Nazi lemak, anyone?

Great food has long seemed to me one of Malaysians’ chief consolations for the pain of having to stomach such a disgusting government.

A fact that has long also provided a feast for the kleptocrats and their cronies, of course, given their monopolies on sugar, rice and other foodstuffs.

But now the huge attendance at the Bersih 3.0 rally has revealed just how pressing the people’s hunger is for electoral reform, and the then inevitable end of the Umno/BN gravy train.

So the regime is throwing everything into its frantic attempts to cook-up opposition to calls for clean and fair elections, up to and including the kitchen sink.

Or maybe that should be the kitchen stink, considering the stench of political corruption in the way that the police and DBKL recently stood idly by while people cooked beef burgers outside the house of Bersih co-chairperson Ambiga Sreenevasan in a blatant attempt to intimidate her and offend her personal, cultural and religious sensibilities.

Then a bunch of disreputables claiming to be members of the Malaysian Armed Forces Veterans Association (PVTM)arrived and did ‘excercises’ in order to insultingly show Ambiga their butts, or, to better sustain our culinary theme, their buns.

Even more outrageous than this far-from-appetising sight was the subsequent claim by PVTM president, Ali Baharom, that his group’s demonstration had stopped Bersih from holding a further rally.

And now, their enthusiasm for guerrilla catering apparently unabated, members of the Kuala Lumpur Petty Traders Action Council are planning a two-day market selling food, drinks and sundries outside Ambiga’s house.

But if these nazi lemak and goreng sellers imagine that anything they can dish-out will diminish the appetite of this redoubtable mother, lawyer and activist for electoral reform, they’re gravely mistaken.

In fact they and their fascist political paymasters should get it through their thick noodles that their anti-Bersih antics only serve to remind more and more Malaysians how totally fed-up they are with a steady diet of grubby government and dirty elections.

But the big cheeses of BN still appear confident that they can keep right on running Malaysia as if it was their own personal mamak stall, and so they’re serving-up heaping helpings of the same nauseating old swill as ever.

Head chef Najib Razak off on another of his overseas junkets, so Tun Dr Mahathir was filling in for him in and dishing-out all his customary dirt.

First, of course, the filthy lie that the rally for clean and fair elections was actually an attempt to violently overthrow the government.

And now, since nobody appeared to be swallowing that offering, he’s changed it to simply accusing the rally participants of “hooliganism”, charging the Bar Council with pro-opposiition bias, and praising the police for their “restraint” in not resorting to use of their firearms.

Meanwhile, Mahathir’s disgraced former inspector-general of police, Abdul Rahim Noor, has re-heated home minister Hishammuddin Hussein’s stale can of worms, the claim that Pakatan Rakyat “was out to cause bloodshed” at the Bersih 3.0 protest “because it was not confident of capturing Putrajaya through legal means.”

But as hard as this was to swallow, it was nothing compared with the load of rubbish cooked-up by Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin that “the federal government had already bowed to Bersih 2.0’s demands but merely failed to adequately explain it to voters.”

And in case that wasn’t emetic enough to get his audience gagging and retching, he topped it off with the saucy remark that “it has become part of our commitment since we achieved independence to grant the people their rights to free speech and assembly.”

All of which had as faint a flavour of the truth as Defence Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi’s recent claim that Bersih 3.0 protesters were paid RM200 to RM300 each to attend the April 28 rally.

Then, as if Malaysians hadn’t had enough brainfood-poisoning to be going on with for the week, BN assemblyperson for Klawang and Negri Sembilan executive council member in charge of agriculture, agro-based industries and entrepreneurial and co-operative development (wah, what a mouthful!), Yunus Rahmat, declared that hawkers in his state using government-issued equipment were henceforth barred from trading near opposition ceremahs.

In the light of the regime’s employment of hawkers to harass and threaten Ambiga Sreenevesan at her house, this has to be the ultimate example of the pot calling the kettle black.

But BN couldn’t care less about such trifles as logical consistency, or how suspect the recipe or how fishy the ingredients as long as they can keep getting away with their share of the dough and keep cooking the books to try and cover their tracks.

What they overlook, however, as they live off the fat of the land and distribute crumbs to the rakyat, is the discontent that’s simmering away in the pressure-cooker of public opinion.

And growing numbers of us can hardly wait for the final explosion. Not for the spectacle of broken bodies and lost lives that Najib Razak threatens, as considering Altantuya Shaariibuu, Teoh Beng Hock and countless others, there have been more than enough regime casualties already without Najib’s providing more cannon-fodder.

But be it explosive, implosive or just a case of choking on its own greed, whatever the final course in the banquet that Umno/BN has been gorging on all these years at Malaysian citizens’ expense, one thing is for sure.

With the help of its nazi lemak-sellers, violent protests against Bersih like the recent one in Malacca, the selective prosecution of Anwar Ibrahim and a few others following Bersih 3.0, and the Scorpene soufflé that’s being whipped-up in Paris as we speak, this revolting regime is finally about to get its just desserts.

- Dean Johns Ad Lib