The BN made a big mistake in opening a can of worms. It is reluctant to release its ministerial profligacies. Dr Mahathir set a bad example. The late Tun Abdul Razak, as Prime Minister, would insist that his foreign trips did not last more than ten days; he preferred seven but he would often return in five. Before he returned, he would spend his money to buy gifts for those in his office. Often, he would return to the Treasury the money he did no spend. But then he had a high sense of public duty. Tun Hussein would pay back to the Treasury for his private entertainment at Seri Taman, his official residence. Tengku Abdul Rahman's penny-pinching at official expenses is well-known. Dr Mahathir set a record for profligate behaviour. If he does it, why not those below him. They did not disappoint him and embraced this leadership by example. Profligacy is endemic under the Mahathir governance. The Subang Airport had a RM100 million facelift shortly before the contract to build Kuala Lumpur International Airport for several billions were given. Now I understand Parliament House had a RM50 million refit just as plans are readied for a new Parliament House in Putra Jaya. Because most of these expenses are shrouded in darkest secrecy, they are often known only after the fact. Parliament is often not consulted. Today the BN is at the deep end. But profligacy is only one facet of it losing control. For the first time in living memory, the BN is caught in its own trap. It does not know how to come out of it. It wanted general elections in Sabah first, but it then found Sabah BN and Sabah UMNO are so hopelessly divided that it saw defeat staring at its face. Instead of taking a hard look at its position, BN hopes it could push its way through victory. It could. But for how long?

The Prime Minister has not lost his taste for extravagance. He spends the country's money as if there is no tomorrow. He suffuses himself with every modern gadet worth hundreds of millions of US dollars to show he can. He has all but bankrupted the nation with his penchant for massive structures and other loss-making projects. He has helped bankrupt Petronas with his desire for a national capital that would rival any on earth and last centuries. But it is constructed so it would not last decades. Especially with our fascination for building but not maintaining it. Pak Lah now calls for a "culture of maintenance". It is nothing new. Dr Mahathir had called for it several times. So did his predecessors, Tun Hussein Onn, Tun Abdul Razak, Tengku Abdul Rahman. How could there be when huge sums are set aside for maintenance do not trickle down to the company who is to do it. So much of it has been siphoned off that there is little left for it. Compound that with a nationwide belief that money-making is more interesting than working for a living, and that cannot be erased with frequent calls for a maintenance culture. Go to the toilets at the ultramodern Kuala Lumpur International Airport, or indeed into the government offices in Putra Jaya, and you would know what I mean.

With Malaysia's Merdeka Day due in eleven days, I thought I would talk of our four Prime Ministers since 31 August 1957. The official records, and the prevailing wisdom, say we have had four Prime Ministers. That is not correct: there were five, one held the office twice. The first Prime Minister, Tengku Abdul Rahman, resigned for three months when the 1959 general elections was due, and Tun Abdul Razak was Prime Minister during that period. He felt that since he would be the Alliance leader more than Prime Minister during the elections he felt honour bound to resign. But we have an unsual penchant to blur historical accuracies. Malaysia Day, for instance is not on 31 August but on 16 September, to mark the day in 1963 when it was officially proclaimed. It was changed to 31 August as casually as we alter our national anthem and destroy our national symbols.

There is one constitutional problem over the administration of Islamic laws in Malaysia. Each sultanate in the federation has its own Islamic law, and is not beholden to any federal dictates unless they agree. When Malaysia in 1974 decided, with Singapore and Indonesia, to co-ordinate the beginning and ending of the fasting month, the then Prime Minister, Tun Abdul Razak, did not discuss it with the states or the Conference of Rulers. Several states would not agree, and went their own way, so that it was an offence to begin or end the Ramadan fast in one but not in another. This confusion led to various bureaucratic rules which the federal government cannot remove, requiring more than a dozen groups to sign the moon for the onset of Ramadan, when once it was only one or two.

