The Red Bean Army is again in the news in Parliament.

Home Minister Datuk Seri Zahid Hamidi told Parliament during question time yesterday that “the Red Bean Army and its ilk” will face criminal and civil action for spreading lies through the Internet.

Many questions come to mind.

Firstly, does the Home Minister with his intelligence and background really believe that a “DAP-funded Red Bean Army” of 3,000 cybertroopers really exist, and is this belief backed up by the Police? Will the Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar speak up?

Secondly, why the government has not taken any action for the principal lie that the DAP funded the so-called Red Bean Army of 3,000 cybertroopers with a budget of RM100 million to RM1 billion in the past six years, as it should not require much professionalism for the cyber-cops to expose the quackery and buffoonery of this tall tale of fiction, especially as Concorde Hotel, which is the haunt of top UMNO/BN leaders, had been pinpointed as one of the major centres of operation of this mythical cyber-army?

This was why last week I led a team of DAP MPs to visit Concorde Hotel, and all we found was the place crawling with UMNO leaders and operatives and the only discovery was that there was not only no sign of Red Bean Army, but the exorbitant ice-kacang in Concorde Hotel had no red beans at all!

Thirdly, has the Home Ministry greater expertise on information technology than the Communications and Multimedia Ministry when the Communications and Multimedia Deputy Minister admitted to Parliament last Thursday that it does not know who the Red Bean Army is or whether there is a Red Bean Army despite all the allegations flying around both in cyberspace and the Barisan Nasional-controlled media.

Fourthly, and most interesting of all, why the UMNO/BN’s “fatal obsession” with the Red Bean Army tale.

After last week’s discovery that there is not only no sign of Red Bean Army in Concorde Hotel, a haunt of UMNO leaders and operatives, but there is even no red bean in the hotel’s exorbitant “ice kacang”, the fiction of a DAP-funded Red Bean Army of 3,000 cybertroopers is the subject of widespread jokes, scorn and derision.

What Zahid did yesterday was a desperate attempt to prevent the tall tale of DAP-funded Red Bean Army from dying a “laughing death”.

Clearly, the “fatal obsession” of Umno/BN to the tall tale of “DAP-funded Red Bean Army of 3,000 cybertroopers” is related to a secret agenda reaching high into Umno/BN circles to justify an allocation of RM350 million in the next five years to fight the fictitious Red Bean Army.

This is why the tall tale of the “DAP-funded Red Bean Army of 3,000 cybertroopers with a budget of RM100 million to RM1 billion in the past six years” must be salvaged and rehabilitated or there would be no case for a RM350 million allocation for the army of Umno/BN cybertroopers for the next five years.

We have hence come to the cause for UMNO/BN’s RM350 million “fatal obsession” with the fictitious Red Bean Army caper.