Since the government insists that an event did not happen if it does not give the news, either through Bernama, the official news Agency, or its public relations outlets, the official and mainstream publications, radio and television are forced to write 'fearlessly', if only to retain their readers and viewers. Nature abhors a vacuum. Other news comes in to fill it in real life. And that takes pride of place even in the official and mainstream media. This is so as they fight new wars on the successful past. Everything is spin that we do not often know what we read or hear. True, the alternate media can also be full of spin, but that often does not match the spin of the rulers who also embraced the Internet though bureaucratically. But this is only temporary. Once the dust settles down, the situation could change. Until then. the spin and what did not happen will form part of the armoury of those in power. They are in trouble when that spin collapses and there is nothing to take its place.

The government, although it says otherwise, is happy because neither it nor the politicians in power can explain the larger losses hidden from the public eye. Petronas, for example, has earned about RM1,000 billion in its 31 years. But we are not told how that money was spent. Even Parliament cannot discuss it because Petronas is an off budget Agency and its purview. Malaysians do not know about its finances. How much of this is still Petronas', and where has the shortfall gone? Neither was the excesses of Malaysian Airline System (MAS) known until anonymous messages from inside the senior managements wrote about it. But Malaysians are not allowed to question nor are they told how the government linked companies are doing, even after wrong doing is established.

All the newspapers, including The Sun, are appendages to commercial organisations. Those in power will not allow news to be reported as it happens. The government's version comes through Bernama, the national news Agency. The newspapers carry these items, often without the source, but with their reporter's byline. There is therefore a sameness about what each newspaper carries.

News travels fast. Usually distributed by Western networks, newspapers and news agencies. Every time the Third World is able to cope with reporting the news, additional rules are brought in so that only the Western networks, newspapers and agencies can report exclusively. So the Third World agencies, and newspaper reporters do what they do best. When their leaders travel, or when they summarise Western newspaper reports. The newspapers in the Third World often ignore their own news Agency reports for the Western news Agency reports. The big problem is money. The wherewithal of working like the Western reporters is to have a communication network that is beyond the budget of the Third World agencies and newspapers. So they depend upon the West. And become drugged the extent that even news on their backyard is not covered. For Malaysia, its backyard is southern Thailand where there is friction between the Thai authorities and the villagers. I have not seen a report in Malaysian newspapers of what is happening there. They cannot because the Malaysian authorities are playing a dangerous game there. No one is allowed to, or would not, report that in the newspapers, almost all of which are owned or controlled by one or other parties in the National Front, and they owe their loyalty to the head of the National Front, who is also Prime Minister.

The cabinet told her to 'face the music' in Parliament. She kept telling to all who would listen, especially the Bernama news Agency, that she was on 'important' business overseas, that she was representing the country, and by inference Parliament could wait. But Parliament was also part of the nation, and an MP elected, as she is, has her first priority to attending its sessions. She took care of the Pak Lah cabinet by giving APs to members of it so that if she were investigated, so would they. Pak Lah and his advisers decided that Datin Rafidah should face Parliament on the AP issue, knowing fully well that the National Front had the majority in Parliament. The NF MPs were told to clear her. But the two MPs who voted against her is indicative of the problems within the Front. The government and cabinet cannot be made of the NF leaders, and once appointed, do as they like. Which is how the NF government and cabinet runs. Datin Seri Rafidah problem in Parliament, and her rantings afterwards, only highlighted this. Approved permits, contrary to what Datin Seri Rafidah now says, is given to 'important' people in the NF. It is not available to you and me. The APs are one way that 'us' and 'them' are kept apart in NF and its main party, UMNO.

What is the official reaction to all this? Establish a cabinet committee under the Prime Minister to study the recommendatitons. This is wrong. Pak Lah is the minister in charge of the police. He should not sit to discuss what has gone wrong in his ministry. He is already overloaded. He cannot cope. Nothing will come out of it. Or if it does, glossed over. As far as the government is concerned, the police force is in fine form because it says so. The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, throws another red herring. He could not believe – that is if you can suspend your belief reading this – a police officer could amass RM34 million. "It's a huge amount," he says irrelevantly, "let's find out a bit more on this ... as the name of the officer was never mentioned. I am sure the police will take the necessary action." The anti-corruption Agency is quick off the mark to do its master's bidding. It will leave, as the tabloid press would say, no stone unturned to bring the culprit to account.

As often happens, in the end it was pure farce. With each unbelievable explanation, it became clear even to the most casual listener that the National Front (BN) government is caught out in another scam. Only this involved national security. Is it concerned about this breach? No. The director of military intelligence, in whose watch it took place, should have dismissed, or at least allowed to retire when his term expires in a few months; instead, he is due to have his term extended. Loyalty to Dato' Seri Najib counts more than competence in military intelligence these days. It is not only the DMI who failed: every intelligence Agency – the National Security Council, the Special Branch, the Research wing of the Prime Minister's Department, the individual military intellgence agencies, amongst others – failed.

