THE US IRAQ STUDY Group reported that the former Iraqi government, under President Saddam Hussein, alloted Malaysian prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, through a Malaysian company called Tradeyear, oil vouchers worth 2m barrels under the UN Oil-for-Food programme. Other Malaysian beneficiaries are a company controlled by a Sabah business man, the Malaysian petroleum giant, Petronas, a retired Malaysian ambassador, an Iraqi resident amongst others. This announcement came at an inconvenient time. Pak Lah had just called on Malaysian business men to eschew corruption as a way of life.

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.

THE KERFUFFLE OVER ISLAM Hadhari has left us all shell-shocked. A scatalogical comparison of Islam Hadhari with money politics on a blog, which was quickly corrected and the writer banned, raised needless political pressure, fear and doubt if the prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's reform agenda is what it says. It showed, once again, that it takes little for UMNO politicians and its acolytes to instil fear on any who differs from its worldview. The National Front (BN) government it leads, not to be outdone, rise to the bait and make it real.

This make-belief of innocence and incorruptibility is a cover for the corruption that is not too far beneath the skin. The newly-annointed president, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and the deputy president, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, inveighed corruption or, in UMNO-speak, money politics. With this comes the confident insistence that those who backed them in the new supreme council are pure as the driven snow; and those who eschewed the results were not. This convoluted logic now insists delegates do not know what corruption is, they are lambs led to slaughter, so it must be clearly defined. All have jumped on the bandwagon to re-invent the wheel.

No speaker missed a chance to rail against Dato' Seri Anwar and money politics. One would have thought that both united to bring UMNO to its knees, the leaders blabbering like idiots when either or both are mentioned. How do we know there is no money politics in UMNO? Every winner in the party elections proclaimed loudly and clearly that they did not know what this money politics is, did not indulge in it, and won because the members decided they should. Those who failed should try harder to be the servants of the people the winners are. They lost because they did not serve the people. It did not matter of course that on the eve of the election, many candidates happily doled out money to help the expenses of those who came to vote. That is not corruption or money politics, you undersand, but just what a politician would do so others would not be put to money problems for coming afar to vote. The UMNO president, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, said he did not believe this talk of bribery, vote buying and money politics. It is spread, did you not know, by anti-UMNO elements out to destroy UMNO and Malay unity.

THE NEW UMNO PRESIDENT, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, must rue the day he decided he could attain power in a vaccuum. A year after he is prime minister, with his UMNO-led National Front (BN) government sweping into power as never before, and unopposed election as UMNO president, he still seeks what he needs most: political legitimacy. He rode rough shod to cling to power, ignoring the quiet resistance of the ground joined by a caucus of his political enemies, taking silence as assent. He is now dealt a fatal blow at the UMNO supreme council elections yesterday (23 September 2004). He and his advisers riled the UMNO ground, helped by a chorus of sycophants, on whom he relied upon much, that he misjudged the forces ranged against him. To the Malay ground, and not only in UMNO, he became a two-dimensional cardboard figure, immensely popular but deeply flawed as a leader. In other circumstances, it could well be different. But not in the present. He mistook feudal obeisance as a mark of his strength.

DATO' SERI ANWAR IBRAHIM is the subject of much obloquy at the UMNO general assembly this week, accused of betraying the Malay race, of unspeakable sex crimes, a traitor to UMNO, and ordered banned from ever returning to UMNO. The UMNO president, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, the youth, wanita, putra chiefs gleefully and with alacrity put the knife into him in venom. At the end of the day, they pat each other with a self-satisfied smirk of a job well done, convinced the man is history, and UMNO safe from this traitor. But it is UMNO, not Dato' Seri Anwar, which lost the plot. If he is disbarred from UMNO because he worked against it after he was expelled, should not this rule, in fair play, be applied to others equally guity? The UMNO youth chief, Dato' Seri Hishamuddin Hussein, insists he should not ever return to UMNO. How could an UMNO leader when he leaves, or is forced out, ever talk ill about this glorious party of Malay hegemony? He must pay for it if he does. Dato' Seri Anwar did. So he must.

