Pak Lah cannot stop now. He must show he means what he says. If it takes the ACA between five and ten years to investigate corruption, how efficient can it be? It has little to show how successful it is in rooting out corruption. Its high profile case to show it can do its work without fear or favour collapsed spectacularly when it recommended the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, be charged with corruption. This is its next chance to redeem itself. Yet it steps in for a clear political purpose. The investigations began when Tun Mahathir Mohamed was prime minister. It kept quiet. It did not act until his successor needed wants a few scalps to prove he is serious about rooting out corruption.

There is more to Perwaja Steel than meets the eye. It was set up in 1982 as part of an ambitious plan to lurch Malaysia into developed status by 2020. Tun Mahathir had just become Prime Minister, with Perwaja Steel the fulcrum of his grandoise plans to frogmarch Malaysia into industrialisation whether Malaysians wanted to or not, if the country was ready for it or not. It collapsed spectacularly. Within six years, it was on bankruptcy's door. The government kept it afloat. It would not have shut down had Dato' Seri Anwar not been finance minister. He did not see why good money should be thrown at the bad, especially when it was done at the expense of social and other services. Perwaja, like the Bakun dam, became casualties in this confrontation between the Doctor and the Sheikh. Given what happened since the Sheikh was sacked and jailed, his prescience cut losses much. Pak Lah is now left to pick up the detritus of that. The first casualty is Tan Sri Eric Chia and Perwaja Steel.

When the BN lost its head, after the Anwar Ibrahim affair in 1989, the disenchanted Malays in the Malay states distanced themselves from the state authorities. Nowhere was this clearer than in the mosques. Some mosques the Klang Valley - in Damansara Utara and in Section 14 in Petaling Jaya, for instance - were "anti-establishment" mosques. Try as it might, the government could not contain them. They represented the PAS view of a religion under challenge and attack. For years, it remained an odd presence in a sea of official conformity. It is not any more. The official view of Islam is challenged in even the old FMS states. It goes without saying that even in the 'official mosques' in Selangor and in the other states, Muslims gather in the evenings to castigate the government for its "wrong doings". The mosque in Ampang Jaya frequented by the late brother-in-law of Tun Mahathir Mohamed was one. He would, when when he was there, put up a strong defence of his brother-in-law's administration, but he was almost always shouted down by his fellow parishioners, several of whom, at least when I went there with a Muslim friends on occasion, had federal and state titles for which a Chinese business man would gladly have sacrificed an arm and a leg and lots of money. There it was the inescapable voice of the Establishment.

So, what has he achieved in his first hundred days in office, two days before this edition of Seruan Keadilan hits the streets on 10 February. He has made a series of orders and statements railing against corruption, praised the Chinese but scolds the Malay for his subsidy mentality, without adding that it is the UMNO-led BN government that nurtured it as official policy in the past three decades. Like the MIC's hold on its vote bank, the downtrodden and rural Indians, by cyncially raising the continuance of Tamil schools which only keep them tied perpetually to the poverty that is now their lot, the UMNO-led BN held on to the Malay community with its widespread policy of providing them with political subsidies that now backfires on it. What made it worse is, of course, UMNO's favourite punching bag, the jailed former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, who turned that into an issue to all but destroy UMNO's hold on to the Malay cultural ground. So it reacts in panic. Pak Lah has made a few headline winning comments on corruption, but as usual he does not look at why, a few are charged, but with no attempt to address the root causes. He accepted the Mahathir cabinet, long past it sell-by date, as his own, the only two main changes - that of the new deputy prime minister and the second minister of finance - forced upon him.

THE MALAYSIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY tells the US State Department the Anwar Ibrahim trials from the start were, and are, conducted to the highest standards of Malaysian justice, the former deputy prime minister is found guilty in a Malaysian court of law which, lest it forgets, had in the past convicted "many" prominent Malaysians. He is accorded all the rights available in criminal jurisprudence, and is defended by some of Malaysia's best lawyers. No one, the spokesman said, including Dato' Seri Anwar, is above the law. Justice is served and human rights respected in the Anwar case. It is not for any foreign country to tell Malaysians how it must conduct its activities. And none should interfere in Malaysia's affairs. This, in sum, is what he said in response to the State Department's claims of flaws in the judicial procedure which convicted Dato' Seri Anwar and, last week, denied bail. The State Department reacted on the same day Dato' Seri Anwar was denied bail by the Court of Appeal. Why did it wait a week to respond?