UMNO IS CAUGHT IN its own trap. Since before, during and after at its party elections in September, it insisted bribery or, as genteel political circles would rather describe it, money politics, was an isolated aberration. But the evidence was all over the place, even if incontrovertible proof was not fortcoming. It would not call in the anti-corruption Agency or the police, it could handle this minor piffle itself. But try as it could, few accepted this in good faith. The elections saw more money changing hands than many listed companies in a year of busy sales. But unlike the companies, those who gave and accepted bribes did not bother about receipts and paper trails. And as any first year law student would tell you, without evidence there is no case. It was not law students though who repeated this elementary mantra of proof: it was those who administer the law, the highest authority in the land, the prime minister no less and his ministerial and political minions. In Malaysia Boleh, that is proof that no judge would dare ignore even in the face of evidence to the contrary. That being so, bribery does not exist. The Gods have spoken.

BE HONEST AND OPEN in business, the Malaysian prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, tells Malaysian business men. The is all he could say at a fund-raising dinner (on 06 October 2004) for the Kuala Lumpur society for transparency and integrity (KLSTI). The world would shun Malaysia if business men bribed and corrupted their way for what they want. Otherwise, foreign investment would go elsewhere. Commitment, not corruption, would show the world who we are; Malaysian businesses must remember it for a niche in global business. The government will help where it can, but business men to stay on the straight and narrow. The government helps by arming the anti-corruption Agency (ACA) with more powers, stiffer penalties for those found guilty, with a national integrity plan.

Instead of addressing the reality, Dato' Seri Samy threatens and goes into a huff when he is challenged. The Anti-Corruption Agency wants to investigate. The minister reacts with a threat: the project would be further delayed.

This did not stop Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah from seeking to be UMNO president. The mainstream media and the official Bernama news Agency, rushed in to paint him as yesterday's man, questioned his motives and his relevance in today's politics. It made him more determined and, frighteningly for Pak Lah and his camp followers, brings him more support than ever. He has yet to announce his candidacy. The Malay cultural rules of engagement insist he must at all times be a reluctant candidate, and confirms it only when he cannot hold out any longer. There was never any doubt he would not. In one sense, it is timing. He is expected to make an "important" announcement in Kota Bharu in the next few days.

The New Straits Times, which exists, for the moment, to praise Pak Lah and his stalwarts and decry their detractors, kept quiet about it. The Star misled its readers to ask if he would contest at all, for which post, wondered why he would when all the cards are stacked against him, and rounds with a stirring call for Pak Lah to be unchallengeable because he has proved his worth in his eight months in office. Bernama, the official news Agency, obviously did not think it important to report it: if it had, all the newspapers would have carried it. The television station, TV3, however, did break ranks and mentioned that Tengku Razaleigh made his intentions clear in Gua Musang yesterday. But the Malay mainstream newspapers, especially the Utusan Malaysia, have been fairer in its coverage, that even a casual reader of this paper got the drift that Pak Lah would be challenged - and by Tengku Razaleigh.

THE SELANGOR MENTRI BESAR, Dato' Seri Mohamed Khir Toyo, will have no National Front (BN) candidate if the Anti-Corruption Agency finds his or her background murky. The candidates are not selected yet, but the ACA, superbly efficient when it wants to or political duty calls, have found them all to be clean as a whistle. No one has asked how a political party could ask a supposedly independent government Agency to do its dirty work in front of a general election. Does this mean that if the ACA does it for Selangor, it does for all BN controlled states? Is this then the first step to require all candidates, in Parliament and the states, to obtain an ACA clearance before they could contest? But it is also to impress voters of the strict selection process of candidates, but it does not fool the voter. It is a silly move as can be. But selecting candidates is a nightmare for the BN president and Malaysian prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. He is heir to a flawed system which he cannot change, that those who should be out must be in for his political safety. The public anger at some of the candidates is real. So subterfuges like this to show all is well. Expected to be candidates are several whose rightful place is the Sungei Buloh prison, but if that were so, the BN edifice collapse.

So with every general election the Opposition is forced into an even tighter straitjacket. It does not have a proper avenue to protest or negotiate, even in Parliament. Bills are rushed through, on certificates of Agency, Parliament, with little time for defeat on an important bill, even amending the constitution, but the bills are often given to MPs as they arrive for the session. That is when Parliament is brought into the government's confidence. But large expenditures, like the RM20 billion for the first phase of the new administrative capital of Putra Jaya, do not come before Parliament for approval. This is because the Malaysian oil company, Petronas, builds it, and its accounts, as an off-budget Agency, do not have parliamentary oversight or discussion. When privatised roads are made public, with no tolls payable, the works minister blithely announces compensation in the hundreds of millions, without the need for Parliamentary approval. In other words, the BN is so comfortable governing that it finds Parliament and the Opposition a frightful inconvenience. This bred an arrogance that ignored the naysayers as severely.

