Travesty of Justice Barisan Nasional Style

Multitudes of Malaysians are currently expressing their outrage at the Court of Appeal’s overturning of the convictions of Special Action Unit officers Chief Inspector Azilah Hadri and Corporal Sirul Azhar Umar on the capital charge of murdering Mongolian translator Altantuya Shaariibuu.

But as sincerely as I sympathise with people’s burning desire for any sign whatever of just retribution for members, accomplices and agents of the criminal BN regime, I’m delighted to see it’s not getting away with hanging these two fall-guys.

Firstly because I’m dead against the death penalty on principle. Secondly because dead men both proverbially and literally tell no tales, and thus as long as these two Special Action Unit personnel are alive they’re a danger to whoever ordered them to take special action against Altantuya. And thirdly because it’s glaringly obvious that the original hearing that resulted in the conviction and sentencing of these two suspects, whether they actually carried out the killing or not, was a typical travesty of justice, BN style.

The gross irregularities that plagued the alleged trial are sufficient evidence of its invalidity. These included, to name just a few, the mysterious erasure from Immigration Department records of Ms Shaariibuu’s arrival in Malaysia, suspicious failure to call a whole collection of key witnesses and persons of interest, including then-Defence Minister and now Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, and the hiding of the faces of the accused throughout the proceedings.

In any case, the BN regime doesn’t need to resort to ‘legally’ executing those who embarrass or oppose it, or who happen to be handy scapegoats, considering how efficiently it employs its Police force and other paid assassins to carry out extra-judicial killings on its behalf or at least with its consent.

The hapless Altantuya Shaariibuu was, after all, just one of the dozens if not hundreds of victims of Police shooting sprees and custodial violence whose deaths have yet to be sincerely, properly and professionally investigated, let alone avenged or atoned for.

And yet, despite the public outcry at the injustice of the Altantuya case, and at other high-profile failures to execute its duty to enforce the law, the deaths of Teoh Beng Hock, Ahmad Sarbani, and A Kugan, their murderers are still hanging around.

In fact, far from facing the noose themselves, the members and accomplices of this rotten regime, along with its cronies in business, the civil service, media and even in ‘religious’ circles, somehow always seem to have enough rope to keep on killing and robbing at will.

Thanks to millions of Malaysians who are happy to take its blood money in the form of pathetically petty bribes for their votes, and millions more so bereft of care for their neighbours or their nation that they can’t even be bothered to register, BN now enjoys a new five-year ‘mandate’.

Of course it was greatly assisted in obtaining this new lease on life by its own fraudulent abuse of Malaysia’s electoral system, from massive and entirely anti-constitutional gerrymandering of electoral boundaries to the use of fake and corruptly-acquired ‘indelible’ ink.

But the fact remains that far too many Malaysians have, through their own apathy, small-time self-interest or sycophantic sympathy with the rich and powerful, chosen to collude with these crooks.

And human nature being what it is and always has been, I personally don’t see much hope for the better.

Millions did vote for something better

But hey, what’s with the sudden fit of pessimism I’ve just expressed here? What about the fact that the majority of Malaysians did vote for something better in the recent stolen general election? And that countless Malaysians devoting their lives to the cause of ridding their beloved country of the curse of BN, not like me just writing a few columns from afar?

Sorry folks, I guess it’s just been one of those weeks. The first blow to my customary optimism came, from all places, one of my (formerly?) favourite Enlightenment philosophers, David Hume (1711-1776).

Having long admired Hume for anti-religious and indeed entirely anti-metaphysical empiricism, I was naturally looking forward to reading a fragment of his Treatise on Human Nature as required for one of my current Sydney University subjects, Philosophy and Literature.

But to my horror I discovered that the first line of the specified passage read: “Nothing has a greater tendency to give us an esteem for any person, than his power and riches.”

What on earth, I wondered, had possessed the man to persuade him to such an outrageous opinion? My first thought was that he must be joking. But apparently not, I discovered, as he repeated the sentiment a bit later and used it to argue for something he termed “human sympathy” or what today we call empathy.

So I cast about for an alternative explanation for his heresy. Was he, a young man at the time he penned such perfidy, still in the grip of the faith of his upbringing, Calvinism, that with its doctrine of predestination prefigured by worldly success eventually drove him to embrace atheism?

Or was Hume simply not the estimable man I had thought him to be, but just some toady trawling for patronage by sucking up to bigwigs in the style since made famous by BN-connected contractors?

Or, perish the thought, could he have been an early exponent of the entire BN philosophy? Whichever, he totally cast a cloud over my previously perfectly fine week. And as if that hadn’t been enough of a downer to be going on with, I then made the mistake of reading a book my wife generously bought me.

When I first glimpsed the title, Power & Greed, I rashly assumed that it must be a definite history of BN. But no, so the sub-title informed me, it was “a short history of the world.” And so it turned out to be. An absolute masterpiece of compression by a Canadian author named Philippe Gigantes recounting the historical triumph of raw power and naked greed over every respectable creed.

Trust me, it’s a truly terrific read. But also so downright depressing that even yesterday’s surgical removal of a spot of skin cancer, and thus the saving of my life, at least for the time being, has thus far failed to cheer me up.

But at least it gives me a ray of hope that, even though BN has been hanging around for well over 50 years now, the majority of right-thinking Malaysians might still have time to rid themselves of this malignancy before it kills their beloved country.

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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’.