THE DATE OF THE GENERAL election is at the absolute discretion of the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. But he cannot announce it without first making sure his National Front (BN) and UMNO are ready. This is when it begins to unravel. Nothing is secret in this city, and soon all political parties are aware of it, and plan for it. In the past, the BN's dominance, especially within the Malay community, was so dominant, that even if the date was known, there was little the Opposition could do to force it off its perch. Those were the days. Today, the BN is assured of its two-thirds majority only if the Chinese community backs it wholeheartedly. The Malay is on the sidelines, after the political destruction and personal humiliation of its former deputy president, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. He wants more proof of the BN's political intentions, and on how it intends to right the wrongs he sees implicit in why the former deputy prime minister continues to be in Sungei Buloh prison. The plans as it stand is for Parliament to be dissolve on 01 March and for polling on 20 March.

THE UMNO-LED NATIONAL FRONT (BN) can insist, as hoarsely as it cares, that the jailed former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim is history, is not an election issue in this year's General Election. He is in jail, is denied bail, time has blunted the hurt the Malays felt at the time when he was arrested, beaten to a pulp, convicted in a kangaroo court. Malaysians have their lives to lead, not waste their time on a man who stands justly convicted in a court of law, with no extenuating circumstances to even consider bail. This has now become a mantra for the the BN government, not for its truth but for its comfort. If the BN is comfortable about uncomfortable facts, surely the country should feel likewise. Indeed, the UMNO supreme council had decided all this a while ago.

THE JAILED FORMER DEPUTY Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, returns in triumph to the centre of Malaysian politics. He remains in jail and would remain there awhile. But it is for the governing National Front (BN), and its main party, UMNO, to convince Malaysians that he deserves to be there, the courts justly convicted himvicted by the courts, the judiciary is independent, the Malay perception he is wronged is false. If it cannot, it would be the BN that must fight doubly hard to govern with a two-thirds majority after the polls. For the Prime Minister's claim of an upright and independent judiciary is in tatters: the yardstick for that is how it dispenses with the Anwar appeals. Every day Dato' Seri Anwar is in prison is one more difficulty for BN and UMNO at the polls. The Anwar issue is as potent as an election issue now as it was in 1999. The Malay ground is convinced the jailed politician should not be where he is, that he pays a high price for his bid for power before his due, not for the criminal charges he is convicted of. That UMNO does not act to convince them otherwise makes it more so.

DATO' SERI Anwar IBRAHIM'S CUTTING remarks, after the Court of Appeal turned down his appeal for bail this week (21 January 2004) and his appeal against a conviction for sodomy, about kept judges and of a judiciary beholden to political pressures, struck home. The three judges should have struck him down and charged him for contempt of court. Instead, they walked out. The judiciary has kept silent on that extraordinary scene. If it had to respond, it should have been the three judges or, even, the chief justice. But the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, did, which raised more questions than answers. In his defence of the judiciary, he stuck to constitutional and judicial principles, not how the judiciary is or could be independent when its chief justice, or Lord President as he was known then, was drummed out of his own court for believing in its independence, and judges are not promoted, on political pressure, because they are too independent, or others are rushed through the ranks to the highest positions for no reason than they are pliable and respond to what the Prime Minister wants, and a chief justices goes on holidays with his favourite lawyer, when they have appeals pending in his Court.

THE COURT OF APPEAL DID what it must. The injustice must be allowed to fester. The man in the centre of the storm, the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, did what he must. The judicial system is injustice personified. Nothing changed therefore when Dato' Seri Anwar is denied bail and his conviction for sodomy dismissed. Take a step back and view what happened at the Court of Appeal yesterday (21 January 2004), and notice that nothing unusual happened. Each side stuck to its guns. It proved conclusively that as long as the Anwar affair is not resolved politically, every non-political move is mere drama, an opiate for those who do not want to resolve it politically. For at the root of this affair is the deep divisions within the Malay community over it. This cannot be repaired until the Anwar issue is put to rest once and for all.

