The New Straits Times editor-in-chief, Tan Sri Abdullah Ahmad, ignored it when he waxed eloquent about the 27th anniversary of Tun Abdul Razak's death, and mentioned it briefly only after Mr Lim's comment. The Tengku was born on this day in 1903, the sixth son of then Sultan of Kedah and his Thai wife. His was a typical wasteful life of a playboy younger son of a ruler followed, until in mid-life, he burst into the Malayan firmament -- by accident, he would tell all those who would care to listen -- and into history.

Kuala Lumpur had nurtured them in a tit-for-tat with the Philippines for its claim to Sabah. It had actively fomented rebellion in Mindanao, with Malaysian politicians including the fomer prime minister and defence minister, Tun Abdul Razak Hussein (the father of the defence minister, Dato' Seri Najib, and uncle of the sports and culture minister, Dato' Hishamuddin Hussein) and the late Sabah strongman, Tun Datu Mustapha bin Datu Harun led the Malaysian charge, training Filipino dissidents in Malaysia, providing funds and all help, even at one point the Malaysian Navy pressed into service to rescue some rebels fleeing from the Philippines Navy. That support, though drastically reduced, has built a pipeline which it cannot shut off with impunity, without risking a retaliation.

After him came the screaming banshees known as BN leaders. The MIC leader, Dato' S. Samy Vellu, said Opposition parties should realise the country would enjoy more development if they join the BN. More important to him, he would also be returned unopposed from his Sungei Siput constituency. "PAS leaders especially should understand this and be more concernced about struggling for the people's interests." The MCA leader, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, says the Opposition should reconsider their stand. "We are inviting them to join us that we can be united to face challenges, especially economic challenges and colonisation. We have to stand together to face this." The Gerakan leader, Dato' Seri Lim Kheng Yaik, recalled how after the 1969 racial riots, "the then Prime Minister", Tun Abdul Razak invtied all opposition parties to join the ruling coalition "to concentrate on physical and social development and reduce politicking among the different parties." The prime minister then was Tengku Abdul Rahman, not Tun Razak. But it was Tun Razak, in 1973, four years after the riots, who expanded the Alliance coalition into the BN.

But they are always aware who they are, and how easily they can be cowed. In the 1970s, the professional UMNO women were horrified that the then Yang Dipertuan Agung took as a second wife a student from the Mara Institute of Technology. They marched in high dudgeon to the then Prime Minister, Tun Abdul Razak's official residence. He heard them out, and told them that for them it was a case of sour grapes. "You would rather that the daughter of one of you married him instead!" he said dismissively. One lady in that march bristles at that to this day. But this view remains high in discussion of matters affecting them these days.

Tan Sri Abdullah now has a benign view of the Tenku. It was anything but at the time. He was amongst the small group of plotters -- amongst whom, besides him, included Dato' Harun Idris, later mentri besar of Selangor; Mr Abdullah Majid; one Dr Mahathir bin Mohamed; one Mr Musa Hitam; all led by the master dalang of the day, Tun Abdul Razak, the father of the defence minister -- which plotted the Tengku's downfall. The May 13 riots in 1969, three days after the general elections, provided the excuse. And in the early years of Tun Razak as prime minister, his personal staff, which included Tan Sri Abdullah, deliberately destroyed the Tengku's files to erase whatever memory there may have been in government. I saw one such destruction in the early 1970s, rescued the files from the waste paper basket, which happened to be the top secret files relating to Singapore's expulsion from Malaysia, found it too hot to handle, called the Tun's principal private secretary, Mr (later Tan Sri) Zain Azraai, who decided it should be delivered to the National Archives. Which I promptly did the next morning.

So, he does whatever needs to be done to ensure he has at least a pipsqueak advantage over his other challengers. He is already caught in limbo with Dr Mahathir's insistence that the defence minister and UMNO vice president, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, be his deputy prime minister. He has the domestic trade and consumer affairs minister and UMNO vice president, Tan Sri Muhiyuddin Yassin, in mind. His effective mentor, Tan Sri Musa Hitam, does not, and prefers, like Dr Mahathir, Dato' Seri Najib. That both Dr Mahathir and Tan Sri Musa both want him as Dato' Seri Abdullah's deputy has to do with the Malay concept of 'hutang budi', literally, a cultural debt, as important in Malay feudal life as honour in Sicilian life. It was Dato' Seri Najib's father, Tun Abdul Razak Hussein, who protected Dr Mahathir and Tan Sri Musa from the then prime minister, Tengku Abdul Rahman, after he sacked Dr Mahathir from UMNO and Tan Sri Musa as executive secretary of UMNO after the 1969 racial riots. They want to repay this hutang budi by ensuring Dato' Seri Najib is deputy prime minister.

