THIS IS THE FIRST UMNO election in which everyone, from the president down to the delegate to the general assembly, is guilty of corruption in one form or another. It is the only common issue. When corruption is as widespread as this, a code of ethics and a disciplinary board to make sure it is followed are as irrelevant as an ice-cube on a hot plate. The board chairman, the former foreign minister Tengku Ahmad Rithaudeen, is clueless on what his duties are. This is to be expected. The ethics code changes with the weather and what is allowed one day is disallowed another.

It is an election the BN candidate must be returned so the Prime Minister and UMNO president-to-be, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, could hold on to his faltering throne. So it sends as many supporters as the 11,500 voters to accompany its candidate to file his nomination papers.

THE KEPONG FLYOVER DISASTER, the Kelantan avian influenza, the UMNO elections, the cabinet at cross purposes, corruption and political and administration decay out in the open and all but uncontrollable, point to one inevitable fact: the dysfunctional National Front (BN) administration of the prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, which wallows in its irrelevance, despite its dramatic electoral successes – the General Elections and Pak Lah's election as UMNO president.

THE UMNO ELECTIONS is for its general assembly delegates a time to make hay while the sun shines. This year's, next month, is no different. The more the leaders rail about corruption and the need to stamp it, the more it prevails in often ill-disguised forms. In past years, UMNO at least could control it. This year it cannot. Much as the acting UMNO president, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, is against it in principle, his actions belies his words. No one believes he is serious.

So, who won? Ahmad Zahid Baharuddin or Zahid from the Peninsular; and two runners up from Sabah: Norlinda Nanuwil or Linda; and Mohamed Aizam Mat Saman or Adam. They got their usual goodies, and go about their Warholean 15 minutes of fame, with the press and media falling on their every word. They are touted as role models, although nothing in their background suggest they could be.

What then is Islam Hadhari? The government is silent. But supporters come with increasingly bizarre explanations on what it is. Islam Hadhari is around since the first days of Islam. One letter in the Internet newspaper, malaysiakini, even has a list of about a score of Muslims, from the Prophet Mohamamed to – and I kid you not – the prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's grandfather, Ustadz Abdullah Fahim; the Prophet's followers and successors are on this list. So far it has not been challenged. When the government is quick to challenge malaysiakini when it disagrees with what it carries, one must assume this letter does spell out what Islam Hadhari is.

The prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, may find this unfair, but the geriatric cabinet he presides over is his most dangerous enemy, not his deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, nor his challenger for the UMNO presidency, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, nor even his predecessor as the jailed deputy prime minister and UMNO deputy president, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

THE PRIME MINISTER, DATO' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, is about to eat his own words. He insists all is well, the government is flush with funds, all that is needed to distance himself from his predecessor, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, is to right the excesses of that regime. One is this practice of negotiated contracts worth billions parcelled out to favoured business men and cronies. In this, price was no object, only that they be given the contract, and they in turn charged what they could get away with. When projects are tendered for, it gave the government a choice at a price that was brought down by the need to win it against competition.

But an SMS making the rounds says it all: 'Beri, salah; tak beri, kalah; pesanan Pak Lah' (Literally: To give, wrong; not give, and lose; by order of Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi). At the Taiping divisonal elections, the delegates were paid RM1,100, in three tranches of RM300, RM300 and RM500, for a vote. It was repeated in every UMNO division in the peninsular and Sabah. UMNO once expelled a business man who spent RM6 million to be a branch head.

OPEN WARFARE HAS BROKEN out in the prime minister's office. The arrogant, even supercillious, Oxbridge coterie ("scholars") around the prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and led by his son-in-law, Mr Khairy Jamaludin, had attempted to sideline the civil service ("the Ninjas"). It worked awhile, but as the days went by, his interference and his reach knew no bounds. He was appointed to a high civil service appointment at a grade that a score could hope to reach after three decades of service. He had to resign from that post. He was said to be appointed chief operating officer of Khazanah Holdings, the government investment arm.

