INDIA IS STRONG BECAUSE it is backed by a strong power, the USSR (as it was) then, the US now. Indians can rail all they want in their newspapers that it is not so, but the fact is India is not in Southeast Asia these days as it was 500 years ago. One Indian high commissioner to Malaysia about ten years ago, talking of India's roie in the region, said it ended when Vasco da Gama reached Calicut in 1498. It was an important speech for which many policymakers had attended, and they left confused ...

THE PRIME MINISTER HAS excused New Straits Times but not the Sarawak Tribune and the Guong Ming Daily News. NST's front page apology on the front page showed the paper was contrite, said the Prime Minister. No body is penalised, as has happened in the two newpapers although they did apologize. All the television stations have carried cartoons deemed offending the Prophet, but how can they be punished? The information minister, Mr Zainuddin Maidin, who is himself a former newspaper editor, who has been running a feud with the former editor-in-chief of the NST group, Mr Khalimullah Hassan, is caught with a dilemma over the television stations under his control ...

PRESIDENT BUSH WAS CROWING two years ago that Iraq is a democracy, that it is a far better place that when Saddam Hussein, who is now facing trial for his life, was in charge. But US destroyed the framework, made enemies of the Baathist Party, opened the country to be run by Shia, made sure that the Sunnis would never have a place in the government. The civil war is fuelled by the Sunnis, Iraqi nationalists (both Sunni and Shia), the youngsters who see no future in an Iraq under American control. President Bush has had to eat every one of US optimistic statements ...

THE GREATER REASON FOR the crisis in journalism in Malaysia today is with the government. That does not mean the media or its pratictioners evade blame. Journalism is after all the megaphone to authority. The media in Malaysia is not independent but owned by commercial or political groups close to the ruking National Front, and all that matters is the balance sheet, not its reporting ...

There are only two political parties of any note in Malaysia: UMNO and PAS. They exist because they are supported by the ground because they love the larger ideal the two parties represent. This is why the only two parties ruling this country are these two. UMNO governs as the National Front, which is the government in all states but Kelantan, where PAS leads ...

PAK LAH SAYS PROTON needs a foreign partner after his government prevented one to join hands with the carmaker. The adviser to Proton, and the man who inisisted it be set up, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, was so angry when the foreign partner, Volkswagen, withdrew from the link-up that he returned the VW car that was given him. What is now known is that deals behind to ensure that an private parties benefit rather than the nation were hatched at that time, and Proton naturally was the loser. Volkswagen withdrew from the deal, but why it did so is not made public ...

PAK LAH has resuffled his cabinet, so the newspapers and spinmeisters said. But has he? He has organised his cabinet to be ready for the 2007 UMNO elections, not to run the country effectively. He has blinked at a time when he should not. He hopes the changes would destroy lhis enemies ...

THE SADDAM HUSSEIN TRIAL, like Slobodan Milosevic's, is political but conducted in Baghdad as a legal trial. The motto seems to be: First the trial, then the execution. It is presumed the defendants have no no case, so it is presumed by the prosecutors. And are shocked when the strong defence is made ...

CRYING 'FIRE' IN A CROWDED theatre is not acceptabe, It may be freedom of speech or expression, but the responsibilty that goes with it, equally important, prevents it. That is accepted the world over. Similarly, the publication of a cartoon depiciting the Prophet Mohammed in a bad light, when Christianity representing the west is involved in a crusade against the Muslims. The editors can justify this as freedom of speech ...

THE UNITED STATES IS losing badly in Iraq. It does not release news of any kind from there. In the past, before the reality struck in, one could not escape from Iraq, which it saw as evidence it is winning, whatever that means, the war. The government there is bothered about bird flu, as if that is the most important thing amid the mayhem the US has caused, is causing, in that country since it invaded it in 2003 ...

THE PEOPLE'S ACTION PARTY created Singapore out of its image, the work of its long-term leader, Mr Lee Kuan Yew. It dismantled the British superstructure in the island colony and put in its place the sinews of a modern administrative state. But in doing so, it created a whole colony of beavers, who worked hard, kept their thoughts to themselves, and did what they were asked to do. Those who did not follow the general trend were severely dealt with, and that included recalcitrant journalists and overseas magazines, The officials assumed a persona of their own, believed they could do no wrong, and looked down upon the people they negotiated with, if they were Malaysians, and got the edge over them by slick public relations. The general feeling in Singapore is that the country across the causeway is their's for the kicking. The one time they clashed over water, in which Singapore assumed it was theirs and did Malaysia a favour by giving it treated water, it took Mr Lee Kuan Yew to see his counterpart, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, in 1986, and gave the Malaysians the upper hand in relations with the island republic.