I have seen two Prime Ministers and numerous cabinet ministers disappear into oblivion in the fading years of their life. Tengku Abdul Rahman lived a twilight existence when he retired after the 1969 racial riots. His successor, Tun Abdul Razak Hussein, insisted the Tengku's unpaid taxes be deducted from his modest gratuity. Every effort was made to rub his nose in the sand. A Chinese business man he helped the most by giving him a licence to print money had offered his London flat for the Tengku's use. He never availed of it until after his stint as the OIC secretary-general. Within hourse of moving in, he was told to clear out for a junior cabinet minister was due in a few hours. He lived long enough to return the official dignity he should have had as Malaysia's founding father. Tun Razak died in office.

The first UMNO president, Dato' Sir Onn Jaffar, walked out in a huff in 1951 when UMNO rejected his suggestion in horror that non-Malays should be admitted as full members. At that time it had associate members of non-Malays: the former high commissioner to India and later president of the Industrial Arbitration Court, Dato' S. Chelvasingham-MacIntyre, a Sri Lankan, was one. The deputy public prosecutor in the Attorney-General's Chambers, Tengku Abdul Rahman Putra al-Haj, succeeded him, negotiated for independence, and was Prime Minister and chief minister for 16 years. He stayed on too long, and he was ousted from office in the wake of the 1969 racial riots by a cabal led by the then deputy prime minister, Tun Abdul Razak. Tun Razak died five years later in 1976, and was succeeded by Dato' Sir Onn's son, Dato' (later Tun) Hussein Onn.

In another footnote to history, my old friend from Johore Bahru, the opposition politician, Mr Abdul Razak Ahmad, has decided to call it a day. A recurring back problem and the ravages of old age - the last time we met at a function at the Selangor Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Kuala Lumpur, we talked more of our infirmities as once we would of politics and the world; he is 60, and I four years older - forced him to take the course he did. His importance in Johore politics is that he was there when the poor and the unconnected confronted the government, usually when it wanted to take their land, which happened to be in area where tens of millions of ringgit could be made. He was banished from Singapore for his activist role, as he was about to sit for his LL.B. final examination. That was never lifted. But it burnished his image more than Singapore would ever realise.

PAS makes an unsually strong challenge in Pahang. Many leding lights have to decide if they should continue to be loyal to the UMNO vice president, Dato' Seri Najib, or switch to the Prime Minister-to-be, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. The malaise within UMNO leads many a state assemblyman and member of parliament to ignore their constituencies; several have not visited their conwstituencies for years since 1999, and only start to do so only in the past few months. Now there is another issue: the second casino in the state. In the 1970s, the law was amended so casinos could be set up 35 miles off the coast, so that one could be set up in Tioman, then as now, in the Pekan constituency of the then Prime Minister, Tun Abdul Razak, and now his son, Dato' Seri Najib. Tun Razak, when he heard of it, shot it down. Then Genting Highlands casino was set up, and now another in Bukit Tinggi, a few minutes away as the crow flies. Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong of Gentings and Tan Sri Vincent were cronies of the politicians in power in those days.

That it cannot. What is unmentioned, and impolitic to say so in genteel company, is that all but a handful of NAM's 114 members are firmly in Washington's pocket. Where else can they be when they are, but for a handful, poachers-turned-gamekeepers. Let us look at Malaysia, the host. Malaya was hostile to the Bandung Conference, would have no truck with it, firmly in the Free World Camp, and when the circumstances allowed it, helped in the destruction of one NAM giant, President Sukarno of Indonesia. Kuala Lumpur moved away from the West only in the late 1960s, and firmly only after Tun Abdul Razak became prime minister in 1971. As the British empire disintegrated in Southeast Asia, and the old promise of military help London reneged after destroying President Sukarno, Malaysia turned to a more neutral foreign policy, not out of conviction but of necessity. It was a natural gravitation after being bluntly told by the former colonial power that the country is on its own. This happened in other areas as well with other countries, and this natural gravitation ensured that it would no more be what it was.

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