Pak Lah rests on his record after he became Prime Minister. There is not much to talk of, although he announced several policies, but mainly stuck because of internal opposition, within the cabinet and the civil service. The widespread attack on corruption has ground to a halt, after three high profile arrests. When the candidates are known this week, several accused of rampant corruption, investigated by the Anti-Corruption Agency, but which could go further because the Prime Minsiter of the day would not allow it, would be candidates. The Tok Guru has opened one more issue that Pak Lah must answer. What has upset the BN is that PAS directs its attacks and taunts on its leader, forcing him to justify whatever is claimed about his religosity by his spin doctors. If Islam was not the issue, the Tok Guru would have been justifiably criticised. Not this time. But instead of taking on Tok Guru, the BN and Pak Lah decided to be defensive. Why?

The BN has a severe problem in Sarawak. The state BN is opposed to the chief minister, Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud, and could not be persuaded to work with him for one more term. Kuala Lumpur agrees with this, and to make that clear to Tan Sri Taib, the Anti-Corruption Agency called on him. There were too many odds and ends to tie up, and so it was decided not to have the Council Negri elections now. For Parliament, two state parties, the Sarawak National Party (SNAP) and its offshot, the Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS), are both suspended from the coalition, and would be out of the elections. So, SNAP has decided to field candidates against the BN team. They would have for the Council Negeri if elections were called for it as well. In Sabah, matters are a little better but not by much. The state BN is badly divided, as is the state UMNO. But the Opposition is not well organised, as in the rest of the country, and that gives BN a measure of hope.

THE PRIME MINISTER, DATO' SERI Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, kicked off his slipping into office with a promise to go after the corrupt, however high and close to the levers of power, but after two high profile arrests, both Tan Sris, and a handful of civil servants, the campaign grinds to a spluttering stop. The de facto justice minister, Dato' Seri Rais Yatim, announced, out of the blue, that 18 "big fish" are under investigation, not all would be brought to trial if only because the cases against them cannot be sustained in a court of law. This shifted attention from the anti-corruption drive to who could be amongst the dozen and a half men and women. That was not a long time coming. Two cabinet ministers, Datin Rafidah Aziz and Dato' Seri Nazri Aziz, denied they were, with Datin Rafidah promising to sue Opposition leaders if they dared target her. Several of them invited her to sue them. How she could succeed in her defamation beats me, even if the Malaysian courts have a well-earned reputation for expedience against the weight of the law. The Anti-Corruption Agency had investigated her, as numerous cabinet ministers, including seven National Front (BN) party leaders, but no further action was taken because the Prime Minister of the day, in this instance, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, would not allow prosecution to proceed. That is then taken as proof that those investigated are as pure as driven snow.

THE PRIME MINISTER, DATO' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, is caught in a crisis of his own making. A Mahathir crony and a once prominent business man, Tan Sri Eric Chia, is arrested three days ago and charged with corruption committed when he was head of Perwaja Steel in the mid-1990s. This morning (12 February 2004), the land and cooperative development minister, Tan Sri Kasitah Gadam, is charged for what he is alleged to have done in the late 1990s. Arrested with him is the Sabah land development board general manager, Dato' Wasli Mohamed Said. The two Tan Sris are released on bail of RM2 million and RM1 million respectively. Another Tan Sri is widely believed to be arrested soon. The Anti-Corruption Agency investigated one for nine years and the other for four, and produced them with Pak Lah wanted to prove his stated commitment to root out corruption. It raises more questions than answers.

WHEN THE ANTI-CORRUPTION Agency (ACA) arrested Perwaja Steel's former managing director, Tan Sri Eric Chia, this week (09 Feb), it raised more questions than answers. Perwaja Steel was to have been Malaysia's crowning jewel in its idiosyncratic bid to be an industrialised country by 2020. He is arrested and charged in court nine years after the ACA began investigations into this Mahathir crony's stewardship of the now shut-down Perwaja Steel. ACA had wrapped up its case years ago, but it was never allowed to prosecute. It now acts because the new Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, has to show he is not tied to his predecessor's apron strings.

On his appointment, the news agencies and the media are quick to garland him, and others, with superlatives. He is, one news Agency reported, a "British-trained economist". He is not. He is a British university drop out. He rose in politics as the son of the second Prime Minister, Tun Abdul Razak, and which began when his father died in 1976. He has an awesome political machine but is a political lightweight known more for his political treachery, and his wife's defence deals. Dr Mahathir wanted him as deputy prime minister to repay what the Malays call "hutang budi" (a cultural debt one must honour in one's lifetime). His father, Tun Razak, protected Dr Mahathir when the then Prime Minister, Tengku Abdul Rahman, sacked him from UMNO after the 1969 racial riots for openly challenging him.

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