FEW HAD HEARD OF DATO' MEGAT ABDUL WAHAB bin Megat Abu Bakar. The New Straits Times today recounts in loving detail how this near Bankrupt former teacher who drew currency notes as a hobby in his youth now owns the Royal Mint. It tells how he conquered the odds, and boldly asked the Malaysian central Bank, Bank Negara Malaysia, to privatise the Royal Mint to him. And it did. Without hesitation. From then on, it has been a bed of roses. He does so well that he plans to make it the supplier of currency blanks to the region. Who is he? How did he get the privatisation of the Mint? I dare say it had nothing to do with him. The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, or the finance minister of the time, Tun Daim Zainuddin, would have instructed the Governor of BNM to give it to him. All he then had to do is to ask for it. BNM then gravely informs him it is his. That is how these things are done in Malaysia. He is the crony extraordinaire. Royal Mints cannot be run as businesses are in Malaysia. But Dato' Megat Abu Bakar tells us it can.

How do they do this? By sheer bribery. I know of three instances in recent years when a suitable amount of money slipped into the pockets of the religious affairs officials save them from further embarrassment. In the 1970s, a middling civil servant who later rose to be Malaysia's chief spy, was caught smooching with a young Malay lady within the grounds of the National Museum. Money was demanded of him which he did not have. And offered a cheque drawn on the Jalan Raja branch of the then Chartered Bank. When they turned at the Bank to cash the cheque, they were arrested.

Three years ago, the retired Malaysian armed forces chief, Tan Sri Ismail Omar, built a house in the vicinity. On 20 November 2002, a mudslide in heavy rains in the wee hours of the morning reduced it to rubble. The general, chairman of Affin Bank, was dug out of the rubble, but six of his family, including his wife, and two Indonesian maids, died. He was rushed to nearby Ampang Puteri hospital, muttering incoherently about important documents he needed to get his hands on. The MPAJ rushed in to flex its muscles: Residents in nearby houses were ordered evacuated, and if they did not, be fined RM250 for every day they did not. Meanwhile, technical experts explained how this building on slopes of hills already upset from its geological foundations was a tragedy waiting to happen.

When Puteri UMNO was formed, one target was Malay undergraduate women. But for every one else, politics is explicitly banned. When the Government would not allow Parti Socialis Malaysia, with a largely Malay base, to be registered, for reasons unknown, it did not even wait to register a new party to replace the Sarawak National Party within days SNAP was deregistered. Even when the government decides, again without consultation or debate, to impose national service, it is now made optional. The Malay sees it as a devious attempt to allow the rich and the titled the option of their children not mixing with the hoi polloi. MARA, a body formed to help the Malay get on in life and by common consent the most successful body to uplift the Malay, is now privatised to a Malay apparatchik who financed it with majority funding from a Singapore-government-controlled Bank. In other words, if this Dato' cannot repay the loans (as he cannot), MARA ultimately would be controlled lock, stock and barrel by the Singapore government.

The Soh trial is one nightmare of many. It could trigger his house of cards to collapse. He assumed it would, and could, not so long as he is MCA president. Which is why he must remain in office. No one talks of it but his debts -- directly, his wife's, and his son's RM1.2 billion for which he must be in the end responsible -- cannot be repaid. It is not known if he has signed any personal guarantees, but he could almost surely have. He is liable for RM600 million to one Malaysian Bank and a like sum in Singapore dollars to one Singapore Bank. There are others in the two countries and elsewhere. He manages, by the skin of his teeth, to pay the monthly interest, which raises another question of how he he gets RM100 million and more every month to do that.

Now comes Scam Two. The Touch 'n Go scheme is relaunched, with a much desired feature: Auto Reload. When funds run low, all you have to do is to flash your credit card at the booth, and it would be topped up. There must be a catch, and there is. About 30 Banks, foreign and local, issue Master Card and Visa credit cards. But only three -- Affin Bank, Hong Leong Bank, and Bumiputra Commerce Bank -- have this feature. If you have cards from the other Banks and financial institutions, which is the majority of highway users, you are out on your luck. You queue and suffer the penalty for not using the preferred card. Or apply for it if you must. The Touch 'n Go chief operating officer, Ms Swinder Grewal, is oblivious to it all. She waxes eloquent in a letter to Touch 'n Go card holders: she promises you peace of mind "knowing that you will always have sufficient funds in your Touch 'n Go card"; auto reloading via affiliated Banks; and auto reload combined with a credit facility, "all in one convenience card". In other words, if you want to make full use of all these facilities, get a credit card from one of the three Banks. Could she explain why?