THE DEPUTY PRESIDENTS OF parties in the National Front, elected to office, are not liked by their presidents. In UMNO, Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia, MCA, MIC, for example, the presidents believe they can ignore the membership. In MIC, the president goes one step further. He arranges so that the branches supporting the deputy president is struck off for the flimsiest of reasons, and rearrange these braches to be beholden to him. The deputy president, Dato' S ...

CHENGARA VEETIL DEVAN NAIR, or C.V. Devan Nair, is dead. Not where he was born – in Malacca, Malaysia; not in the land of his adoption, Singapore whose president he became; but in exile in Canada, hounded to the end by Mr Lee Kuan Yew, then prime minister but now two steps higher as minister mentor, whose colleague he was and who had him elected as President. He was born in 1923, and died in December 2005. He was, of course, a Malayali, a clan Mr Lee was, and is, afraid of, and who gave him his biggest trouble in his march to be Prime lMinister ...

THE FORMER FINANCE MINISTER, Tun Daim Zainuddin, is on a rampage after he was implicated in the Metramac scandal, and Mr Justice Sri Ram, about to retire, said some snasty things about him. Metramac's lawyer, Mohamed Shafee Abdullah, is facing a possible contempt of court charges for what he said after the Appeal Court hearings. Tun Daim and his compatriots assume that justice will only be served if judgement go their way. They could be excused if they had said this after the Federal Court had made its judgement, when all avenues of legal proceedings would then be over ...

DAT0' SIR ONN JAFFAR, Menteri Besar of Johore, UMNO's founding president, father of the prime minister, Tun Hussein Onn, grandfather of Dato' Hishamuddin Hussein, is also known for having got the Malay women of Malaysia to protest against the British plan to neutralise the Malay rulers. The British did not know what hit them. The National Archives is full of reports, written usually in amazement by British officials on the scene, of how the normally placid women protested against plans to remove the powers of the Sultans. The British officers did not know what to do, dare not allow a 'lathi charge' as they would have against the men. The normally apolitcal women were organised by Ibu Zain, who was given a Tan Sri in the 1980s because her daughter, who worked as a journalist for a while on the New Straits Times after she left the education service on a point of principle, would not accept any medal or title if none was given to her mother.

THE UMNO YOUTH DEPUTY LEADER, Mr Khairy Jamaluddin, said in Sabah the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, is irrelevant to the politics there. That was the only news in the English language newspapers in West Malaysia, in effect all the newspapers which double as the National Front's publicity organs. But it had the opposite reaction. That he himself is irrelevant in Sabah is of course not mentioned ...

THE MINISTER OF INFORMATION, Dato' Seri Abdul Kadir Sheikh Fadhir, has suddenly discovered the Rukun Negara, enunciated more than 30 years ago, and promptly ignored, to give a sense of longing to the Chinese and Indians. It was the brainchild of Tun Ghazali Shafie, who was a thinker in residence in addition to the other portfolios he held. His mind is acute then as it is today, although he is in his 80s and confined to a wheel chair. He was unusual among Malaysian minister in that he read widely ...

WHAT HAPPENED ON MAY 13 – whether it is the Malays who orchestrated it or the DAP which started it – misses one important fact. It was to get Tengku Abdul Rahman, the first prime minister, out of office. The deaths in the riots do not matter, only that the man must go. The MCA felt that the Chinese had let it down, and quit the government ...

THE NON-MALAY CABINET MINISTERS who complained to their prime minister, Pak Lah, about non-Muslim voices being unheard, is ordered by Pak Lah himself to withdraw it and not let it be discussed by outsiders, i.e. Malaysians. Why they took this extreme stand, especially when they agreed with Pak Lah in the cabinet what they protest now is easy to explain. The non-Malay ministers are beholden to UMNO, and they nod their heads when the prime minister tells them to ...

THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO the Health Ministry, Dato' S. Sothinathan, was suspended for three months because he defied a government decision. He had immunity when he complained, in Parliament. But when ten non-Muslim cabinet ministers protested in public what they had in the cabinet sessions agreed, probably because they had to show their communities they meant well, there was recriminations and explanations, but no action against them. Their Malay ministerial colleagues, notably Dato' Nazri Aziz, in criticising them, said they agreed with an Islamic state ...

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