Malaysia's honour is besmirched. An Indonesian pressure group -- or as the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, described it, "a small group of radical Indonesian nationalists" -- burned the Malaysian flag, the Jalur Gemilang, in Jakarta in continuing protests over Malaysia's caning of illegal workers, many Indonesian. He is sanguine about it. Malaysia would not seek an explanation. "We cannot respond to the action since it is not reflective of the Indonesian Government's stand," he says. But his response reflects not confidence but impotence. During Indonesia's confrontation of Malaysia 40 years ago, Mr (later Tan Sri) Melan Abdullah, then editor-in-chief of Utusan Malaysia, led a band of UMNO ultras to the residence of the Indonesian ambassador in Kuala Lumpur and burnt the Indonesian flag. Indonesia took umbrage, the name calling became worse, reacted by airdropping Indonesian commandos in Labis, Johore. Tan Sri Melan, of Javanese descent, would not go to Indonesia until decades later though he was the editor-in-chief of the UMNO-owned Utusan Malaysia and had risen to the inner circle of both UMNO and the then Prime Minister, Tun Abdul Razak Hussein.

Tan Sri Abdullah Ahmad, the editor-in-chief of the New Straits Times, in his alter-ego's NST diary (New Sunday Times, 11 August 2002, p8), draws a tenuous link between shingles (which Malaysia's first prime minister Tengku Abdul Rahman in 1965 suffered as Tan Sri Abdullah now) and major decisions of state. He makes an unfair hint that the Tengku, in pain, ordered the deputy prime minister, Tun Abdul Razak, to prepare to amputate Singapore from the Malaysian federation. Even more preposterous is his claim that Tun Razak, whose political secretary he then was, read parts of the Tengku's letter to him, and how he pleaded with the Tun to persuade Tengku to reconsider. If the Tengku had written that letter, it must have been later for the Tun received his instructions in person from the Tengku then recuperating at the London Clinic in London.

This list grows in Malaysia, and large groups of potential postal voters are shifted from constituency to constituency for a block vote. How the armed forces get its soldiers to vote is an open scandal. What the government should do is to restrict the postal votes to those who need to be out of the constituency. Soldiers must register where they are, not where their base it. But that this is even talked about is proof of how BN wants to cushion future shocks. The UMNO vice president, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Abdul Razak, retained his Pekan parliamentary seat in 1999 by under 250 after 2300 postal votes were counted. The implication is he would have lost without the postal votes. In other words, the postal votes are bonus votes for BN leaders whoever they are.

Much newspaper space is expended in Malaysia to misrepresent and misread history, common in a country where one's historical past is limited to when the leader of the moment takes office. We have no sense of history. Tengku Abdul Rahman, Tun Abdul Razak, Tun Hussein Onn, former Malaysian prime ministers, have all disappeared into Malaysia's dark hole of history in the time of their successor, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed. As he inevitably would when a new prime minister appears on the scene.

Dr Mahathir must take the blame for English disappearing from the curriculum. He was amongst those who egged the then education minister, Dato' (now Tun) Abdul Rahman Yaakub, to discard it without cabinet approval. He had been expelled from UMNO two years earlier, and was rehabilitated after Tun Abdul Razak succeeded Tengku Abdul Rahman as prime minister. He decided his path to power was on the backs of the Malay language fanatics. When he became education minister after the 1974 general elections, he made the disappearance of English from the curriculum a priority. It was he who insisted in 1975 English be taught to communicate, not as a language of diplomacy and commerce. Students were taught an Esperanto English, which a generation later makes no sense. Grammar and Shakespeare did not not figure in the teaching of English. More so in science and mathematics.