WHY DOES TRENGGANU HAVE a PAS government? The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, blames the prisoner, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, for it. Why is UMNO in fear of its future as General Election nears? In public and on the record, it is not; but in private and off the record, it is the injustice it meted to the former deputy prime minister. Why did not Tun Mahathir Mohamed go out in a blaze of glory after 22 years as Prime Minister? It is for framing his then deputy for sodomy and corruption. His successor, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, begins his term on a sticky wicket because he would not address the one issue that firmly divides the Malay community: its firm belief that Dato' Seri Anwar is convicted and jailed by a kangaroo court. The Court of Appeal hearing in Putra Jaya this morning (19 January 2003) and the utter confusion there is one more sign that it does not matter if he is guilty or innocent; he must remain in jail, no matter what.

So the proposed merger turns out to be a damp squib. The more one delves into it, the more one is convinced that the merger proposal is to divert attention from the problems in the two parties. I find it remarkable that a merger between MCA and Gerakan is floated on such petty issues. No strategic reasons, only a lame excuse to unite the Chinese behind the proposal so the Chinese would deliver the vote to BN in the coming poll. For the raison d'etre of this exercise is to stave off defeat. The Gerakan realises that in Penang, the Pak Lah move to control it by removing the UMNO leader in Permatang Pauh, where once the jailed UMNO deputy president and deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, reigned supreme, has angered UMNO in the state. This merger is mooted, with no intention it would be carried out, for no reason than to unite the Chinese and, in Penang, to prevent the back-biting which allowed the Opposition to make headway.

A General Election must be held by the end of this year. The UMNO election should have been last year but it was postponed a year in anticipation of General Election. That could not be postponed for the same reason. The public furore over it would add needless pressure on Pak Lah. Besides, he must ensure that the Malay ground is united behind him, a tall task, but more important, the BN must return to office with its traditional two-thirds majority. He cannot if the Chinese community deserts him. The Malay ground is split. He cannot repair when what caused it remains: the arrest, the police brutality on him manacled and blindfolded, and humiliation of the deputy prime minister and UMNO deputy president, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, in 1998. The Malay ground, which once UMNO could depend on, sits on the sidelines to swing to a Malay political party which could provide him cultural security. UMNO has to fight for what was unstated.

What is strange about this is that his mind is centred on what UMNO and the Malays think of him, but his public attention is on the Chinese community. The Malay ground is split, after the Anwar Ibrahim episode, and cannot be depended upon. That does not give PAS comfort either. For the Malay sits on the sidelines, waiting to see who would gain the upper hand before he chooses. UMNO is burdened with its former, and present, leader's assault on Malay cultural traditions. That would remain so long as Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim is in jail. It does not matter, as is argued persuasively by UMNO leaders and others, that he is forgotten, and has no role in Malaysian politics. Even if he should be released, it would be five years more before he could play a role. But this is to miss the point. He could be written off in Malaysian politics, but he remains an unwelcome ghost in every UMNO discussion. He has re-engineered himself as Malaysia's Nelson Mandela. That is not to UMNO's gain.

Pak Lah's UMNO can survive only if it can persuade the Malay ground that it is both its political and cultural leader. The cultural ground shifted dramatically in 1998 when the then president, Tun Mahathir, destroyed and humiliated his chosen heir, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, so deliberately that the Malay was offended and moved away from UMNO. If this is not awesome enough, another awaits around the corner: the huge and unrepayable debt that Tun Mahathir left behind. How much that is we can only guess. But what I have heard from those who looked at, as civil servants and as bankers, is the losses from privatisation sets us back RM400 billion, with another RM400 billion in profligate projects and deals. The second finance minister, Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Yakcop, contributed four per cent of the total liabilities when he lost RM33 billion in currency speculation in the middle 1990s. It does not matter if he did it on orders, as he says, but he is the expert and he should have cautioned against it. He did not. He basked in the glory when he made money, lots of it. He must take the blame when he failed. The government admitted to RM13 billion but when all contingent liabilities were added, it ballooned to RM33 billion.

Malaysian leaders believe their own propaganda. This is easy when any attempt to right the public record is ignored especially if the record is wrong. The UMNO now is not the UMNO of old, but acts as if it is. The UMNO now is UMNO Baru, formed from the ashes of the old UMNO, is a political party; the UMNO it replaced was a nationalist movement. UMNO Baru's first president is not Dato' Sir Onn Jaffar, but Tun Mahathir Mohamed. But rewriting history or erasing the past would not change the present. UMNO's problem now is its leaders' unfettered and unquestioned monolithic view which they would not allow to be challenged. What makes UMNO fear the future and failure is the Anwar Ibrahim affair. For the first time in decades, it made Malays and Malaysians realised there is another view, as valid and trenchant as the official. But it might be too late to be of any good to UMNO.

