UMNO HIDES, NOR WANT to hear, what upsets it. Truth is its monopoly, its truth the Gospel, who questions an ally of, if not, Satan. As head of the National Front (BN), it dominates Malaysia. It brooks no interference, from BN and the opposition, and, until 1988, could behave as it pleased. Political parties which disagreed – the Socialist Front of the 1950s and 1960s, Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia in the 1970s, Semangat '46 in the 1990s – could not survive this onslaught, with one politically destroyed in an orchestrated damning of it as communist and the other two compromised, co-opted into the BN. Two political parties – PAS and Parti Rakyat Malaysia (PRM) – however has remain thorns in the UMNO flesh for more than five decades. PAS thought to its cost it could flirt with UMNO, but found it could not. PAS is now UMNO's most dangerous enemy. PRM merged with Parti Keadilan Nasional (KeADILan), the party formed after its eminence grise, the former Malaysian deputy prime minister and former UMNO deputy president, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, was jailed in a political vendetta.

It should have warned the mentri besar that all is not well. He ignored it. A straw in the end, he decided as the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar, thought when a scurrilous book about him was published in 1998, and went about as if he was in total control. But Selangor UMNO bayed for his blood. It felt he has not playing the games according to long established rules, that the loot be shared, and though it backed him, the knives were out. He annoyed more people than he should have, he did not understand the changing mood of his people, that his statements of intent treated with the derision Pak Lah's are.

The author of this book, Mr Yahya Ismail, is a journalist and political writer, whose books on Malaysian politics infuriate those he portrays. Many denounce him, and others like him, as pens for hire, available to the highest bidder, but are quick to praise him when he, and they, laud them. The reality is more prosaic. Instant political books are a feature of the Malay publishing industry. The Malay takes his politics seriously, and the instant books are a reflection of how intensive Malay politics can be. Instant books on a wide range of political views, especially of UMNO personalities and politics, are sold out during the UMNO general assembly every year. The Malay political world sees a need for books like these. Various personalities often engage them to write books about them in the hope it would put them firmly in the party leadership. Few make the headlines, usually when personalities sue or demand the books be destroyed. An instant book asking the same searching questions about Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim's chances of being prime minister led him, in a political conspiracy, to jail and humiliation. The corrosive damage of these books cannot be overstated.

THE FORMER PRIME MINISTER, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, is an angry man indeed. His successor, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, pulls no stops to ensure he is put to pasture once and for all. He does not want another ghost hovering over his shoulder. One, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, is bad enough and, try as he might, cannot shake him off. Dr Mahathir says his undoubted role in Malaysian history is besmirched with unfounded allegations he bankrupted the government with his government, and of cutting Pak Lah down to size.

Look at his predecessor, Tan Sri Ahmad Sarji Abdul Hamid. He all but disappeared from public view and access to power though he was well compensated for that: chairmanship of government-controlled public companies, given that most important but fruitless task of denying one Anwar Ibrahim entry into Oxford and access to Malaysian students overseas, and other great national tasks which only a retired chief secretary can complete. Before him, it was Tan Sri Abdul Halim Ali. All the perks of post-retirement privilege is handed to them at retirement, and quietly put to pasture so latter day retirees could slowly adjust to the natural fact that they would in time too. In short, they have to be dragged out into retirement, kicking and screaming for all they can. There is no aphrodisiac like power. Losing it is what they cannot imagine.

That he lost is not the issue. That Dr Mahathir was challenged is. He could continue to govern only by destroying UMNO the mass movement that brought independence and forming UMNO the political party. For another 17 years since UMNO became flawed it held on, especially after Dr Mahathir got rid of the only prop who could have preserved UMNO for perhaps a decade more, and, today, UMNO's man for all seasons, the former deputy prime minister and UMNO deputy president, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. UMNO now represented only Malay politics, not the Malay cultural force which accepted it as its feudal overlord. Pak Lah therefore inherited a pastiche of what UMNO once was. And made it worse when he receded from the cultural centre to petty politics. But if he had been challenged, he could well be not where he is today.

