But the issue is neutalised by the mainstream press. The AP scandal is one such. The Prime Minister, Dato' Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, should have sacked Datin Seri Rafidah Aziz, the minister of international trade and industry, from his cabinet the moment the AP scandal hit the street. He still has not, and the mainstream newspapers which once asked for her resignation is finding new reasons to praise her. The man-in-the-street is fed up and flexes his muscles. Whether he is Malay, Chinese or Indian does not matter. He seems the politician in power to be corrupt, the civil service to be corrupt, the government service to be corrupt. The laws are to shut him up. No wonder a columnist described this year's budget as benefitting the civil service. Most government rules in which the public approach it is so designed that the head of department is the ultimate authority, so you have to bribe the lower officials to push the file forward. A Malaysian doctor returned after he was offered citizenship after staying in Australia and given it by a junior official. He rejected it and returned to Malaysia. If citizenship could be given by a junior official, he decided, then the corruption is elsewhere, mostly which does not concern the people. In Malaysia, the minister decides it, and there is great opportunities for corruption.

Tun Mahathir spoke what was happening in the world, but it was not what Western diplomatics, including the EU representatives and the British ambassador, wanted to hear. They walked out. Earlier, the NGOs, which prescribe their narrow points of view on rest of the world but not in their eventual countries of origin, protested Tun Mahathir's human rights record before the event, and most boycotted the event. As they would. They thought that their protests would stop Tun Mahathir, so the Western diplomats would not have to walk out. I fault Tun Mahathir on a lot of things, but speaking what is right, especially of matters Islamic and the Middle East, is not one of them. He is part of what is wrong with UMNO's rule of Malaysia, but his role in the larger picture was ignored until he resigned as Prime Minister after 22 years. Today, he is ignored at home, the changes at Proton, where he is adviser, took place without his knowledge, as he himself, had admitted, but his comments on wold topics are eagerly awaited. He is, like Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, a Prime Minister was not educated in England. He is the best example of an UMNO leader who could throw fear into Western eyes in what he says, as the human rights talk last Friday revealed.

The government agencies are closed to the Chinese and Indian, so both have written off the civil service. The government is composed of UMNO, MCA, MIC, Gerakan and the other parties of the Barisan Nasional. But the leaders of these parties have remained in the cabinet for ecades, and reluctant to talk of their compatriots in government-run establishments. UMNO had taken this one step further. The prime minister, Dato Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, has stated that those in the government are not required to resign if they lost the party election, as many in MCA and MCA have, and MIC is due to have its elections soon. In the Gerakan elections for the party president, the loser is therefore allowed to remain in the government. Unless he chooses to resign. But resign he would not, if others are an indication. The former health minister, Mr Chua Jui Meng, resigned from the cabinet when he lost the MCA elections.

A scoop was what it thought it had. The newspaper was shortchanged with the announcement of his Tunship. A television station linked to the New Straits Times reported the event as "amongst those awared Tun was the chief justice of Malaysia", thus evading having to mention the other, Tun Ghazali Shafie. The RMP has its own reasons to downgrade Tun Ghazali. The prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, informed the RMP, at the spur of the moment, that he wanted to visit an address in Wangsa Baiduri. A police detail arrived minuites ahead wanting to find out whose house it was. Pak Lah arrived, kept the police out, and remained with Tun Ghazali, who is ill and in bed, in his bedroom, along for nearly an hour. The police could not understand why this should be so, why Pak Lah did not take the police into his confidence that they were kept aside. So his driver's report of Tun Ghazali's problem with his secretary was used by the RMP to destroy Tun Ghazali's credibility. And destroy it the RMP did. It revealed the police report, which ought to have been confidential, and the New Straits Times wrote of the incident as if it were the gospel. There is only one problem with it: He did not file a police report, all the questions he anwswered were police questions on the report he did not file.

UMNO, as usual, is at a loss for words. The UMNO deputy president (and Malaysian deputy prime minister), Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, could only call on Malays to be wary of PAS for it aims to split them, ignoring the harsh reality that UMNO it is which splits the Malays with its lurch into Islamic politics to counter PAS's growing influence and walking away from its leadership of the cultural Malay, to whom Islam is an important part of his being, to Islam being more important than his cultural heritage. It took this line, as usual without thought, because the Malay deserted to PAS and its Islamic message when UMNO got so caught up in the desire to retain control that it forgot those who voted them in. The revolution and reformation in UMNO is a long way ahead, but it believes there is no need for that so long as there is Dato' Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Islam Hadhari to succour the people. One need not add, that before him UMNO laid its whole future in the hands of Tun Mahathir Mohamed and his skewed modernisation plans for 22 years. As his would be when his successor takes office.

