THE FRIGHTENING SELF-DOUBT in the Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi camp is now balanced with cringing fear. First, the UMNO supreme council he controlled demanded the divisions nominate only Pak Lah and the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, for the presidency and deputy presidency. And UMNO youth and puteri nominate only whom it decrees. It was to stop the National Front (BN) MP for Gua Musang, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, from standing against Pak Lah. It failed.

THE PRIME MINISTER, AND acting UMNO and National Front (BN) president, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, denies the BN ordered RM100 million and more - it could be as high as RM1.8 billion - of posters, buntings, badges and other election paraphernalia for the 21 March 2004 general election. He should then have called in the the police and the anti-corruption agency to find out who put BN in a bad light. But ever the conciliator, he advises those unpaid to resolve it with those who ordered it.

But this principle is cheerfully ignored by those who should be terrified of its impact. Dato' Seri Anwar is the evil one; he deserves his fate; we are loyal apparatchiks of power; this principle does not affect us, is how those in power view it. So it is blatantly and defiantly ignored as the prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, to insist they must be returned unopposed as UMNO president and deputy president respectively at the party elections in September.

IT IS THE WORST-KEPT secret: the ill-disguised contempt and hostility between the prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak; complicating it is the like "love and affection" their wives have each other. Pak Lah pulls rank, and Dato' Seri Najib cannot but rise to each snap of the older man's fingers. As one who knows both said: "If looks could kill, all four would have been dead months ago." Before the Hermit of Langgak Golf turned up to skewer the political pitch, leader and deputy and their supporters focussed their attention of bringing the other down.

THE UMNO CODE OF ethics makes no bones about it: candidates for office shall not campaign, bribe, co-erce, print visiting cards to distribute to branches, divisions and delegates. If they breach it, they can be disqualified and sacked from the party. No one is exempt. But the acting party president, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and the deputy president ad interim, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, are guilty of breaching it every day of the week.

TUN MAHATHIR MOHAMED; DATO Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi; Mr Morarji Desai; President Francois Mitterand: they were all Yesterday's Men at one time of their political lives; but they became in time prime ministers and presidents of their countries. So when the New Straits Times yesterday (03 July 2004) dismissed Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah as one, it was carefully designed to stab him in the back - not because he is yesterday's man but because he poses a potent challenge to one of yesterday's men who is now prime minister. It was to put a knife in.

TENGKU RAZALEIGH HAMZAH IS in the race to be UMNO president. He announced it yesterday in Gua Musang, his fief in Kelantan. The utter nervousness in the Malaysian mainstream media is understandable. Did not the UMNO supreme council decide, in three successive meetings in May and June, that the UMNO divisions should only nominate Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi for president and Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak for deputy president? The two men insist it did, and that view is the only accepted view in the mainstream media. What this means is that the people depend on alternate newspapers for news of UMNO politics: Harakah reports in its latest issue that Tengku Razaleigh would challenge Pak Lah. And that has now come to pass.

THE PRIME MINISTER, DATO' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi; the international trade and industry minister, Datin Rafidah Azis; the minister without portfolio in the prime minister's department, Dato' Mustapa Mohamed: to save their political skins, UMNO is put at risk. For, at the end of the day, that was what the secret UMNO-PAS post-electoral pact was all about. It has caused a rift in both UMNO and PAS.

The sixth, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, decides that that is not enough: the supreme council must order the divisions not to nominate any one for the two positions of president and deputy president but Pak Lah and Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak respectively. Not only that, it also ordered the UMNO youth and puteri divisions to nominate none but Pak Lah's choice. The wanita wing, not to be outdone, decided the current leaders must stay, and warned new members, those who migrated to it on reaching 40, not to upset the status quo by challenging them.

As it happened, PAS retained Kelantan with a wafer-thin majority. The raft of election petitions could well have brought UMNO into power, given the judicial climate which insists the BN is right even when it is wrong. The courts would put BN and Dato' Mustapha Mohamed in office as the Florida courts put President George W. Bush in office in 2001. But for one niggly detail: the audit trail of how Dato' Mustapha subborned MTEN to campaign for him. PAS passed them on, through intermediaries, to a BN lawyer, Mr Shafiee Abdullah, who passed it on to Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. Dato' Mustapha, when confronted, confessed.

THE ACTING UMNO PRESIDENT, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, warns party members of a weakened UMNO if it is rend with factions. That can destroy it, and UMNO members must guard against it when they vote their divisional and branch leaders within three weeks of July. But is this true? Yes, and no. He plays with words. What UMNO, as every political party in government and opposition, has are divisions, natural when any group conjoin for a common purpose. Factions cause dissensions within. But divisions become factions when disallowed or restrained from voicing their views.

The meeting's embarrassment at this move was clear, even if the acting UMNO president, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, looked on the proceedings with a cherubic face. There was little or no discussion. The acting deputy president, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, summarised the proceedings. There was no vote, nor dissenting voices. In the culture that pervades now, that was an unanimous decision. Yet it is not announced. Dato' Seri Nazri alluded to it in an interview with a local paper, but that is not the same thing.