The Umno leaders built on it, while the non-Malay Umno leaders enriched and, embolden by the absolute support of the Umno president, ignored the needs of their constituents. But when the cultural and political unity of the Malays clashed in the aftermath of the Anwar Ibrahim affair, all hell broke loose.

THE FORMER MALAYSIAN DEPUTY prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, is now in residence at St. Antony's College, Oxford. When this was made known to one grandee of the Establishment, whose post-retirement role include attempts to prevent him access to the Saudi-Malaysian funded Oxford centre for Islamic studies, all he did not have was a heart attack. He calmed down only after he was told the centre will remain Anwar-free.

The Malaysian political system has been in catharsis since 1988 when the prime minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamed, in political vengeance, destroyed, as president of Umno the mass movement and replaced it with Umno the political party. It did well for a decade because it was held together by one man, Anwar Ibrahim, the then deputy prime minister and Umno deputy president. When he was sacked, humiliated and jailed, Umno fell apart. If he was not, Umno would have survived intact a while longer. The Malay would give his life for Umno the mass movement but not for Umno the political party. That Anwar is now in revolt against Umno splits the Malay community in cultural confusion. The non-Umno parties in BN is similarly split within themselves as Umno, and are deadweight to Umno.

When politicians order their official lives in deceit, foul play, arrogance, they can hang on to power so long as they can wield the whip. Dr Mahathir did until he could no longer. We know who caused that: the former deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim. Today's failing and falling UMNO and, by extension, BN is traced to his political destruction in UMNO. It defied feudal rules. The Malay community splintered. The rump behind Umno lost all reason and used the whip. But the whiplash can no longer keep them in line.

So what happens in TNB is the tip of the iceberg. The TNB now is controlled by the prime minister's son-in-law, Mr Khairy Jamaluddin. He appointed Datoi' Che Khalib Mohamed Noh, in his late thirties, who promptly ran it as his fiefdom, brooking no interruption from its technical or older staff, the divide between the board and senior management and the rest of TNB so wide that it is all but unbridgeable. He is an accountant who does not care if he runs a utility company, or a restaurant chain: all he is interested in is the bottom line, even if he has to destroy the company to achieve it. He is beholden to political power: when Mr Khairy sent him an SMS to order him to award the contract for a substation in Lenggeng, Negri Sembilan, to a company that did not make the shortlist but had the prime minsiter's cousin as chairman, he should have resigned. But he cannot. He is among the brilliant and the bright aligned to the smartest and most brilliant 29-year-old; the slightest hint of disloyalty and he is out in the cold. It does not matter if in politics or business. What happened to the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, has to others too.

NOTHING petrifies the National Front (BN) government than Anwar Ibrahim: if he keeps quiet, if he does not, if he stays in Kuala Lumpur, if he moves about the country, if he travels abroad, if he does not. It wants to see the last of him, tries its best to make him disappear, metaphorically if not physically. It tried to but failed each time. It thought it had him when he was convicted in a series of trials kangaroos would applaud, but few else, for corruption and sodomy and corruption. But the judiciary, in the end, decided that its courts should not be the domain of kangaroos, and six years to the day his ordeal began, he was a free man.

BN politics today, in short, is, in government and parties, to stop this man in his tracks. That is not easy. It has tried for six years to do just that, taking extraordinary measures – detention under the Internal Security Act, beaten to an inch of his life by the Inspector-General of Police, ill-treated so badly that he is all but a cripple, jailed for sodomy and corruption in a traversity of trials – but he survived, and eventually released on appeal. His name is Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, former deputy prime minister, one who should have been prime minister today.