Bankers and other financiers routinely call on UMNO divisional and other leaders about unrepaid Bank drafts and loans before an important meeting, implying that if they follow their conscience and oppose the official view, the loans would be recalled post-haste. If they prove unshakeable, more direct methods are employed. So Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah challenged the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, in 1987, got only two nominations but lost by only 42 votes out of 2,000. When Dr Mahathir found his hold on UMNO challenged, he changed the rules so a candidates got ten bonus votes for every nomination he received for president. It created the climate in UMNO the ideal means to threaten those who stray from the official line. There was no directive, but the officially-inspired heavy hand was much in evidence. As now.

What raised the public ire is her spin, in asking for public donations, not backed by medical prognosis. She claimed she was paralysed, had no money, needed RM300,000 for urgent surgery in Australia. None of which, it turns out, was true. The Prime Minister, his deputy, their wives and a sampling of the UMNO and cabinet heirarchy called on her, the order went to government-owned or -controlled companies to donate. In a week, RM390,000 was raised. We do not know what was donated into her Bank accounts, to which public donations were directed. She left for Sydney in such haste that the Australian High Commission delivered the visa to her at the airport. And without a medical opionion about her condition or even if she needed to go to Australia.

The original plan was for an EPF contributor to go to a Pos Malaysia Berhad outlet, make his selection through Oda Saja Sdn Bhd, a company formed for this purpose, and in due course the Post Office would deliver the computer to your door. If anything went wrong, neither was responsible, and he had to go to the authorised agent of the computer brand selected. He was limited to the brands and models on offer, for a fixed outrageously high price. That collapsed soon enough, as it must. How could the Post Office which cannot deliver letters on time deliver computers on time? Computer shops were then pressed in as agents. The BSN Bank was pressed into the scheme. Pos Malaysia and Oda Saja were let off the hook, but continued to collect the commission. The new scheme gave contributors an opportunity to get at their EPF contributions for their personal needs. Many needed a personal computer as one needs a hole in the head. Having one did not mean one became computer literate although the scheme was presented as if one would be. The scheme collapsed little by little, and is now put to rest.

A fugitive from justice would not get such publicity as Dato' Soh basks in. He is in his view a business man wronged though every aspect of his businesses is no different from the cronies and courtiers of the Establishment. Like every crony, he has nothing to show for his wealth except the money stashed away and the unrepayable and huge Bank loans. The only difference between him and that international business men of unquestioned repute is that the latter made it to be a crony. Otherwise, they are birds of a feather. He desperately wants to return to try his luck again, and he is brought in to knock Dr Ling off his perch. He has more help than he realises. Except for The Star, every mainstream newspaper highlights his criticism of Dr Ling. He is a suicide bomber in the tradition of the Sri Lankan and Palestinian, only in Malaysia, he could, at worst, expect a prison sentence but that only if he fails.

Whatever spin he puts on his arrival, it is to force Dato' Seri Ling off his political perch. He has made a deal, by whatever name you might call it, and however strong his denial. He was arrested on arrival, since there is a warrant of arrest out after a corporate and financial scam, is released on a RM2 million bail, put up by a retired air force chief. Since the prosecution intends to call 300 witnesses, others trembling on the knife edge include Bankers, business men, politicians. Some of the biggest names in the land are mentioned.

The present crisis came from that refusal to consult. And the takeover is now an albatross around the MCA's neck. It puts at risk its profitable Star newspaper, whose stock is pledged to Banks for the funds with which it took control of the Nanyang group. As Tan Sri Tajudin Ramli of TRI would tell you, if MCA cannot service that loan, the Star could end up in the "wrong" hands.

This failures we are now told is proof of privatisation's unqualified success. The National Economic Action Council executive director, Dato' Mustapha Mohamed, says the government's takeover of several major companies is not proof enough privatisation has failed. It is bad management that caused it. The irony of what he says escapes him. If people given the privatised companies, all of whom cronies of the Establishment, cannot run it because they do not know how or run it to the ground, he believes it is proof that it is a success. And he is the man who makes pronouncements on Malaysia's economy on behalf of the government. Besides, he was also finance minister (one of two) until his electors in Kelantan decided to retire him from politics in 1999. He is a Daim crony for whom Dr Mahathir has more than a soft spot. In office, he was well-regarded, and even his detractors admit he did a good job. World Bank officials have told me that they welcomed his appearances, for he came well prepared, and could hold his ground, as many BN ministers cannot.

