He is a Malaysian citizen because he was born in Kampung Koh, in Sitiawan, Perak, then part of the Dindings, whose main port, now known as Lumut, the British wanted as a naval base. The Dindings became part of the Straits Settlements in 1874, when it was ceded to Britain, in the Pangkor Treaty that brought its colonial overlordship over Malaya.

Let us first look at what the 30 January election is about. It is to elect a 'transitional assembly', not a parliament, to draft a constitution, which would has to be ratified in a referendum by 15 October, and then an election by 15 December based on it to choose a new government. Election is by proportional representation, not first past the post that is the norm in the United States and Great Britain, the ballot so complex as to perplex those who dare to vote. There are 7,785 mostly unnamed candidates in 83 coalitions of political parties and causes, each with between 83 and 275 candidates. A third of the candidates are women, their rights enshrined as in that other Washingtonian disaster in this war on terror, Afghanistan. There is nothing in this election to suggest that it is anything but an alien system to Iraq as it is to Washington and London.

So his open house in Kuala Lumpur was in one sense a political homecoming. He re-establishes, after six years in prison, his political credentials as a political heavyweight; that he has no need for UMNO; that he would and could rise with the Opposition; that if he should ever be prime minister, it would be at the head of an Opposition coalition not of an UMNO-led coalition. He is a politician through and through. One should imagine he is as much a threat to PAS as he is to UMNO, but what saves him is that he has a vision for Malaysia that is sorely lacking in the two main Malay political parties. He has usurped UMNO's original vision of a Malay dominant Malaysia in which Islam has a pre-eminent role. UMNO deserted that for an Islamicised Malaysia, and it differs with PAS only on the form. Pak Sheikh entered politics to introduce more Islamic credentials to a multiracial Malaysia but now finds himself paradoxically reversing his roles: how to moderate the rush to an Islamic state with a return to the political formula of multiracialism that brought Malaysia its independence of Britain in 1955.

The government cannot fight corruption alone. All must join in, insist of ethical values and integrity. Or all will come to nought. Societies like the KLSTI works with the government to root out corruption. Pak Lah said what was expected of him. He went off to attend the ASEM meeting in Hanoi. It did not take long for his words to be challenged. The Iraq Survey Group, which for 18 months had investigated Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, found instead weapons of mass corruption. There were no WMD, they found, embarrassing the two totem poles who insist Saddam must be destroyed at any cost because they had. This report is causing political waves in the US and Britain. So, the spin moved sharply to what Saddam did with the UN oil-for-food programme, which allowed Baghdad to sell its oil to buy food for its people. The sanctions continued in the meanwhile, and the ISG, in its trawling of official documents, found countries and inviduals all over the world who allegedly benefited, for personal gain, by partaking in it. It provided the much need diversion from the political flak in London and Washington.

So, why is the Malaysian government so upset at this allegations of torture? The government is embarrassed at this linkage with Abu Ghraib. No government has yet learnt how to deal with embarrassment. Not the United States. Not Britain. Certainly not Malaysia. And it shows. But make no mistake about it: The object of torture is torture, as George Orwell, said in his book "1984".

But it could not be sustained. The political and demographic realities ensured that this democratic government would not want the United States to hang on to Iraq as its linchpin to the control of the Middle East. It was yet another blow. The United States and Britain went to war in the confident expectation that President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass distraction. It did not matter if he did not. They needed an excuse to invade, and this was it. There was none. Then one by one it shifted away from its stated ideals as its own raison d'etre bit the dust. They hoped the Shias would welcome them with flowers; today, the Shia is more determined than the Sunnis to drive the United States out. The Sunnis deprived of power they enjoyed under Saddam Hussein did not take that kindly.

