After the elections, he decides on the chief ministers and mentris besars in BN-controlled states; the only exception is Sarawak, where the local warlord, Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud, wants federal protection against his coalition partners but not its interference. In Penang, the UMNO president made a Faustian bargain with the Gerakan chief minister, that in return for his support, the MCA would remain a junior partner and UMNO the real power in the state. This breaks down when the opposition takes over, as in Kelantan, Trengganu, Sarawak, Sabah at different times since the first general election in 1959. The BN, or the Alliance, as its predecessor was known, would then pull no stops to rout the intruder in the name of parliamentary democracy.

So, why was the coverage so extensive and even intrusive? It had to do with local politics. There has been an unmentioned revolution by stealth in the state National Front (BN) coalition: the Melanau community, forming six per cent of the state's population, is now in total political control of the coalition and the state. Its leader is of course the chief minister, Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud. When the federal agriculture minister, Dato' Nawawi Endawie, resigned, he was succeeded by a Melanau, albeit a Christian, Dato' Lee Michael Toyad. It is a Melanau, Muslim or Christian, who succeeds best in Sarawak politics.

On the face of it, there is no inspired appointment in this cabinet. He wants, like Tun Mahathir, a cabinet of loyalists, would brook no opposition, within the feudal framework he becomes accustomed to. He has opened himself to attack in the states where he appointed several mentris besar at odds with the palace - Dato' Seri Shahidan Kassim in Perlis, Dato' Seri Adnan Yaakob in Pahang, Dato' Seri Mohamed Ali Rastam in Malacca, amongst others - and this could cause needless problems later on. But all told, in the circumstances, he has done well. He needs time to get used to the new circumstances, which while it entrenches the BN, and UMNO, hold on politics, he must fashion a policy to explain why, for the first time since the first elections in 1955, the Malays are for the first time in a minority in the new parliament. In this single-minded desire to frustrate the Islamist and multiracial Malay opposition with the help of the Chinese, the UMNO president allowed Malay representation in parliament to be less than 50 per cent. It made the mistake in Sabah and Sarawak when it assumed that anyone with a name that looked Malay - the chief minister of Sabah, Dato' Seri Musa Aman, the chief minister of Sarawak, Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud, or the former Sabah chief minister, Dato' Seri Salleh Said Keruak, call themselves bumiputras, not Malay, indeed are not Malay but of Indian and Melanau blood. With PAS all but decimated in parliament, the majority of Malays in parliament would come from UMNO, and that is less than one hundred in a house of 219. Pak Lah is in more pressure than he realises. Which is why the coalition partners who forced him to chose could well pay dearly for their impudence.

The BN candidate list is fluid. Pak Lah has to wait until the last minute before he can announce them. The BN, and UMNO, is so fractured from within that whoever is chosen has a ready-made opposition in the constituency. Pak Lah and Dato' Seri Najib frequently call on UMNO members to unite during the campaign. That is easier said than done. There is not one state where this is absent. In Sarawak, it is more serious: the state BN threatened to go it alone, for the Council Negeri elections, if Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud remained BN head and state chief minister. He cut short an overseas holiday to quell the revolt. He failed. To staunch the crisis, the Council Negeri elections is not held. The Kayveas caper tests Pak Lah's political mettle for how that is revolved would measure how successful he is. For, if Pak Lah does not know it, it reveals a weak centre, and the rise of the warlords. Meanwhile, lists are drawn up for candidates in some constituencies. The newspapers mentioned it, but what these problem constituencies do not have is a crisis: the candidate invariable is the man closest to Pak Lah. Meanwhile, Malaysia now attempts opinion polls. They are popular in Britain and the United States. So they must here too. But one must disbelieve them. The pollsters learn as they work, there is no serious attempt to find an acceptable and fair sample of voters, what is acceptable and allowed in the West would not work here, no one, especially a Malay, would tell you what he thinks, many are inaccessible to the urban-based pollsters. The result is not worth bothering about. Perhaps it might in a hundred years. Certainly not now.

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