The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, says MAS's RM10 billion debt and its slide into certain Bankruptcy is not because of mismanagement and thievery but a victim of the sharp decline in world travel after 11 September. Tan Sri Tajuddin Ramli had bought control of MAS on easy-payment schedules available only for Establishmen cronies, made a mess of it, sold it back to the government for a RM900 million profit. Only after the handover was it known how he broke up the airline such that MAS was responsible for the debts, and he made profits for himself, his family and their companies by providing necessary services for MAS. The Treasury representative on the MAS board raised not a smirk, nor the government its golden share to circumvent this rapacity?

What is the BN government doing about it? Nothing but shrug its shoulders and write off the losses. If it was serious about its social contract, it would have forced the lenders to Bankruptcy and their assets seized. The two men have business empires built on sand, and political patronage. If you look at the large debtors of Banks and financial institutions that went under or in difficulty, you would the cronies of the Establishment having debts they could not repay in generations -- and not only in one Bank, but several. If the government had insisted on due diligence, they would not have got a loan to open a pizza parlour. But cronies often get loans, after a Bank had the temerity to reject them for sound reasons, with a threatening call from their mentors. The losses multiply.

He has two men in mind. UMNO Supreme Council rejected one and the other is now chairman of MAS. They do not have a political base, one a former civil servant and the other a Banker. One became Bank Negara governor only to be removed when he could not balance the conflicting demands of the prime minister and the finance minister. The other attracted national attention when he lost the country about RM31 billion, the final tally, in ill-advised currency speculation a decade ago. One could not explain to anti-corruption inspectors the RM100,000 in an enevelope in his table drawer in his office. Rumours now persist he does not want a finance minister, only a finance minister.

Between Dato' Seri Hamid Zainal Abidin, with his gross insecurities, and the accountants with their penny-pinching short term approach to company rescue, there is suddenly a hidden but real danger of its assets being hijacked. Already, there appears to be an elaborate move by the master business 'dalang' (puppet master) to hive off Tabung Haji's valuable assets into a private company he ultimately controls. How does he do this? First, he gets loss making smaller companies in the group take over assets of larger and better run companies. Tabung Haji Properties took over Enstek, with its large land Bank, adjacent to the Malaysian Super Corridor; another, Tabung Haji Technology, takes over the construction arm, Tabung Haji Universal Builders. Both minnows swallowing eagles, with 1,000 jobs to be shed; and makes no sense. The minister should have stepped in, but he would not: the key man in the takeovers is his former pupil when he was a Malay school teachers at Victoria Institution.

The Indera Kayangan byelectios in Perlis kicked off with the usual defections. Barely had the campaign begun when its Keadilan elections director and 68 others defected to UMNO for the usual reasons: they had seen the light; Keadilan did not select a Malay candidate; UMNO is the party of the future; the party they walked into from UMNO is now without hope. Maj (rtd) Mohd Shariff Abdul Razak, who is also deputy liasion chief for the state, decided, on the spur of the moment, to defect, so disgusted he was that his demands were not met; but not disgusted enough to be the Keadilan director of elections. He did not, as he admits, convey his reservations to party leaders. Why did they quit? The Perlis mentri besar, Dato' Seri Shahidan Kassim, says all Keadilan members "that matter" in Perlis would leave "on their own accord, after being disillusioned with the opposition parties". There has not been an election in the past two decades without "disgruntled" opposition members would cross over to the National Front "after having seen the light"; one went on to be a cabinet minister and, on retirement, deputy chairman of a major Bank.

It is there because the party constitution gives him dictatorial powers to remove his challengers, so that he is returned unanimously at party elections. And so Dr Ling went on his merry rule in the party by committing it to debt that cannot be repaid in generations. He treated the party as an extension of his self, buying newspapers and not batting his eyelid when his son acquired RM1.2 billion in Bank loans given precisely because who his father is.

Bolehland has one undeniable function: make life as difficult for the consumer with a panopoly of technological refinements. It does not matter what the product is, it is to make you, the consumer, in the end, to be as angry and frustrated as anyone could. Whether it is to draw money from your account at the Bank through ATM cards, train tickets, or means to automatically pay your highway tolls, the promised ease soon is an illusion. We have the Internet, but try to top up your account, and see how frustrated you become. It does not matter if you sign up with Jaring or TMNet, the ease you get for embracing it must be paid for at some time or other; anyone who is happy with the system should not be allowed to stay that way for long.

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