He is a good example for the government to insist all is above board, and titles must be protected from rascals and scoundrels who somehow got them. If he got them because of high official status, then all the more it must be revoked swiftly. The prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, should order the state governments the BN controls to ensure that every one of the dato'ships Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim was awarded are revoked for his criminality. Pak Lah knows full well, as he repeats to anyone who would listen, that the man is history, he plays no role in the Malaysia of the future, and the people are happy to see the last of him. He should do it, and quick. At least the UMNO rank and file would recognise for what it is: the removal of a man who has done UMNO much wrong. It would also frighten those with titles from walking away from the straight and narrow, and forever be grateful for the crumbs the BN and UMNO throws off their table. And ensure Pak Lah would earn points for putting his money where his mouth is, and the UMNO would love him for it in September. No doubt about it.

UMNO HEADQUARTERS, ON DATO' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's orders, recently informed UMNO state liaison officers to 'advise' the divisions that they should only nominate Pak Lah for president and Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak for deputy president. What if they did not, or could not, is left unsaid; the hint of a threat more frightening than the threat. Pak Lah wants an UMNO cast in his own image, pack it with his loyalists and 'bodeks' (apple-polishers), root out possible challengers and those who believe UMNO is not the president's plaything. A dangerous precedent, not that it has not been done before (it has) but in how he goes about it.

IT IS A TRUTH foretold that UMNO politicians in need of advancement must crow in unison to demand someone close to its supreme leader be appointed to high office. Never mind that a few months ago, the mere suggestion that this great man had plans to polevault from nowhere to the highest office was, and is, deeply resented. Never mind that in five years of working he has made a mess of everything he touched. Never mind that UMNO youth itself reacted in hostility to this Oxbridge graduate's decision to stand for the very post he is now welcomed with open arms. But that is UMNO politics. It is now taken as read that the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's son-in-law, Mr Khairy Jamaluddin, 28, is the next UMNO deputy youth chief. His running mate is Dato' Hishamuddin Hussein, 43, the outgoing youth chief. He decided, after announcing plans to retire and to stand for the UMNO vice presidency, that discretion is the better part of valour, and he stays put.

THE MALAYSIAN PRIME MINISTER, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, left for Los Angeles last week, with his wife for her medical treatment for cancer. He is on leave. He should have been allowed his private moments with his wife there. One has absolute sympathy for his state of mind, and his concern for his wife's health. He is due back this week, after an eight-day holiday, but his spin doctors would not let him be. They had to create him to be what he is not, that in his moment of private grief and family concerns, he rises to the call of duty. They made a mountain out of a molehill. Bernama was on hand to report it, and thus, inadvertently, put a knife into the man. It was as usual ill thought out. It did not have the impact it should or could have. For it was a time of two major events in the United States during the time he was there: the death of President Reagan, and the G-8 summit.

Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is returned to office by too wide a margin, and he cannot revamp UMNO or the government as he would have liked. Besides, the opposition within has given notice the old practices on how leaders are selected must make way for new blood. But the UMNO gerontocracy would not allow it. The status quo will remain, where possible. The president and deputy president will be returned unopposed. It is an act of bravado, especially when the UMNO supreme council, the body which makes statements like these, did not call for it. Two gerontocrats, the party secretary-general and soon-to-be Yang Dipertua Negeri (governor) of Malacca, Tan Sri Khalil Yaakob, and the acting deputy president, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, took it upon themselves to mislead the party and country.

When Tun Mahathir retired, and Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi succeeded him, he was one of the bright figures who would dot the Pak Lah team. He or his protege would be mentri besar of Johore. In any case both would have important positions in the Pak Lah world. But there's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip. It was widely expected that Dato' Shahrir would get a cabinet post, the portfolio of finance was bandied about. But when the cabinet was appointed, he was not amongst them. The protege is in the cabinet, his guru is the chairman of the BBC.

IN THE RUNUP TO the 21 March general election, a controversial advertisement appeared in the Chinese newspapers which raised many an eyebrow: Tun Mahathir Mohamed ran an administration for 22 years - it was coyly described as 'previous government' - that was 'corrupt and rotten to the core' ... with no aspect of life untainted by corruption', but that of his successor, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, is suffuced and cloaked in integrity and righteousness. It pledged an open and transparent system of governance. There is nothing unusual about it. It is standard practice for the new BN and UMNO leader on taking the highest political office to claim he cuts a new path, that his predecessor was wrong, and he would not make those mistakes.

THE DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, is to the political manor born. An aristocrat, a major Pahang chieftain, a relentless ambition to emulate his late father, an awesome political machine, makes him an useful ally in any political ally. He survived many an attempt to have him sidelined, but he has deflected every attempt. He nearly did not make it as deputy prime minister when Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi succeeded Tun Mahathir Mohamed as Malaysia's fifth prime minister. For all his feudal plus points in Malay society, he is weighed down with unfeudal and uncharacteristic personal, character and familial flaws that would have sunk many a lesser man.

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