Let me introduce myself.  I am the prospective candidate for Padang Besar, your present UMNO MP, Zahidi Zainul Abidin..

I want to let voters know that I am smugly complacent that there is no danger whatsoever of the opposition parties winning in this election, simply because they do not have any money, whereas I and my BN colleages have bags of it, as always, some of which we plan to lavish on voters when the time comes:

Bersatu will not be able to win in the 14th general election as its candidates are cash-strapped.  Umno’s Padang Besar MP Zahidi Zainul Abidin said candidates in such a situation would likely end up spending allocations for themselves, instead of spending the funds on voters…..
“If the candidates have not had money for a long time, then Bersatu gives them an allocation, they would use it for themselves, instead of the kampung folk, who will end up losing,”  [Malaysiakini]

With that in mind let me with no further ado introduce our revered Prime Minister of the last decade, who has today also laid out his pre-election pitch, reading his prepared words from those transparent screens that are meant to disguise the fact you are reading (but which in his case don’t).

The Prime Minister

Good day everyone.  I am going to kick off on this crucial speech by laying my cards on the table and knocking on the head all this nonsense about 1MDB that the opposition has been going on about.

Let me make clear, the whole row about 1MDB has been nothing less than a concerted international conspiracy against myself, the Malaysian Government and the entire Malaysian economy by an evil ring of conspirators, including a fabulously paid retired female journalist, bogus anti-corruption campaigners and various James Bond style billionaires, who intend to take over the globe by using the destruction of my reputation as a thoroughly honest fellow as their starting point.

Exposing 1MDB was all about undermining the Malaysian economy, which is to say bringing it into the present mess that we sadly all know about.

What I am saying is that prices would not be rising, along with taxes, and the ringgit would not have plummeted and Malaysia’s reputation for financial integrity would not be in tatters, had not this evil ring exposed 1MDB.

I can assure you of this, since for the last decade I have been the Finance Minister and Prime Minister in charge of the entire Malaysian economy, so I should know what has caused all its present problems, having not so long ago been touted as an Asian Tiger.

Don’t believe a word of what international economists and the opposition say, which is that the implosion of 1MDB and loss of some RM42 billion has caused, along with my other shenanigans, a general loss of confidence in my handling of the economy.  The fact that my pals and I stole most of that money and spent it on yachts, paintings, mansions and diamonds, all now largely seized by foreign governments like the United States, which have launched gigantic money laundering operations, is neither here not there.

What has caused the actual problem has been the deliberate and malicious expose of such minor and perfectly normal peccadilloes by these conspirators.  If these plotters had just shut up and not drawn attention to the situation, then I could have further abused my powers and launched my planned bogus flotation of 1MDB back in 2014: forcing all the pension funds that I control to pour in more of the Malaysian people’s hard-earned savings, in order to shore up the pillaged fund and cover the whole thing up.

Then there would have been no disgrace and no loss of confidence in my management of the ringgit.  The conspirators are therefore to blame and as we speak they are progressing to the next stages of their dire plot to take over the globe.

Let me explain again, the original plan was solid.  Under my careful captainship of the situation Jho Low could have kept his yacht, Rosie could have continued hoarding more diamonds, I could have built up my war-chest for GE 14 (well I have found other ways of doing that, of course) and lots of pensioners would never have realised they were far worse off in retirement than they needed to be.  Since these ‘simple folk’ know no better, so-what?

OK, so to pull back just a little bit. We have decided I am going to have to concede that a few things did go wrong with 1MDB: there were ‘valid concerns’.  However, let me make it absolutely clear, it was the exposure of the corruption that did the damage and not the corruption itself.  Believe me.

With that minor matter out of the way, let me now tell you what a fantastic challenge I have faced during my decade in power and explain why things look so absolutely terrible these days in Malaysia, compared to when I took on the job.  It is, naturally, all the fault of my useless predecessor and present opponent, who ran the country for two decades and conned everyone that he was doing a pretty good job of improving standards of living – well, in West Malaysia anyway.

Malaysia’s present problems are all the fault of Dr M!

I took on a country with a whole lot of problems invisible to the electorate, but which I then had to contend with.  A decade on there is no one to blame for our current economic difficulties, therefore, apart from my predecessor Dr Mahathir and no one can possibly argue that I could be held responsible in any way.

I know this seems strange, since until Dr M decided to call me a disgraceful crook and left the party to join the opposition (together with my Deputy Prime Minister and a Vice President of UMNO) I was calling him the revered ‘Grand Old Man’ of my party and a ‘Father to Malaysian People’ and treating him like a demi-God.

Indeed I was proud to call Mahathir my mentor, until he turned round and called me a dreadful disappointment and a crook to boot.

