Pak Lah has decided he and he alone must be president at all costs. The deputy prime minister is on notice that should any division aligned to him have the temerity to nominate anyone else for the presidency, he would he excorsised from UMNO more severely than the former prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, a minor setback. It is now an article of faith, which the former prime minister and UMNO president, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, that the Tengku be allowed only one nomination – from his division of Gua Musang, Kelantan.

The electoral code of ethics is breached time and again, but the UMNO leaders presume it does not apply when the challenger is excoriated. In traditional Malay politics, the leader is never challenged; when he faces challenge, he drops out if he would lose or a challenge would split the society, so the challenger is the new leader. But this was turned on its head in 1987, when the then UMNO president, Dr Mahathir, declared he is UMNO president if he won by one vote. To make sure he would be unchallenged, he brought in bonus votes, giving a candidate a bonus ten votes for every nomination he gets. The more nomination he gets, the less the chance of an election. He changed it when his then deputy, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, made use of it to force out the deputy prime minister, Tun Ghafar Baba.

Could it happen without his knowledge? No. Could he admit he knew or allowed it? No. He can only deny it for all he is worth. If he admits it, it becomes another breach of the Anwar Ibrahim principle of jail and damnation for corruption if power is abused for personal ends or benefit. If he does not, it does too, for it appeared under his watch. The BN under his leadership used its dominant hold of government to election material and not pay for it.

THE PRINCIPLE IN THE Anwar Ibrahim affair, for which he was convicted and is in jail, is that power abused for personal benefit is corruption. The traditional meaning that corruption involves money is stood on its head. The federal court affirmed this principle when it dismissed his appeal on the first set of charges. It is reluctant to hear the second set. It does not matter why. But it warns all in high office not to abuse power for personal ends or gains. Why Dato' Seri Anwar is in the mess he is in is irrelevant, even if he would not be if he had not defied his mentor and then prime minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed.

To return to the narrative. Dr Mahathir then chose Mr (now Tun) Ghafar Baba to replace Tan Sri Musa, but had to drop him in 1993 when his protege and now nemesis, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, collected enough nominations to defeat Tun Ghafar for the deputy presidency. Rather than face a humiliating defeat, Tun Ghafar withdrew. Dr Mahathir had to eat humble pie. But while he brought in Dato' Seri Anwar, he also planned for his eventual destruction. That was when Pak Lah was brought into the cabinet, after years in the wilderness, dismissed from the cabinet for aligning in the 1987 UMNO elections to the Tengku and Tan Sri Musa. His task was to keep a wary eye on Dato' Seri Anwar.

He is 67. So this is his last crack at the UMNO presidency that was denied him in 1987; he won it, but like the Democratic presidential candidate, Mr Al Gore, in the 2000 presidential election who won the popular vote but it was the Republican loser, Mr George W. Bush, who became president. He has had support from several power groups in the party, who switched to him because, for varying reasons, they did not want to be aligned with Pak Lah. The 'invisible man' in Sungei Buloh aka Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim has instructed his supporters in UMNO to align with the Hermit. Could he win? Does it matter? The challenge has devalued Pak Lah's candidacy. If the Hermit wins or loses, Pak Lah is the loser.

This leaves Parti Keadilan Rakyat or KeADILan. The Registrar of Societies insists it be known as PKR, not KeADILan, but how is it going to enforce that? It was formed after the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, was jailed on trumped up charges of sodomy and corruption when he showed his metier and frightened the BN prime minister of the day, Tun Mahathir Mohamed. He is its eminence grise. But for too long he was its raison d'etre. But if it wants to exist as a political party it must go beyond commitment to its eminence grise. This is where the difficulty begins. Too many among its leaders want this to continue. But it cannot if it must have a role in Malaysia's larger affairs.

The New Straits Times notes (21 June 2004, p1) two instances when the party was split by factionalism and camps: in 1987 and 1993. It did not, of course mention, that Pak Lah was with the challenger, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, in the first, and in the second, with the official candidate, Tun Ghafar Baba, in which the challenger, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, won. It came after years of disallowing debate as the then Prime Minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, rode rough shod over Malaysia to turn it on its head to force feed it into the industralised age. He failed, and UMNO with it. What is not mentioned is that Pak Lah was with the challenger in 1987, and Dato' Seri Najib was on the point of defecting to the challenger when he decided not to.

