THE SELANGOR STATE GOVERNMENT believes in taking people for a ride. So does every state, and the federation, under the National Front (BN). The BN believes citizenship means voting it into power, and accept without question whatever it does, right or wrong. Questioning it is akin to treason. "You voted us in, we can do as we like," is how BN leaders look upon their role in government ...

THE ONLY POLITICAL UNCERTAINTY these days is if the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, or the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, would win this coming clash of the UMNO pygmies. The clash is not over issues or policy or Malaysia's future direction but of who controls UMNO and the near absolute power it gives him. UMNO's dominance in Malaysian politics has lasted one year short of five decades. This invincible position ignored, in time, the views of others, even critics within, and a worldview that the Opposition could be safely ignored ...

THE DIRECTOR OF MILITARY INTELLIGENCE, Lieut.-Gen. Dato' Wan Abu Bakar omar, proved by his own words why he should be removed forthwith. In an irrelevant television and print interview with Bernama yesterday (19 April 2005), broadcast on all TV channels and reported in the newspapers today, he proved why military intelligence, at least in Malaysia, is an oxymoron. He ignored totally Singapore's breach of our national security, to which the armed forces, the police forces, the intelligence agencies, the prime minister and deputy prime minister, were complicit ...

TENAGA NASIONAL BERHAD (TNB) continues to be an example of a privatised utility taken control of by cronies of the Establishment, in this instance, the most powerful 30-year-old in Malaysia who doubles up as the Prime Minister's son-in-law, Mr Khairy Jamaludin. The professional management of TNB is not allowed to run the electricity utility as it is capable of; instead, it is at the mercy of the cronies of this 30-year-old, who line their pockets and destroy what was once Malaysia's best run utility. It was privatised on the flawed principle that the government should not concern itself with making money. But it is here to be robbed and pillaged by its present management because the government did a good job of running it well for all its life.

So, why did the government privatise TNB? The flawed thesis that money-making is best left to private enterprise, first articulated in US business schools, attracted governments all over the world, not that it is but that it provided a new form of corruption ...

IN THE LATE 1930s, the then governor of Singapore, Sir Shenton Thomas, would drop in at the Raffles Hotel barber shop to have his hair trimmed by the popular Japanese owner, who was so discreet and obsequious that he was regarded a harmless fellow. Caution was thrown to the winds, and talk flowed freely when senior officials met there every month. Along Jalan Ibrahim, Johore Bahru, in the 1930s, the Five Cent Store occupied the spot where the K. Abdul Wahab news agent, stationers and general merchants now does ...

A mystery ship is berthed 500 metres beyond the North Port in Klang, but within the pilotage area of Port Klang. It is there since July 2004. Port officials and pilots are concerned about what it does and why it is there. No one else is ...

RAJA KAMARUDDIN RAJA Abdul Wahid. A former commando, so he is also known as Raja Komando, a member of the Selangor royal family, close to the Selangor house. A former UMNO member who left like so many ohers when it betrayed its deputy president, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. Joined Parti Keadilan Nasional when it was formed ...

THE PRIME MINISTER, DATO' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, began the litany of official confessions this week. He orders government websites, woefully out of date for years, updated. Not that they would. He issues so many even his office cannot say how many ...

THE NATIONAL FRONT (BN) GOVERNMENT is caught in its own trap. Suffused in false logic, doubtful premises, with no clue what it wants, it privatised government and public services and assets to crony business men and politicians aligned to the establishment. They did not know, nor care, how to run the businesses they were handed on a plate. There was no pretense of fairness or scrutiny of who got them ...

MALAYSIAN SKYSCRAPERS ARE NOT designed to withstand earthquakes, but in "in one or two years", the rules would be designed to protect future tall buildings. The director-general of town and country planning Mohd Fadhil Mohd Khir says official guidelines has no provision for earthquake-proof skyscrapers. This is frightening: our "world-class" buildings become flimsy when earthquake tremors strike. The most recent, last Sunday, caused cracks in many skyscrapers ...

WHEN THE HISTORY OF Malaysia comes to be written in other than the tempestuous present, one man will loom large in her first 50 years. More than the political leaders, he will emerge as the glue that held together a nation prescribed and formulated by politics and its leaders.

He had an important role in the formation of Malaya and Malaysia, was the public face of Malaysian diplomacy even after he retired to enter active politics. His legacy is mixed. That is not unexpected since his flaws are as dominant - on occassion - as his strengths.

He is all but forgotten now, a victim of his brilliance, faults, political miscalculations, his over-reaching ambition, remarkable penchant for attracting immense loyalty and hatred in equal measure, and a prime minister in the final years of his public career who viewed any who second-guessed him as a traitor.

In a nation which hurries to forget the past, the 21 years out of office marks him out as a non-person. Many indeed think Ghazali Shafie is dead ...