MALAYSIA-THAI RELATIONS ARE TEMPERED by an irreconciliable problem - the four Malay provinces of south Thailand - which Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur view through its national perspective, making a permanent solution all but impossible. When Britain demarcated its colonial borders with Thailand in 1897, Bangkok ceded sovereignty of Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan and Trengganu but retained Pattani, Narathiwat, Satun, Yala, the Malays in southern Thailand fought with Bangkok for a Muslim space in a Buddhist nation to this day. Bangkok tolerated it though in the main did little to correct the grievances. In the past five decades, especially after 1957 after Kuala Lumpur's independence from Britain, this plight of the southern Thai Malays attracted its attention. All post-independence Malaysian prime ministers - from Tengku Abdul Rahman to Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi - have had an important role in the southern Thai Malay convulsions since. None would talk about it, but the hidden Malaysian hand was clear. The Thai Malays, at that time, wanted to be in Malaysia. The Thai government in Bangkok wanted to preserve its territorial integrity.

All these issues would reassert itself within this fratricidal struggle for the Malay heartland between UMNO and PAS on which has a better plan for an Islamic state. That would be much more traumatic for it would be fought against irreconciliable political enemies in which neither is now prepared to give, or take, a quarter. It would be at the heart of the other irreconciliable divisions. For as we approach the 50th year of our independence from Britain in 2007, we as a nation are as fractured and divisive as we could be. One reason for it is that the BN had an external agenda - to paint PAS in the blackest fundamentalist paint it could. This general election is held amidst the ubiquitous war on terror in which the bad guys, as Washington sees it, should not win. They did not. The battle is won. Is the war?

The BN candidate list is fluid. Pak Lah has to wait until the last minute before he can announce them. The BN, and UMNO, is so fractured from within that whoever is chosen has a ready-made opposition in the constituency. Pak Lah and Dato' Seri Najib frequently call on UMNO members to unite during the campaign. That is easier said than done. There is not one state where this is absent. In Sarawak, it is more serious: the state BN threatened to go it alone, for the Council Negeri elections, if Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud remained BN head and state chief minister. He cut short an overseas holiday to quell the revolt. He failed. To staunch the crisis, the Council Negeri elections is not held. The Kayveas caper tests Pak Lah's political mettle for how that is revolved would measure how successful he is. For, if Pak Lah does not know it, it reveals a weak centre, and the rise of the warlords. Meanwhile, lists are drawn up for candidates in some constituencies. The newspapers mentioned it, but what these problem constituencies do not have is a crisis: the candidate invariable is the man closest to Pak Lah. Meanwhile, Malaysia now attempts opinion polls. They are popular in Britain and the United States. So they must here too. But one must disbelieve them. The pollsters learn as they work, there is no serious attempt to find an acceptable and fair sample of voters, what is acceptable and allowed in the West would not work here, no one, especially a Malay, would tell you what he thinks, many are inaccessible to the urban-based pollsters. The result is not worth bothering about. Perhaps it might in a hundred years. Certainly not now.

IS THERE RELIGIOUS FREEDOM in Malaysia? Yes. There is no doubt about it. But as in all societies - including the US: try building a mosque or a Hindu temple in the middle of a Christian community; or wear a Muslim headscarf to school in France or at work in a supermarket in Denmark - it is not absolute. It cannot be. The United States, like Malaysia, is fond of lists. They create one for every conceivable occasion and statistic. It is a powerful weapon to browbeat those it believes it can, and use these lists on various issues to shame the governments to believe they are unfit to be in the globalised world of nations it dominates. These lists are at best of doubful truth. The US, in these lists, would be among the top. But we saw what happened to Muslims there after 11 September 2001. The Guantanamo detention camp was for Muslims from the uncivilised world. If the Muslims were from Britain or Australia or other "civilised" nations, different rules apply. But if you from the "uncivilised" Muslim world, like Pakistan, Indonesia, the Middle East, and elsewhere, death is too good for them. Washington is critical of Malaysia's execrable detention laws, but keeps its silence when it enacts tougher laws to punish the Muslims for their temerity to challenge Christian civilisation in this, in President George W. Bush's memorable phrase, crusade.