A steady stream of Muslims and Malays join PAS, either deserters from UMNO or new members, which frightens UMNO and BN. UMNO then reacted to embrace Islam as its political vehicle for no reason than to deny PAS its recruits and its Islamic credentials. It did not succeed. To Islamisation as official policy is added Islam Hadhari, the hare-brained concept of civilisational Islam, which is now toted as what Islam should be for no reason than to build the prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, as the progenitor and leader of this wave. But it falls by the wayside, for few, if any, know what it is. Expensive two-day courses are conducted for all and sundry to understand it, yet no one know what it is. It has become a convenient shorthand to counter PAS's fundementalist Islamic creed. When UMNO and BN find that tough going, it tries to outdo PAS by official rules as what Dr Abdullah Mohamed Zin announced on 17 May 2005.

No one won. Dr Mahathir suffered as much as Anwar Ibrahim: one as his power and control dissipated from within, the other in jail. But it turned public opinion against Dr Mahathir and towards Anwar. It put Malaysian politics in a tailspin. The National Front (BN) government could not, and still does not, function. It is makebelief, with the prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, unable to chart his own course while the larger problem is unresolved. It does not help when he and his predecessor, Dr Mahathir, are not on good terms.

AN 18-YEAR-OLD BOY, Ahmad Hafizal Ahmad Fauzi, is the unlikely victim of an elaborate plan to brainwash Malaysian youths to support the National Front (BN) for all time. On May 10, the Kangar magistrate's court fines him RM600 or two weeks jail for missing the mandatory three-month national service training. The DPP demanded an exemplary punishment to warn teenagers of their fate if they defy calls for national service. With a total family income less than RM600 a month, to which he contritbutes a quarter, he could not pay and went to jail. The Perlis mentri besar, Dato' Seri Shahidan Kassim, ever on the look out for cheap publicity and with an eye to the political havoc the opposition PAS could cause, in the state and nationwide, paid the fine. The Attorney-General, who authorised the prosecution, now promises to revise the sentence if "what the boy says is true". The exemplary punishement turns out a damp squib.

Dato' Seri Anwar is out of jail, but he is barred from political office for five years, until April 2008. He is not allowed political office nor stand in an election until then, though he can address political gatherings and be active in politics. This means, he could well miss out standing in the next elections. This is not due until 2009, but UMNO leaders do not want to test his popularity, and would hold it earlier than April 2008, possibly in 2007. They are worried of their seats if he is a candidate. But that he has bounced back to make himself more dangerous to UMNO than when in jail has shifted support towards him from all sides, especially in UMNO, BN, the civil service, the armed forces, the police, even the rulers. The UMNO heirarchy, led by its president, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, fights this trend. But there is little it can do. Politics in Malaysia is framed around Dato' Seri Anwar as surely as UMNO was post-1969 around Tun Mahathir.

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 1969 racial riots changed all that. The constitutional and political changes made UMNO invincible in government. But the leaders used it for personal power and control. Dissent is dealt with harshly. When an opposition party shows its teeth and threatens its continued hold, its leaders were carted off to detention without trial.

The two men must be ordered to show cause why they should not be dismissed. The National Security Bureau – formerly the National Security Council, and changed for no reason than a Bureau had more gravitas than Council – co-ordinates the intelligence agencies, but it operates at all times as a toothless watch dog. Frighteningly, it, and its members, slept through this breach of national security. The prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, must demand the resignation of all involved, and punished, for sleeping on the job.

The defence minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, must explain how and why Malaysia's national security is handed over to a foreign company, heads must roll, especially of the armed forces chief of staff and the director of military intelligence. The prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, must act against his own intelligence heads, who were like the military asleep on their watch. This is not the first time such lapses have occurred. More than a few years ago, a Malaysian defence adviser in Singapore, a colonel, was recalled peremptorily after he was compromised; he was not allowed to enter the Ministry of Defence on his returned and was later dishonourably discharged. The National Security Council, which co-ordinates the various intelligence agencies, was asleep too.