But there is no scam and no offence, insists the ACA. Dato' Soh could well have to explain why he maligned this upright man's reputation. Did he not know that the cards were stacked against him when he, as an outsider, began his quixotic quest for justice? If he wants to know more about this, he should consult the lawyers of one Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim who is cast to the wolves though he was deputy prime minister because he forgot, as Dr Ling did not, that loyalty to the prime minister is more important than loyalty to the nation or justice or some deranged ideas like that.

Far from it. Malay decorum would not create a scene but if they are upset about it they would show with their body language they are against it. The chairman would notice it, and decide as they wish. That does not mean the UMNO president can do as he likes, taking silence for consent for whatever is one the table. Pak Lah and Dato' Seri Najib come to the UMNO elections crippled in the general elections, even if the National Front (BN) romped home with the largest ever percentage of seats, helped by an utterly biased Election Commission. It ought to propel them without a contest into the two highests posts in UMNO, their political base, but UMNO is horribly split, more so than after the Anwar Ibrahim affair in 1998. If UMNO does not pitch in to help, they could well be defeated.

The then prime minister, Tun (then Dato' Seri) Mahathir Mohamed sacked him more than a decade ago because he was among the few who would stand up to him, and say his piece. He went into business, made a moderate success of it, but his heart remained in UMNO and how it could be reformed. He did not have the traits of a young man in a hurry, as Dato' Seri Anwar. He calculated his moves with precision, and acted only when he had a reasonable chance of success. He is not one for grand gestures, but when he speaks he is listened to with reason.

So, are our cabinet ministers corrupt? As a rule, yes. They escape trial and conviction because it is the Prime Minister who decides if they should be condemned. Whatever you might say of Dr Mahathir, he kept detailed files on the BN members, including the cabinet, and used it to keep them in line. Dato' Seri Anwar challenged him, so he goes to jail. Datin Seri Rafidah did not, so she does not. Even Dato' Seri Nazri admits the allegations of corruption against him are false: there is insufficient evidence, the case is closed, so how could he be corrupt? He threw a tantrum when the ACA confronted him last year over how taxi licences were distributed. He resigned. He was persuade to stay. Now he talks of retiring. He is amongst several cabinet ministers who husbanded their resources so carefully that in office they acquired assets in excess of RM100 million.

He has not said why. But it centres on how the UMNO establishment conspired to destroy its deputy president, and the country's deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, in 1998. The cultural shockwaves in UMNO and in the Malay community continues unabated as Dato' Seri Anwar fights a brilliant campaign from his prison cell in Sungei Buloh to force UMNO leaders to look over their shoulders in fear even as they insist he is history. The more he looms large, the the more nervous and frightened are those who had even cameo roles in his political and personal destruction. Mr Alies Anor was one of them. His was then already political secretary to Dato' Seri Najib, and headed a sub-commitee to ensure Dato' Seri Anwar's political demise.

The test of Malaysia's independent judiciary now rests on how it deals with the political framing of the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. It does not yet pass muster. Similarly, the test of Malaysia's ISA will rest on how the police deals with those accused of breaching national security but with close links to those in power. When the powers that be want some one damned, the ISA is invoked to make that easy. The Anwar Ibrahim case is only the most prominent of that. But its test will come when it acts against someone in the eye of power, like the son of the Prime Minister. The Tahir case reveals it is not. It is time, as the Opposition Leader, Mr Lim Kit Siang, suggests, to rethink the ISA, and amend it for the purpose it should be on the law books, and not to rein in the government's opponents. But that, as many good suggestions from him, is for the government, water off the duck's back.

But the ACA is not serious about its task. It is directly under the Prime Minister, and he must agree before any minister or BN politician is charged in court. He approves only when he wants to destroy a minister. The most famous example is Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, the former deputy prime minister. The ACA helps with its incompetence. Dato' Zulkipli says it received 10,000 reports in the past three years, and decided most were frivolous. He said it so casually and off handedly that no one noticed what that meant. The ACA cleared ten reports a day, when one a month would have been a superhuman effort, for the past three years! It is short staffed, subject to political pressure, had not had a major case in court that would suggest at least it means business. Instead those who appear in court are the postmen, the police-man, the clerk, but none of the 'big fish'. Since Pak Lah made a song and dance of his determination to root out corruption, he must come and take charge of this quickly, or it would redound on him.