The Gelang Patah-Tuas bridge has opened a new link between the two countries. The Southern Gateway has another unmentioned aim: to allow water to flow through the straits for the first time since 1941, when Australian army sappers blew up the causeway - which until then had a drawbridge to allow free passage of ships through the straits - to deny the invading Japanese troops easy access to the 'impregnable fortress' Britain mistakenly thought Singapore then was. It was not, as later events proved, but that is another story. The Southern Gateway now is an afterthought. Johore feared that if the second link was widely used, Johore Bahru would become a dead town. There was even a suggestion that the Johore capital would be transferred to a Putra Jaya-like capital at the site of the capital of Johore Lama of the 16th century up the Sungei Johore. All that is, it now turns out, the rantings of politicians on the make. And so the Southern Gateway.

But when Britain decided her citizens detained at the base deserved better, and should be dealt with to the highest standards of Western justice, that citizenship determined how and where an enemy combatant, the US term for those in Guantanamo, is tried, it made nonsense of its commitment to its war on terror. The non-British citizen deserved their fate, but not the British citizen. In every discussion of this in Britain, in the media and elsewhere, no thought was given to the others in Guantanamo, the presumption being that Britain must ensure its citizens should not be subjected to the frontier kangaroo court justice the others would face.

He does not now even seem to be master of his own self. He was forced to release the Reformasi 6 by the Anglo-Saxon powers he rails about. There is much truth in this. It is difficult now to see how Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim can be denied bail, as he desires, on 14 July 2003. The pressure is too hot. He understands the political implications of not kowtowing to this pressure. It was the British and United States ambassadors in Indonesia in 1965 who had a still unclear role in unleashing the bloodbath that killed a million Indonesians to overthrow President Sukarno, and bring in its wake an Anglo-Saxon friendly government. As released official British and US documents now reveal, the then British ambassador, Sir Andrew Gilchrist, gloats about the extent of the bloodbath and gave enough clues of his involvement. The US ambassador, Mr Marshall Green, had come to Indonesia from South Korea, where he had presided over the military coup which brought General Park Chung Hee to power, and with it a clear hold on its economy. It is Britain and the United States that caused the conflagration in Iraq. So he had no choice. His attack on the Anglo-Saxon powers must be viewed with this background in mind.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH OF THE world's only superpower met with his 'Coalition of the Willing' vassals, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar of Spain in one the few places on earth they could without fear of angry anti-war demonstrations or public oprobrium: the Portuguese island of Azores, 900 miles off the coast of Europe and 2,100 miles off the East Coast of the United States. Mr Bush would have faced massive anti-war protests if had come to London or Madrid; Mr Blair and Mr Aznar to Washington would affirm their status as vassals. Meeting as thieves in the night revealed their isolation, bumbling ineptness, and arrogance in forcing a war with Iraq no one wants now. Spain there confirmed their impotence. It was a council of war no less. Otherwise, it would have asked the other permanent members of the Security Council, or at least their Cold War ally, France. Curiously, Bulgaria, the other nation itching for war, was not there. It did not qualify, even as a vassal.

What an accident that was! He was the right man in the right place. When Dato' Sir Onn Jaffar, the UMNO president walked out in high dudgeon when his plan to open the party to non-Malays was rejected, this playboy prince, then a forgotten deputy public prosecutor, succeeded him. And galvanised UMNO and Malaya to demand independence from Britain, which he achieved on 31 August 1957. Knowing himself and his weaknesses, he surrounded himself with capable men. But he made the decisions, which once made rarely wavered. He had that rare ability to listen to advise and decide quickly and firmly.