THE ROYAL MALAYSIAN POLICE MARKED its 198th birthday on 25 March 2005. Why now and not its 200th in 2007 is not explained, but it was the "right" moment to tell Malaysians to respect the police or else. The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, as the internal security minister, did not mince his words: It should be honoured, it does brilliant work in difficult circumstances, its stellar roll in public security and crime prevention is so crucial that young Malaysians, school-leavers and graduates, should regard a career in the police force as their first choice.

Why? A "noble" career in the police force "uphold(s) the law and ensure the peace of the country and security of the people", he said at the function. The police should not rest on its laurels: it should aspire to be a world class force ...

MALAYSIA CANNOT SURVIVE WITHOUT foreign labour – especially illegal – politically, culturally, socially; and a scapegoat for the ills of Malaysian society. Factories and estates shut down, construction grinds to a halt, small and medium factories and industries head for bankruptcy, restaurants and hawker stalls have to close when they are not available. Periodically the UMNO-led National Front (BN) government creates an issue of it, blaming on it the ills of society: rapes, armed robberies, snatch thieves. What is not said is why and how foreign labour came to dominate Malaysian society in the three decades illegal immigration was encouraged within bilateral agreements to allow it in legally and officially.

So when Malaysia peremptorily threatened to cane illegal workers last year if they did not leave within a fortnight, it set off fear and panic ...

POS MALAYSIA BERHAD IS, like Malaysian government-linked companies, on the rip-off trail. It has peculiar notion why it is around. It is not to serve the public or provide a service, but to make money for its senior executives and, if there is enough change left, for the postal service. The first step is to computerise its operations, done not to make it easier to deal with those who use it, but as a religious offering in the temple of computerisation and modernisation ...

THIS BELIEF IN THE UMNO-led National Front (BN) federal government the thirteen states and the federal territories of Kuala Lumpur, Putra Jaya and Labuan are for its raping is now vigorously challenged. It controls parliament and all but one, two or three states at different times in opposition hands, the sultans must therefore throw constitutional niceties to the winds and submit to superior power and authority. The conference of rulers and individual sultans were deliberately side-stepped to cause constitutional crises from the expulsion of Singapore in 1965 to the Selangor Bukit Cahaya Seri Alam agricultural park fiasco in 2005. In a nutshell, the BN government ignores the federal constitution when its policies and plans conflict with the supreme law.

Tengku Abdul Rahman, the first prime minister and a younger son of the Sultan of Kedah, had the political and regal authority to have his way but, except in the expulsion of Singapore, scrupulously kept the rulers informed and got their consent before a constitutional move. His successor, Tun Abdul Razak, had little patience with the rulers, and how he forcibly alienated the federal territory of Kuala Lumpur from Selangor provided his successors the precedent to rewrite Malaysia's geography ...

THE 'REFORMASI' MOVEMENT, founded to protest a grave injustice, has seen better days. It was the catalyst seven years ago in the most seminal mass movement in Malaysian history equal to, if not more important than, the mass rallies in 1946 which led to UMNO's founding. The issue then and seven years ago rose out of an insult to the Malay psyche: in one the British reducing Malay sultans to colonial ciphers, the other, UMNO defiling Malay cultural mores. Malaysian history will not forget either even if UMNO today reflects British colonial arrogance more than post-colonial Malay confidence. It took UMNO five decades to self-destruct; but barely a decade for the reformasi movement, if it does not reform. To put it bluntly, the reformasi movement knows not if it comes or goes ...

THE SANGKANCIL INTERNET FORUM, which I run with Bala Pillai, is held hostage to Islamic vigilantes, who would divert into an irrelevant mud-slinging whenever Islam is mentioned in however innocuous a context, so that their “noise" drives out all but the daring to dip their toes in. It is difficult enough to persuade Malaysians to speak their thoughts – the walls have ears, the Special Branch listens in, our jobs and our families would be in danger, I am told, that if they agree to what is "officially" disapproved. No matter what the topic, few would dare express an opinion. Bala in Sydney and I in Kuala Lumpur decided from the start it would be unmoderated ...

UMNO HIDES, NOR WANT to hear, what upsets it. Truth is its monopoly, its truth the Gospel, who questions an ally of, if not, Satan. As head of the National Front (BN), it dominates Malaysia. It brooks no interference, from BN and the opposition, and, until 1988, could behave as it pleased ...

THE SELANGOR MENTRI BESAR, Dato' Seri Mohamed Khir Toyo, reacts as any politician when blame is laid at a his door: blame the civil servants, others, everyone else; he alone is free of blame. When the Sabah chief minister, Dato' Seri Musa Aman, is caught with his hands in the till, he brazens it out. Both are naked, even if one is backed by the prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, the other not. If one goes, Pak Lah goes with him; if the other stays, Pak Lah does not ...

THE SELANGOR MENTRI BESAR, Dato' Seri Mohamed Khir Toyo, is hunted like a cornered rat. Few in UMNO shed a tear for him, and fewer if he is sacked. UMNO wants him out. He has his supporters, notably the former prime minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed ...

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