From that moment on I have been calling him all things back under the sun and claiming that he too has joined the global conspiracists, because he is plotting to return to the position he retired from, owing to unfulfilled ambition….  well, his ambitions were fulfilled and he had retired, but he also had plainly concealed a come-back ambition, which I had sadly not appreciated until he started complaining that I was a crook.

So, let me tell you, there is no point discussing whether I am a crook or not, because the even bigger crook was my predecessor Dr M.  I know neither I nor my fellow party members mentioned this reprehensible fact until he started criticising me, but it wasn’t really very convenient to do so at the time.

I can tell you all this now however, given that I have fallen out with him, and I am sure you appreciate that telling the truth about what a crook your party leader was is better done late than never.

Granted, he was also clearly a rather better crook than me, because nobody has been able to pin anything on him, whereas my billion dollar bank account has been fully exposed by the Malaysian Task Forces and FBI.  What’s more, he and his wife give the appearance of modest living whereas my wife makes Imelda Markos look a cheapskate (and sits in my seat half the time as well).

But, people have to understand that this story that Mahathir now tells, which is that he is disgusted that I have robbed the country blind and put my politcal opponent into jail, so he has decided to come back and give those people who once trusted and voted for BN an alternative besides myself is bunkum.

Equally bunkum is the pledge by this old man that he would use his election to campaign for an immediate pardon for the jailed opposition leader (who got more votes than me even before people found out about 1MDB) and hand power over to him the moment the law allows.

No, I can tell you, that this lousy fellow is none other than Robert Mugabe in a mask.  He had planned to destroy Malaysia’s economy while in office for twenty years, but instead decided to frame it so that that only happened when I took over, so that he could come back and take over again.

This makes perfect sense as anyone can see.  So, I merely have left to tell you that yes, I have succeeded in raiding more public funds and that BN does therefore, as usual, have access to vast and unnaccounted for sums of cash to splash around at the next election, with which to buy your votes.  Don’t worry, all those short term financial treats BN are about to hand out will soon make voters forget about all their other woes brought on by this government.

The simple mug-heads will vote for the candidate with a bag of rice and a pre-election bribe – i.e. BN. Always have, always will.  Then we top dogs can get back to another five years of pillaging their pension funds and driving fast cars.  Everyone happy and business as usual.

On that noble sentiment, I will hand back to our brave member for Padang Besar to lay out in fuller detail his arguments made earlier today about why the opposition simply haven’t got the cash to win the coming election.

More from UMNO MP/ Election Candidate, Zahidi Zainul Abidin

Prime Minister, thank you for laying out your position so clearly.  Now I and my fellow UMNO leaders, who have followed you so slavishly (after all Cash is King) know exactly what to say to our voters.

Yes, I have to say I feel supremely confident in the continuing attraction of BN/UMNO as we approach this coming election, given that these opposition folk plainly haven’t got a bean to bribe with.

And let me ask, if they don’t know how to steal the cash, what qualifications do they think they have for government of Malaysia?

Of course, these Bersatu people may get some money allocated to them by their party donors to spend on campaigning (they are probably sticking to the legal limits poor things).  However, they are bound to filtch that for themselves, because unlike us BN people they haven’t had years and years in power to feather their nests and spare plenty more besides, in order to be able to afford to appear ‘generous’ to kampung folk in the pre-election ‘hand-out period’.

I won’t blame them for taking the money, as it is what I would plainly do in their shoes – who wouldn’t?

People have to realise, therefore, that there is a lot to be said for continuing to vote the same bunch of fat-cat cronies back into power time and again (“crony capitalists” is what I think my Prime Minister called them when he was attacking his own party predecessor just now).

The reason being that these super-rich office holders have everything they need already, so they aren’t desperate to start stealing more.  It is generally known as ‘noblesse oblige’….. Well, of course, there are the kids to keep happy (it seems they can never have enough jets or sports cars) and somehow greed is a vice that can never be satiated it appears – ask Rosmah.  It seems that the more you take the more you think you can get, so the more you want.

However, let me assure you, as one who knows, if you let in that other lot they will just start filching from scratch – and it will take them a heck of a lot before they will reckon they have enough to spare on others for pre-election goody-bags.  Much better with us.  We have a war chest, just like at the last election, where the Big Boss handed UMNO and all the other BN parties hundreds of millions to pop into little envelopes and hand around.

Yes, granted, some of it may not have arrived quite where it should have, but since there is no accounting… well there is no accounting.

And the fact that all that money came from the development fund 1MDB is quite immaterial.  The Prime Minister has already adequately explained how it was not the corruption, but the exposure of 1MDB that caused the problem.

No joking, we are serious contenders!