Its difficulties compounded when it sacked and humiliated its deputy president, violating the irrevocable Malay cultural code of a feudal leader, which the UMNO president is, never ever humiliating its chieftains. Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, on his release from jail in September, cannot dream of returning to UMNO. It has put up barriers, the attacks on him by UMNO leaders and others frightened at what he could achieve, damn him in their waking hours, as their fathers and grandfathers did of Dato' Onn, and spared only after he died. This is why I am amused by this insistence in UMNO that he has no future outside it. There is none inside it either. Ask Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah.

That man is, of course, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, former deputy prime minister and UMNO deputy president, he who is back from the political dead to even greater prominence in Malaysia and the world. The government is in mortal fear of him. BN and UMNO leaders look over their shoulders before they act; are struck dumb when he is mute and when he talks; turned him into a political ogre since his release from prison three months ago; and one who could well edge UMNO on to the unaccustomed opposition benches.

THE MALAYSIAN GOVERNMENT COULD have done without the year 2004: the new prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi dramatically lost ground with each setback – the general and UMNO elections, the UMNO bete noire Anwar Ibrahim's unexpected release from prison – to turn UMNO into a political battleground of its present and immediate past president for political control. This in turn undercut the National Front (BN) coalition in office, but with the UMNO leaders at each other's throats, with UMNO warlords on the march, all it could was to cling to office, duck the bullets, protect its leaders, and pray they would not be pawns in this fight for political control. The bald uncomfortable truth is that no one is in charge, the government drifts uncontrollably, But little of that seeps out because all this is fought within the accepted code of feudal fealty.

Few UMNO leaders can escape blame for it, including the former UMNO deputy president, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, who banned, in office, even the singing of carols at shopping malls and public places, and arbitrarily re-arranged the school holidays so Christmas is not during the long vacation. This was reversed after his fall. But the religious slights continued by other means, because those who should protest – their leaders in the cabinet and government and religious bodies – dare not. And so it is today.

What it reveals is a dysfunctional BN government, frozen in terror of what may happen, in near rigor mortis when the former UMNO deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, after his release from prison, quickly takes over as a politician who knows what he does, raises issues and possible solutions with a verve not seen even during the Mahathir years. What he says is mundane, run of the mill, nothing new but he says it loudly and clearly. Instead of taking him on, UMNO leaders take fright and mumble incoherently. When he plays his political games, like his call on Pak Lah during Hari Raya, UMNO is in shell shock. The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, rushes to mend his fences against what he sees as a redoubled Pak Lah effort to destroy him. But Pak Sheikh has no desire to rejoin the UMNO from he was ignominiously expelled or be a part of the insane political mudfights its leaders are engaged in.

In Malaysia, democracy such as it is is in mortal danger. The democracy we have is a genteel description for the autocracy we have. The BN government has made it increasingly difficult for the opposition to spread its views, rushes elections through in less than a fortnight, all in the name of efficiency and cost. But when we look at how other countries, perceivably in worse shape than Malaysia, we see strains that we can only wish for: a vibrant press that would challenge the government, as in Zimbabwe and Ukraine; a judiciary that would call the government to account; an opposition leader who can be heard in his country's newspapers. In Malaysia, even those in his cabinet perceived to be against the prime minister gets short shrift in the media. Look at how the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak's recent visit to Jakarta was reported in Malaysian newspapers; never mind that his visit was upstaged by the Malaysian nemesis-in-chief, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim; but he got better play in Indonesian newspapers than he did in his own country.

When the federal government conducts its affairs so shoddily, could the states be far behind? When the UMNO-led BN in Kuala Lumpur cannot control its profligacy, how could it in the states in its watch? Especially when profligacy is encouraged of its leaders. It could not restrain the states for fear of a leadership backlash. The BN had kept the states on a tight leash, usually by make them beg for what is due, ignored local sensitivities, often forced on the state unacceptable mentris besar. Rebellion was dealt with severely. In the centre, the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim was cut down to size; in the states, the former mentri besar of Selangor, Dato' Harun Idris, was jailed for his political insolence.

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