageous hypocrisies as his claim regarding the Sports Ministry heist that his government “would never compromise on cases where government funds are misappropriated and stern action would be taken against those involved”.

Brazenly flying in the face of the fact that the people of Malaysia and indeed the world have at least 2.6 billion reasons to reject such a load of nonsense from him, of all potentates, he went on to add that “all ministries and government agencies should always oversee their spending with the highest level of transparency and accountability.”

In short, just as most of us had convinced ourselves that government by Najib and his gang was as fraudulent as it can possibly get, they up and start using their frauds as frauds and thus take deception to a whole new dimension.

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’.