Opaque is as bad as fake.

Let’s not be fooled by this week’s fake attacks on fake news and views by two of the fraudulent Umno/BN regime’s leading exponents of such fakery, Salleh Said Keruak and Ahmad Maslan.

These fakers are hoping we’ll all be so focused on the fantastic hypocrisy of their remarks as to be fooled into forgetting that fake news, for all its evils, is at least out in the open where we can fight it with the truth, but that we are totally powerless against non-news, or denial of information we have a right to.

In other words, the censorship or outright silence on government actions and economic management as enforced by the Umno/BN’s notoriously extreme Official Secrets Act (OSA) and similarly truth-repressive statutes ruthlessly enforced by other repressive regimes around the world arguably disadvantages people even more than lies do.

Though of course state secrecy and lies always actually work together, with secrecy serving as the first and fundamental line of defence against revelations of official incompetencies, corruptions and other criminalities, and lying kept in reserve in case such embarrassments become public.

For example, the case of world-record looting of 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) and subsequent laundering of the proceeds was long kept secret by Malaysia’s regime-complicit banking authorities, so-called law-enforcement agencies and ‘mainstream’ media, and it was only after overseas-based media and economic regulators made the scandal public that Umno/BN had to resort to crying ‘fake news’ and to creating its own genuinely fake fake news in response.

Though this frenzy of fakery has doubtless proven a mixed blessing for the Umno/BN regime, on the one hand failing to protect it from international opprobrium and ridicule, not to mention the investigation and possible prosecution of some of its members and cronies, and on the other hand drawing both local and global attention away from countless lesser or still-secret scandals.

The farrago of fakery inspired by the 1MDB affair seems to have been a mixed blessing for the Malaysian people, too. Those still steadfastly supporting Umno/BN out of what I can only assume must be stupidity, cupidity or a dismal combination of both, have been shamed even more than before.

And those too smart, honest or just plain true to themselves and their ethical, religious or political principles to feel or even bother faking any respect or regard for the regime must be feeling considerably encouraged and even empowered.

Though of course they can be by no means confident of sufficient power to rid themselves and their beloved country of the Umno/BN curse in the forthcoming 14th general election, considering that the regime’s system of secrecy remains firmly in place, and that it continues to protect and sustain itself with a combination of fake ‘news’ media and fraudulent electoral and other faux-democratic institutions.

Plus, of course, the customary fake reminders from the regime that only Umno/BN can be trusted to continue its alleged ‘struggle’ to support royalty, the Malay race and the Muslim religion, and thus keep the nation united.

Some consolation

But at least, I suppose, Malaysians can console themselves that they are not quite so bedeviled by official fakery as their fellows in, say, China or North Korea.

Or can they? China, or Chaina as I prefer to think of it in light of the fact that its citizens are totally bound by the system of secrecy and fakery forged by their single-party dictatorship, seems to be making quite startling inroads into Malaysia, due to the fact that Umno/BN seems to be secretly or at least stealthily selling the country out for the cash it needs to compensate for the massive toll they’ve taken on the national economy through 1MDB and countless other corruptions.

So it doesn’t seem to be far-fetched to imagine that Malaysians could someday or even soon find themselves not only part of Chaina’s so-called ‘belt-and-road’ fantasy, but also brow-beaten by Chainese-style fake news in addition to the Umno/BN variety, and even under the fake ‘protection’ of a local version of the triumphally truth-resistant ‘great firewall’ of Chaina.

And an even worse fate for Malaysians would be to find themselves playing host to increasing numbers of secret North Korean factories and their captive sweated if not outright slave labourers, considering that assurances to Donald Trump by Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak that Malaysia would co-operate in sanctions against the Kim Jong-un regime following the assassination of Kim’s half-brother at KLIA will doubtless prove to be as fake as everything else that Najib promises.

In short, as I’m nearing my dreaded word limit, I urge all who truly love Malaysia to do whatever it takes, from massive marches through overwhelming voting to million-strong class-action court cases against its members, to finally force this fake, opaque, on-the-take Umno/BN regime to embrace truth, transparency, and accountability or else, as I’ve said so many times before, fake off.- Mkini