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. No one cares if they are carried out. The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, says the cabinet re-affirmed the official policy of two years of teaching science and mathematics in English. It works well, he says, but he also why students fail in the two subjects. He calls this failure a "phenomenon", which it is not. It is bungled policy.

Long term policies are decided ad hoc, and changed or ignored when they become inconvenient or irrelevant though only after the damage is done. Cabinet ministers, caught by this clear and open resentment of the middle class, threaten the people when confronted with the mistakes of their policies. Profligacy and irrelevance dictate public policy. Petronas spent RM40 billion to build the first phase of Putra Jaya, and cannot maintain it, let alone continue to build the rest of it. The prime minister's residence, a 400-room monstrosity, cost RM200 million to build, but when it became a political issue in Parliament, it was told unequivocally that his living quarters cost only RM17 million. it was a lie. But it was accepted in good faith. Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who succeeded Tun Mahathir Mohamed, orders a RM30 million facelift to his official quarters before he moves in. No parliamentary approval was asked for. Besides, why does a building less than five years old need a face lift nearly twice what it cost? Reason flies out the window, starting at the top.

The political problems of the Sabah chief minister, Dato' Seri Musa Aman Khan, and the Selangor mentri besar, Dato' Seri Mohd Khir Toyo, began with weblog questioning of their misdeeds. The prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and his deputy, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, flounder on slippery ground because their political and other misdeeds are hotly debated in cyberspace. And lose ground for their belief that the internet and weblogs count for little because what they write go a limited audience, and decide a studied silence is how to deal with that. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is not. They are distributed all over the country in less than a day.

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.

The BN knows that if it did not do this, power would recede from it with each general election. It did badly in 1999 when the Malays deserted it in droves, in the aftermath of the arrest and humiliation of the then deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. It was kept in power by a near solid non-Malay support. This would have been too in 2004 but for Tun Mahathir Mohamed's brilliant move to resign and hand power to Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi before the elections. Even UMNO officials admit that had he remained in office, the opposition would have done far better, capturing even his home state of Kedah. But Pak Lah, for his own reasons, had to fiddle with the electoral rules. He did not get what he wanted: annointment in office. He is today as unsure of his position in UMNO as on his first day as prime minister.

Tun Hussein Onn, who followed him, was a senior Johore aristocrat, the son of the first president of UMNO, but even he did not think twice in his time when he had to engage in some extra-consitutional skullduggery in Pahang and Perak. Tun Mahathir Mohamed had but contempt for the rulers, and force-fed a constitutional crisis to removing the sultans' immunity for his private actions, and put a sultan on trial for his private indiscretions. That law is unconstitutional. Now, his successor, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, caused another constitutional kerfuffle when he ordered the transfer of the agricultural park to federal control without discussing it with the sultan or the state government.

So I thought at the gathering to honour the victims of police brutality, and jailing, of reformasi activists in the kerfuffle who rose to support the just sacked then deputy prime minister and UMNO deputy president, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, who had raised the ante when he challenged his arrest and humiliation. That struck a common chord with the Malays who discovered their cultural and political common weal hijacked and reduced to hewers of wood and carriers of water. The gathering last night (13 March 2005) at the Century Paradise Club in Taman Melawati, which Dato' Seri Anwar attended, descended at times to farce. It harked back to its glory days, as if that guarantees its future. As UMNO would tell you, it does not. It must have a new focus and a new enemy. But for Hishamuddin Rais's brilliant skit on the prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, which had the few thousand in the audience in stitches, and Dato' Seri Anwar's 30-minute speech, it was dated and irrelevant.

I am attacked in the past fortnight by a young obviously well-educated Malay lady who insists that I, as a 'pendatang' (immigrant, which I am not), should not roil the Malay peace by raising issues that would. She hopes all pendatang would leave, for they are a nuisance. I asked her what would happen if the pendatang left, especially since every one of our five prime ministers were pendatang or had pendatang blood: Tengku Abdul Rahman (Thai), Abdul Razak Hussein (Bugis), Hussein Onn (Circassian-English), Dr Mahathir Mohamad (Indian), Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (Sino-Indian). But her objection to me is that I am a non-Muslim pendatang.

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)