Dato' Seri Najib has the best organised political vehicle, so powerful that if he challenged Dr Mahathir as Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, he would be where the former deputy prime minister is. He is a shrewd politician with his political tentacles so deep that he has his men in not only every division but in many branches in each. He bides his time, knows he can be where his father, Tun Abdul Razak, once was, and prepares the ground for it. His vaccilating character makes him an unreliable ally. It is not forgotten, certainly not in Tengku Razaleigh's inner circle, of defecting from Tengku Razaleigh while on stage to join him. His wife's business connexions, depending on her husband's ministry of the moment, rankles many an UMNO leader. But he knows what he wants, works relentlessly to get it.

It is not a date cast in stone. A leader who announces his retirement ahead of time, especially in Malay feudal society, would be forced out before long. Malaysia's first prime minister, Tengku Abdul Rahman, did it when he was in the same maelstrom as Dr Mahathir now is, and he left office a much embittered man for wanting to serve his nephew, the then Yang Dipertuan Agung-to-be, wishing to his dying days he did not. His chosen successor, Abdul Razak Hussein, had tired of waiting to succeed and moved brutally against his mentor. This cannot escape Dr Mahathir, a student of history. He should have retired gracefully before the inevitable political coup de grace. Abdullah, for all his likeable image, is a brilliant behind-the-scenes political operator, and brutal when the occasion demands it. He was secretary to the National Operations Council, which Abdul Razak formed to govern while the Tengku was marginalised and turned into a non-person. He formed the Biro Tatanegara and which has returned to his bailliwick. By all accounts, he sidesteps every attempt by Dr Mahathir to rein him in. He shows unexpected strength of character and steel.

When the first Prime Minister, Tengku Abdul Rahman, was forced out, after the May 1969 riots, he asked to stay on until a day after his nephew, the Sultan of Kedah, became the Yang Dipertuan Agung, in September 1970, a year into the future. His successor, Tun Abdul Razak, and his cohorts, who included one Dr Mahathir bin Mohamed and one Dato' (now Tan Sri) Abdullah Ahmad, made his remaining months so difficult that the Tengku wished he had not asked for that extension. He was thoroughly ignored, as the prime minister-to-be -- whose son is the defence minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak -- tightened his feudal grip on the administration. The Tengku became a non-person. His return to Malay consciousness came in later years when he stood up to challenge the marginalisation of UMNO and the Malays under Dr Mahathir's leadership.

Some offer a gloomy future. This UMNO power struggle, said one, would be so bitter that UMNO itself could collapse. One thought UMNO could find itself in the opposition a decade hence. When the second Prime Minister, Tun Abdul Razak, moved to reduce politicking so Malaysians could concentrate on development, all it didd was to intensify it. The stakes were higher with defeat in party elections near fatal to one's political future. But the leaders controlled events by forcing a no-contest as a matter of presidential policy. As the government did to allow the Malays a free run of the economy without competition.

Pak Lah (1364)   United States (636)   Straits Times (412)   Samy Vellu (224)   Putra Jaya (200)   Chief Justice (200)   Saddam Hussein (188)   Vincent Tan (164)   Civil Service (154)   Parti KeADILan (148)   Islamic State (118)   Johore Bahru (100)   Sungei Buloh (94)   Bukit Tinggi (88)   Abdul Razak (80)   Pengkalen Pasir (68)   Ting Pek (64)   Armed Forces (59)   Soviet Union (58)

Malay Dominance (58)   Yong Teck (56)   Hong Kong (56)   Human Rights (56)   Syed Hamid (54)   Puteri UMNO (52)   Islam Hadhari (52)   Royal Commission (51)   Hussein Onn (51)   Rafidah Aziz (48)   Indian Congress (48)   Open House (44)   Vision Schools (44)   Shah Alam (44)   Malay Unity (42)   Chua Jui (42)   Abdul Taib (42)   Ampang Jaya (36)   Ras Adiba (36)

Osama Bin Laden (36)   Nik Aziz Nik (20)   Ling Liong Sik (18)   Lee Kuan Yew (18)

High Court Judge (14)   Wan Azizah Wan (9)   Lim Kit Siang (9)   Megat Junid Megat (8)

Mahathir (2960)

Anwar (2399)