As a vicious pretence. The “emergency” confected by PN with top level support was never intended to counter Covid 19 but rather to keep in power an illegitimate government headed by a nobody handpicked by two ‘superior beings’ to allow the suspension of democracy and permit steps back into a past that most Malaysians had thought to be a relic of history.

It is a cruel irony of fate that the pretence has morphed into a national tragedy with which an administration of crooks and incompetents have proved entirely unable to cope. As usual it is the ordinary Malaysian who is paying the price for air-conditioned stables rather than air-conditioned hospital wards and the treatment needed to counter covid.