THE UMNO DRAMA IS OVER, so many believe. But it is not. The prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, is now UMNO president in his own right. But a flawed one. The political respectability he sought - through the general elections, the UMNO presidency, his visit to President Bush in Washington – eludes him. Nothing could change that. He used every power in the land to threaten, cajole, order the UMNO state liaison chiefs, whom he appoints and are mentris besar and chief ministers in all states but two so that the challenger, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, is reduced to one nomination – and that from his Gua Musang constituency.

THE QUIET JUBILATION IN in Washington at Malaysia's unwise offer to send a 'significant' medical mission to Iraq tells it all. The prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, has firmly joined Washington's tattered, and fraying, coalition of the willing in Iraq when he acceded to President George W. Bush's request. The Asian Wall Street Journal was quick off with an editorial which reflected this change of mood, how a recalcitrant Malaysia under the former prime minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, is not under his successor, and how that bodes well.

The prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who inherited this political hot potato, would not address it. He insists it is not his baby but Dr Mahathir's. He is wrong. He, not the good doctor, must decide. So far, he evades it. When he could decide, he did nothing. When one KeADILan leader saw him for permission for Dato' Seri Anwar to seek surgery overseas, he invited the man instead to return to UMNO. When another made the same request in the second week of July, he promised to reconsider. In other words, he would not decide.

MALAYSIA IS BEHOLDEN TO the United States more than ever. The prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, after a call on President George W. Bush in Washington, announces a "sufficiently big and not just a token" medical mission to Iraq. But in Paris en route to London shortly after the Philippines Government withdrew its token medical presence from its armed forces in Iraq in exchange for a Filipino truck driver it held hostage and threatened to decapitate.

THE PRIME MINISTER, DATO' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, should be lord of all he surveys: his National Front (BN) coalition is returned to office with 90 per cent of constituencies, unseated one state of two in opposition hands, in the March general elections; he is returned as UMNO president, with a near perfect 99.99 per cent of nominations. Now, in Washington, he charms President Bush and tells him a thing or two about global and Middle East realities.

IN THE RUN-UP TO the UMNO elections in September, the prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, pulls all stops to demand an uncontested annointment as president. UMNO vests absolute authority in its leader, or as ancient Rome called it, imperium in imperio, absolute power in an absolute autocracy. The UMNO imperium annoints its leader with absolute powers as ancient Rome its caesars. The political spin would not put it as starkly, but that is what it is.

But UMNO and PAS sources insist there is more than either reveals, that the meeting followed an earlier unscheduled and private meeting in Kota Bharu, the Kelantan state capital, between the prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and the state mentri besar, Tok Guru Dato' Nik Aziz Nik Mat. It is no coincidence then that one is the son-in-law of the former and the other a trusted aide of the latter.

TENGKU RAZALEIGH HAMZAH REVEALS to UMNO leaders how dangerous he is to their political health. Not just to the prime minister and deputy prime minister, but to every division leader. All stops are pulled so he gets not a single nomination. He needs 58 to be a candidate for the presidency. The supreme council decreed the prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Abdul Razak, should be returned unopposed. He defied it. Panic set in. A chorus of orchestrated and vicious personal attacks reverberated in the media. He pushed ahead. Panic set in.

If it is the law of the jungle, then of course he is right. But is it the law of the jungle that we head for? It does look now as if it is. Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi would surely know who this cabinet minister is. He would do this country much good if he orders the man to ensure his son is at the police station immediately.

THE PRIME MINISTER, DATO' SERI Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, declares in a television interview to show he is all things to all men, that he has the interests of all Malaysians, but especially Malay contractors, that his government is flush with money but if it imparts a stinginess with funds, it is "only that we are careful with our spending." All this talk of not meeting its bills is pure gossip. But he means well, you understand. He has ordered his second finance minister, Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Yakcob, to settle RM120 million due to members of the Malay chamber of commerce (DPMM) who have complained hard and long for payment for work completed.

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