But in independent Malaysia, the humanising elements of an otherwise unconscionable law is progressively withdrawn so that one detained under the ISA has no rights whatsoever. He is at the mercy of his captors. It gets worse by the year. It is only the ministers who insist that this gratuitous violence does not exist. How could the Inspector-General of Police no less take the law into his own hands, and beat the manacled and blindfolded just detained former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim to an inch of his life. The police then insisted he was well. It took a royal commission to reveal the torture inflicted on him.

WHAT UPSETS THE NATIONAL Front (BN) coalition and its lead party, UMNO, now is that it splinters from within. Despite the best results ever in a general election in five decades, it flounders and blunders, with uncertain and worried leaders more worried about their future than if the coalition and its member parties must survive. The Malay ground is split, diffused, confused, still seeking a cultural leader it lost in UMNO when it defied Malay cultural mores to sack its deputy president, and the country's deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim in 1998. The UMNO president then did not care how he went, only that he must. But he also wanted him to be humiliated so that he would not have a political future outside of UMNO. He was then detained under the ISA, beaten to an inch of his life by the Inspector-General of Police no less, charged and convicted for sodomy and corruption in circumstances that ensured he would not get a fair trial. He is jailed for 15 years, his appeals wends its way through the courts. As expected, they are dismissed, but with fresh doubts about the fairness of the proceedings. It now redounds on Malaysians that the BN and UMNO, for their own political future, cannot allow him to be free.

Malaysia has long seized to believe in the sanctity of the law and of justice. The Anwar Ibrahim trials and high profile cases where the chief justice goes on holidays with the lawyer for a prominent business man but would not recuse when requested topped the public's contempt for justice in Malaysian courts. There are hundreds more. It is reflected in peculiar ways. Malaysian corporations, when signing contracts, insist on disputes adjudicated by foreign arbitration. The system has broken down. The blame for that must be laid on the former Prime Minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, who did not have a sense of history, did not understand or care how the system worked, and cared not if it broke down the system. All that mattered to him was this his dictates were implicity obeyed. He did not understand government, nor its workings, nor its history. It is system that provides continuity. In any endeavour the individual should fit into the system, not the other way around. If the system must be changed, an alternative must be at hand. This is what the People's Action Party did in Singapore. This is what Malaysia did not do. This is what the United States did not in Iraq.

UMNO, THE ONLY POLITICAL party that matters in the governing National Front (BN) coalition, does not like young men in a hurry. It does not matter if he is a protege of the Prime Minister, as the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, or the son-in-law of the Prime Minister, Mr Khairy Jamaludin. It is a matter of time when the party would unite against them. The last time a young man jumped the queue was in 1976, when the Prime Minister, Tun Abdul Razak, died, and his son, now the deputy prime minister, was press-ganged to stand for his Pekan parliamentary constituency in the by-election. There was a near-revolt in UMNO over that. The rules were hastily redrawn: henceforth UMNO members must serve an apprenticeship of five years before he could contest in state and parliamentary elections. UMNO, especially after its leaders' virtual coup that led to the 13 May racial riots and the later sidelining of all political parties but UMNO in the ruling heirarcy, had begun to atrophy, as muscles when not exercised. The leaders did not want challenge, and imposed creative rules to prevent it, the most creative under the former Prime Minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed. Leaders were told they must await their turn, that Buggins' Turn rules, and any jumping the queue must face the consequences, however unpalatable. The most serious criticism hurled at Dato' Seri Anwar now is that he was a young man in a hurry, and UMNO does not like that.

HUBRIS, UNMITIGATED ARROGANCE, THIS belief in its skewed confidence that it is lord of all its surveys, has brought the National Front (BN) and its president and prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, to their knees. The BN splits from within, far more effectively than the Opposition could, as the huge parliamentary majority weakens it. No one talks about it, but the BN is now irrevocably split. Pak Lah is caught between two stools, unable neither to take advantage of his unprecedented mandate nor keep his troops in line. The BN has had powerful pressure groups from within, but they are, by and large, kept in their corner. Add to this, two groups none would talk of: the small band of Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah loyalists, and the more widespread but seemingly powerless backers of the jailed Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. But these two groups kept their own counsel, did not attempt to be more than a pressure group, and as equally forcibly distanced from the source of power and patronage. This time, however, the wide split from within comes from an uncertain and weak party president and the state warlords, who exert their authority in ways they would not dare under previous prime ministers.

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