That civilians died in all those wars, no one cares or mentions. It is "collateral damange", the language debased so they do not have the dignity of death. But when Bali and Mombassa strikes, we must, we are told, be shocked and horrified at the carnage. President George Bush was present at the memorial service for those who died in the 11 September 2001 carnage and the Australian Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, for the Bali service. As for the hundreds of thousands who died in other wars who did not live in democracies like the US, Britain, Australia, there is not even a thought. This selective lachrymose sympathy fuels the terrorists to more violence and infuriates others who would otherwise be sympathetic. This is how it would be, more horrifying civilian casualties than ever.

The Malays who joined the MCP often did through the organisations they represented. Those who fought, in the 1930s, against British colonialism, opted to back the MCP when it took up arms against Britain. But Kamarulzaman Teh joined it out of personal conviction. In 1946, he wandered into the City Light bookstore in Foch Avenue (now Jalan Chenglock) in Kuala Lumpur, bought a book on the History of the Soviet Union, was so impressed with it and its hopes for energizing the individual Man, that he walked into the offices of the Malayan Communist Party, further down the street, and joined it. There was a brief misguided attempt to suggest he did not, but had instead joined a Malay-based political party which did not exist. But it was out of character. He had had no ties with any purely racial party or association in his life. The MCP was legal then, its leaders marched in the Victory Parade in London, and Chin Peng, its future secretary-general, was awarded the OBE for his exploits during World War Two. Another who marched in that parade and represented the opposite steam was the late Tun Datu Mustapha bin Datu Harun, later Yang Dipertua and chief minister of Sabah, who also got an OBE for his wartime exploits.

But the government also sent Malay students in the tens of thousands to universities and colleges in Australia, New Zealand, Britain, the United States, Canada so they would not lose out. But as usual it was not properly thought out, and it is the Malay today who is imperilled in this drastic inability to understand English. When Malaysian and Singapore officials met recently met to sort out their bilateral difficulties, much of the confusion and miscommunication came from the Malaysian delegations' misunderstanding what they heard, and what they thought they meant was not. The talks of course were in English. English has declined so drastically as a language that our interaction with the world is drastically reduced. Better English is spoken in Myanmar than in Malaysia. That would continue so long as the teaching of English is a form of political vendetta.

The news out of Afghanistan now reminds one of news out of Moscow of its adventure in this blessed land: the supreme confidence and belief it turned the corner enroute to civilisation for these 'barbarians'. But this confidence and belief is inverse to ground reality. The Afghan regards the United States as it once did the Soviet Union and, lest we forget, the United Kingdom: a foreign power who should be made to pay for daring to colonise it. There is, in Afghan eyes, no difference between the Moscow-protected Babrak Karmal or Dr Najibullah and the Washington-protected Hamid Karzai. When Washington recently took over the security of its protege, Mr Karzai, the battle is lost. All Afghans now only need do is to force the United States into a never-ending quagmire, as they Britain during the Great Game in the 19th and 20th centuries. The recent attempt on Mr Karzai's life in Kandahar is but the first salvo. There would be more. And a new enemy. With Mullah Omar and his Taliban disappearing into their tribal heartlands, the new enemy is its old friend, Gulbudeen Hekmatyar, building a new crusade against the new invader.

Mishaps notwithstanding, the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, would succeed Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed. He needs to clothe himself in heroic grandeur to lift him out of the ordinary to be demigod successor of Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed. So, in an interview with Bernama, he makes the astounding revelation that his grandfather, Sheikh Abdullah Fahim, chose the exact time and date, midnight on 31 August 1957, through Islamic astrology, Malaysia would get its independence from Britain. The link is tenuous. He is unsure. As the Bername report says (The New Straits Times, p5), "Abdullah thinks that after hearing about the talks which would be held in London, they may have asked about a possible date for independent. 'What I know for sure,' he said, 'is that when they wanted to set the date, my grandfather, Sheikh Abdullah Fahim's suggestion was accepted as the most suitable date for the independence of our country.'" This could well be true but I am astounded that an important nugget as this is kept hidden during the 28 years Dato' Seri Abdullah has been in government.

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