This is UMNO culture in its naked form. So when the new UMNO president, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, banned money politics, it was as King Canute ordering the waves back. He could not stop it but he wanted to make an impact. Typically, it caught every one by surprise. The rules were framed in a hurry, and changed ever so often that the latest had no connexion from its original. What was banned at the start is allowed now. You could not advertise or hand out visiting cards then but you can now. I was once introduced to a politician from Sabah. We exchanged cards, only that he give me a pile of 20, each different and representing the candidates he supported. He need not have bothered. They could now. This suggests that the leaders had put restrictions on bribery and vote buying so their nominees could be returned. It did not work. So the rules were relaxed, with dire consequences threatened on particular candidates if they misbehaved. It did not work either. So nothing is disallowed now. The only rule is: Don't Get Caught. But if you do, you would be given a slap on the wrist and told to go and sin no more. That is, unless you are not a neophyte politician trying to rise up the greasy pole. Then the book is thrown at you.

The biggest problem facing UMNO is that it has few men of vision amongst its leaders, nor men who would speak out for the changes needed to survive. The party is hostage to its president of the day. But what happens to the party when the president is held hostage to his own insecurities? UMNO fractures from within as the weak president and the weaker deputy president (both to confirmed today) want to edge the other out. For the first time, the leaders do not know how or what the ground thinks. Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi bent the rules to lead the BN into power with a 90 per cent majority, and to be returned unopposed as UMNO president. He – or his handlers – did not understand or expect the cost. The cynicism of the UMNO delegates is so overpowering this year, that Pak Lah would be weaker still after this assembly is over.

WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's triumphal grand entry at the UMNO general assembly this week (from 23 September 2004) descends rapidly into a nightmare. His overwhelming March general elections victory, the ousting of PAS from Trengganu, his more than 99 per cent anointment as UMNO president – each of doubtful provenance – should be enough to welcome the conquering hero. He could not; not that he would not but that he would in an atmosphere of fear and loathing, which resides in the Malay mind beneath the surface and tightly controlled, but which could run amok at an instant's notice. Pak Lah and UMNO misjudged and misunderstood the mood outside, that the Malay ground, even in UMNO, had moved sharply away from the party, the anger nurtured to breaking point by its arrogant assertion that UMNO knows best for the Malays, that it could manipulate the Malay mind at will, that they would not ever rebel, that Malay culture is sustained by an absolute respect for the fuedal lord. This belief is sustained in UMNO even as it dismantled the feudal structure to replace it with one which owed loyalty not to the sultans but to the UMNO president.

WITHIN DAYS OF ITS general assembly, UMNO has two momentous decisions before it: fulfil Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's dreams for Malaysia and UMNO and overcome his greatest challenges; and help Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak capture the hearts and minds of the young so UMNO could survive. Nothing else matters in front of the assembly. The delegates are on autocue; loyal marionettes, who nod when they have to, clap when they must, praise the leaders at the right occasion, reduce the nation's problems to irrelevant asides and jokes. It does not, of course, matter that this charade is repeated every year without fail, and ignored after the UMNO general assembly. It is all in the UMNO belief that talk equals action, that once a leader says it, it is done. This is not new. Nor that this enthusiastic agenda for the nation and for Malaysian youth turns cold within a week of the general assembly.

Which is why they now pay for it. The Najib gaffe is only one. Why was Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's son-in-law at Dato' Seri Anwar's house on the night of his release? The official spin is to help him obtain a passport quickly so he could leave for Munich. Does he issue passports? What happened to the Immigration Department? If anyone should have gone to see him that night, it should have been an immigration officer, not even its director-general. Or is this a tacit acceptance that the civil servants do not obey the prime minister? Is this why the only beneficiaries of this year's budget is the civil service and other institutions, like the police and armed forces?

The UMNO general assembly meets next week. Yesterday's supreme council meeting was to discuss this, but was sidetracked by the Anwar affair. "The UMNO supreme council unanimously agreed that the sacked former deputy party president would not be re-admitted into the party." The acting party president, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, nevertheless prevaricates. "For now, the door is closed." He told reporters afterwards: "I explained to the supreme council members that there is no deal or secret pact with Anwar on his re-entry into UMNO. The explanation was well received and unanimously accepted." The raises an interesting conundrum: He is in absolute control of Malaysia and the country, the supreme council eats out of his hand, in his own words, Dato' Seri Anwar is irrelevant in UMNO, and yet this decision yesterday revealed its fright and dissarray. The more the news from Germany, where he recuperates from spinal surgery, that other leaders treat him as an important figure in Malaysian politics, the more the loathing and the fear in UMNO and the National Front (BN) government.