But it was the Reformasi movement, after the arrest and humiliation of the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim in 1998, that destroyed much respect the people had for the police. It had been declining over the years. The police became a force to be feared. You would be given the runaround if you go to the police to lodge a report. You must have infinite patience, and time on your hands or dollops of cash to speed your report making. On top of that, you are often abused, and made to wait. Try, even now, getting a copy of the police report for filing an insurance claim or whatever. It would be ages before you did. Unless you typed the report and the copies before you came to the police station, pay the required fees and collect your copy duly signed by the station inspector. Bribery is not a word one discusses in police company in Malaysia. "Cari makan" is the right word to use. It is an art form. As the penalties improve, so the bribe. It is an open secret in Brickfields, in Kuala Lumpur, where I stay, that motor cars can be parked at will and even hog the road so much so it is dangerous to drive along the stretch of Jalan Tun Sambanthan where the restaurants are. But park in front of a shop which did not, or refused to, pay, and he would get a traffic ticket soon enough.

Let us begin at the top. The former Prime Minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, believed in it firmly. His wife, Tun Siti Hasmah Ali, was his medical adviser in his 22 years in office, with an independent office and perks far out of proportion an outsider would get. His brothers-in-law and his children swarmed into business as if they were born to it, several fell by the wayside and had to be rescued often with public funds. He had relatives on its personal staff. He did not encourage his children or siblings into politics. But he did in every other sphere of government and business. His successor, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, has his son-in-law run his private office, with son and daughter amongst his closest advisers. Here again competence is not the issue. It is taken as read that when one is in a position to dispense favours, one should not fail. Once this was a jailable offence. Today, it is only if you are on the wrong side of whoever is in government. More than two decades ago, a senior member of the Malaysian civil service resigned to enter politics in Kedah, and rose to be in the state executive council. He sat in on one committee which awarded a lucrative contract to a company owned by his wife. He had, like the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, crossed Tun Mahathir's path. He was convicted and jailed. But when the federal international trade and industry minister, Datin Rafidah Aziz, presided over a committee which dispensed favours and contracts to a company owned by her son-in-law, it was conveniently swept under the carpet.

UMNO blinked. It took the gauntlet, made Islam, not culture or multiracialism, its principle political plank, alienated its coalition partners, could not match PAS's appeal, and had to fall back on its non-Malay and non-Muslim partners, particularly the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), to keep it in power. The watershed was in 1999, when the BN romped home to a two-thirds majority in Parliament with solid Chinese support. The politics within BN changed irrevocably. The Malays were split and remained on the sidelines after the Anwar Ibrahim affair. The shift to Islamic politics has split one Malay group for ever. UMNO's raison d'etre as the defender and leader of the Malays is in doubt. The Chinese stepped in. UMNO must modify its Islamic image, tattered as it is, to reflect this change. The Chinese community dinner for Pak Lah on 20 December at Bukit Jalil stadium underscored this reality. The MCA, which organised it, needs UMNO as badly as UMNO needs it. Its president, Dato' Seri Ong Ka Ting, had to make his peace with Pak Lah, after he unwisely crossed him during the MCA leadership crisis last year.

The Scholars are well-meaning and brilliant men and women who could in time be intellectuals in their own right. They are young, inexperienced, immature with a thirty-something view of the world that cannot take them anywhere. They have their hangers on, there for no reason than to fill the gaps to extend control. All are short on experience, skullduggery, deviousness. Its importance in Pak Lah's comfort is his nepotic cabal around him. Besides Mr Khairi, the Scholars include his wife and Pak Lah's daughter, Nori; her brother, Mr Kamaluddin Abdullah; their friends like Mr Karim Raslan, the lawyer and columnist; Ms Tan Siok Choo, the think tanker and former journalist, the daughter of the late MCA president, Tun Tan Siew Sin; Ms Zainah Anwar, another journalist and think tanker whose sister is widow to Mr Kamaluddin's late father-in-law. The hangers on include the Bernama chairman, Dato' Khalimullah Hassan. It is a well-knit group, and those not in the family know where they stand. It gives the individual members an importance they would not otherwise have. If the Scholars had another decade of experience, the Ninjas would have cause to worry.

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)