The fall of UMNO/BN - by Dean Johns

by Dean Johns Nov 11, 09 10:31am, Malaysiakini

As optimistic as I usually am that Malaysia will someday be free of the burden and blight of the Umno/BN regime, I sometimes get discouraged. But then something happens to rekindle my faith that freedom can prevail in the face of seemingly impossible odds.

Today, for example, my spirits are lifted by BBC TV coverage of celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Who'd have dreamed, just the day before Nov 9, 1989, that such a key sector of the iron curtain would ever crumble, let alone so suddenly?
Or that it would pressage the collapse just a few years later of the entire structure of that Stalinist totalitarian monstrosity, the USSR? This anniversary of the fall of the Wall (below) also recalls the sudden destruction of some other obscene regimes that seemed destined to prevail indefinitely.
The stunning People Power revolution that put an end to domination of the Philippines by Ferdinand Marcos. The unstoppable student-led riots that freed Indonesia of the scourge of Suharto and his Golkar-party goons.
Then, of course, there were the military defeats of the forces of Serbian mass-murderer Milosevic and the butcher of Baghdad, Saddam Hussein. Admittedly, and regrettably, lots of other candidates for collapse are still standing.
The Generals are still holding the Burmese people at gunpoint as they have for four or five decades, and keeping Aung Sang Suu Kuy under house arrest almost 20 years after the she and her party were voted into office.
The terminally-nasty Kim dynasty still keeps the North Korean people in a state of slavery and starvation and its North-Asian neighbours nervous with its nuclear programme and missile tests. Iran's terror-exporting theocrats continue to cling to power and crush critics of their country's rigged presidential elections.
And in Zimbabwe, despite the instigation of a "power-sharing" arrangement with the opposition MDC, Mugabe and his army-backed ZANU-PF thugs still arrogantly rule the roost. Meanwhile the big daddy of all surviving dictatorships, the so-called "People's" Republic of China, is apparently going from bad to worse.
Orchestrated violence
Most of 14 human rights activists featured as Asiaweek magazine's "People of the Year" cover in 2005 have since disappeared or been jailed or exiled. And President Hu Jintao (below) revised the rule of law backwards from its already-dubious aim of "professionalism" to the "three supremes", which put the interests of the Communist party first, those of society second, and the letter and spirit of the law dead last.
Of course there are dozens more depressing situations around the world that I could mention. In fact I could go on citing cases of criminal governments that haven't yet had their come-uppance until I completely talked myself out of the optimistic state of mind that the anniversary of the fall of the Wall has put me in.
But instead, let me switch back to the positive and talk about some hopeful signs I've seen lately, like the move by the International Criminal Court against fat-cat politicians in Kenya. Following a 2007 election in which incumbent President Mwai Kibaki declared himself the winner despite his challenger Ralla Odinga's having a million-vote lead, over 1,000 people died in a wave of allegedly orchestrated violence.
Now, as the Sydney Morning Herald reported recently, "After months of stone-walling by politicians in Kenya - where top leaders have long escaped prosecution for corruption and other crimes - the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, announced that crimes against humanity had been committed in the post-election period and that he would seek a formal investigation into them".
With former President of Liberia, Charles Taylor, already on trial for war crimes, power-brokers and other suspects in Kenya would do well to take the ICC's threats seriously. As would politicans in many other countries where, to hark back to the Sydney Morning Herald quote, "top leaders have long escaped prosecution for corruption and other crimes".
Malaysia's leaders, or, more accurately, misleaders, have been getting away with corruption and other crimes against the nation's citizens, civil institutions and constitution for as long as I can remember.
Kenya's post-election riots of 2007 inevitably recall the bloodbath in Malaysia in May 1969 allegedly fomented by Tun Abdul Razak in a successful bid to replace Tunku Abdul Rahman as prime minister.
Ops Lalang
And Umno has used the threat of a repeat performance ever since as a big stick to keep the opposition in line. Then there were Mahathir's mass arrests of opponents in his notorious Ops Lalang, his sacking of elements in the judiary who refused to bend to his will, and his framing and jailing of Anwar Ibrahim so as to crush the reformasi movement.
With precedents like those to encourage them, Mahathir's successors, despite their repeated promises of reform, have done nothing whatever to improve the situation. In fact in many ways it's worse.
The financial scandals are getting bigger and more frequent, suspicious deaths in police and MACC custody continue to soar and the perpetrators to go unpunished, while the findings of cosmetic royal commissions are routinely and completely ignored.
Opposition politicians and supporters keep talking about voting these Umno/BN crooks out of office, but the Najib Razak (left) government has taken to buying opposition members and overturning elected state governments. First to fall, with the consent of the courts and its sultan, was Perak, and now the process appears underway in Selangor.
The electoral system is a travesty too. Thanks to a totally compromised Electoral Commission, elections are so stacked in Umno/BN's favour by a combination of gerrymandering, roll-rigging, postal-vote stacking and blatant bribery that the next general election so many good, honest Malaysians are avidly anticipating looks set to be a joke.
What will it take, I wonder, for the international community to start taking as avid and active an interest in Malaysian affairs as it is in Kenya's? The political murder of a foreign citizen from a country with more clout than Mongolia? Another show-trial of Anwar on another trumped-up sodomy charge? An investigation in France or elsewhere of corrupt submarine or other arms deals with repressive regimes?
Whatever it is can't come too soon. Because like Marcos, Suharto, Milosevic, the USSR and the hated Berlin Wall, it's way past time for Umno/BN to fall.