But since the government insists he should not have been acquitted, and it believes the judges' obiter is correct, would it not fail in its duties if it did not instruct the attorney-general's chambers to charge him afresh for the same offence? After all, it wants the man politically dead. This is its golden chance. And it has support from the usual quarters. The former prime minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, is convinced the federal court in wrong, and he is guilty as charged. (This despite his twaddly belief that his successor, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, engineered the acquittal to make him irrelevent.) It was he who first accused him of corruption and sodomy, sacked him from UMNO, where he was deputy president, and the government, where he was deputy prime minister, had him charged and convicted in a political conspiracy that now slowly reveals itself. The attorney-general and chief justice of the day did his bidding to convict him by playing fast and loose with the law and its procedure. But all underestimated him. If any other member of the cabinet had been damned, he would have stayed damned. Instead, as we know now, all they did was to disturb a wounded tiger.

WHAT HIT UMNO ON Thursday (02 September 2004), when the Federal Court set aside Dato' Seri Anwar's conviction and sentence and released him had the political force of a hurricane, a tsunami, a typhoon, an earthquake, a volcanic eruption; in Malaysia, that force is Anwar Ibrahim. The public comment, local and foreign, is of an astute prime minister who wants to let bygones be bygones, and the judiciary to discuss the case on its merits. It is a new beginning. It lays the most divisive period in Malaysian history to rest. When they ran out of superlatives to praise the government, the spotlight turned on Dato' Seri Anwar: would be join UMNO? Would he become prime minister, can he stand up to the rigours of the position, given his bad back? Would he be up to the task, given that he was guilty of what he accuses the present government of? But remember, all this could not have happened, if Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi did not insist he wants the judiciary to be free, and he, on his part, accept its judgement without question.

THE MORE ONE LOOKS into Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim's dramatic release from prison yesterday (02 September 2004) the more one realises politics, not law, that ensured it. He was charged, humiliated, convicted in a political vendetta. The only way he could be released ahead of time only by political intervention. The prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, like his predecessor, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, wanted him in jail for as long as possible. The rules were stretched so he could not get what others charged for similar offences would as a matter of right. The judges, their hands tied, could do little but convict. The speed with which he goes for his surgery – he leaves tonight – raised many an eyebrow. That appears to be part of the deal, that he would leave immediately after his release, and not return for a while as Pak Lah tried to firm his rule. What forced Pak Lah's hand was the fear Dato' Seri Anwar might die on him – horror of horrors – before the UMNO elections in three weeks. Dato' Seri Anwar held his ground, and did not want a deal in which he would lose out politically.

THE FEDERAL COURT, AS expected, today (02 September 2004) quashed the conviction for sodomy and nine-year-jail sentence on Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, six years to the day he was sacked as deputy prime minister. This hearing had been postponed several times, and the decision confirmed recent rumours of both his acquittal and of a deal struck between him and the prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. After his arrest and when blindfolded and manacled, he was beaten to an inch of his life by the then Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Abdul Rahim Noor, causing him now to be in extreme pain and a near cripple confined to a wheelchair. His medical condition is so bad that he had been in hospital for the past five weeks. He would be released from prison today and leaves for surgery in Munich tomorrow on a special flight arranged by the Saudi Arabian government.

THE NATIONAL FRONT (BN), AS only to be expected, was returned in the Kuala Berang by-election. In today's political circumstances, it could not have been otherwise. The stake in this by-election was too high. The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, still struggles for a role in BN, and its main component, UMNO, since assuming office ten months ago, and could not face the UMNO general assembly with a by-election defeat. UMNO has rarely lost a by-election; when it has, it reflected deeper problems within. In Kuala Berang, it was Pak Lah's legitimacy as Malaysia's and UMNO's leader. Those UMNO leaders who campaigned for the BN candidate had their own agendas: they were positioning for a crucial role in UMNO for the battles ahead.

THE PRIME MINISTER, DATO Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, is a man possessed not by one ghost but two. Both are alive and restrict Pak Lah's movements. When he became prime minister in November last year, he had one living ghost to frustrate him. When he did not get the legitimacy he desired in the March general elections, he hoped he would if he stole the UMNO presidency fair and square. He did not. Instead, he is besotted with two ghosts instead of one. If he does not watch his step, a third would soon reside permanently over his head.

All is kept quiet, for any unnecessary or unwarranted crisis in the run-up to the UMNO general assembly could redound on its soon-to-be-anointed president, the prime minister Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. He has yet to be anointed in his own right, although he brought BN home to victory as never before, and will be UMNO president by preventing anyone to challenge him. But he is regarded by many, especially in UMNO, as a caretaker. Try as he can, he cannot shift that image. Perhaps the UMNO general assembly could ensure it. But that is if nothing is upset between now and then. So it is dollops of cash and concern for the underdog, with more crocodile tears than it knows what to do with. Welcome to the world of UMNO elections!

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