COMMENT | Don’t worry, Malaysiakini readers. I’m not about to bore you rigid about the recent riotous and ridiculously failed attempt by the ‘far-right’ wing of Australia’s current government and its attack-dogs in the mongrel media to rid themselves of a prime minister who was too moderate for their tastes and replace him with one of their own.
But I can’t resist at least briefly expressing my elation at the fact that the victory of the at least middling Scott Morrison over the dire Peter Dutton and his political and media accomplices appears to be yet another promising sign that the wrongs of the rabid ‘right’ are coming back to bite them, and with a vengeance.
Vengeance they very richly deserve in the US, by way of the most vivid example, where, far from draining the Washington swamp as he promised, Donald Trump finds himself up to his wallet in alligators.
This follows the convictions and guilty pleas of increasing numbers of his close associates on criminal charges, and the outrage of the majority of right-thinking as distinct from ‘right’-thinking US citizens at the racism, religionism, NRA-ism, protectionism, anti-immigrant, anti-environment, super-predatory capitalism and above all the fraudulence, fakery and flakery of his ‘madministration’.
And in the UK, vengeance is being wreaked on the far-right of the ‘Con’ - as in ‘Conservative’ government - and not only all the UK citizens it conned into voting for Brexit, but also the rest of the population that it failed to fool into supporting a move that is proving so catastrophically wrong that it should by right be called “wrexit”.
But, as I hear you students and fans of democracy cry, at least Australia, the UK, US and a great many other comparatively free countries have relatively egalitarian, equality-of-opportunity-for-
And I couldn’t agree more. In fact, as a glance at the latest global tables ranking indices - such as wealth distribution, social services, freedom from corruption, liberty of the press, citizens’ life-satisfaction and flat-out happiness - tend to be highest in locations where the left is strongest. Like New Zealand, for example, and most of the Scandinavian countries.
Perhaps Malaysia is headed for a similarly happy state of affairs now that its citizens have finally thrown-off the six-decade burden of the BN regime in favour of Pakatan Harapan.
Of course BN was so far further wrong than merely ‘right’-wing in the conventional democratic sense...