This is an issue that will not go away. The Federal Constitution is raped so that Malaysia is an Islamic state. Although Trengganu courts have said the Trengganu state assembly could not give to an organisation to issue fatwas, in the Federal government it is allowed. Otherwise, how could a government department – which the Islamic religious department is – create a crisis, and showed its power by saying it would not form a snoop squad because Pak Lah objects to it. In other words, this department will not follow government rules and will follow what the prime minister has to say, not the other way around. Now in Tampin, an issue has cropped up which would alienate the Chinese and the Buddhists. A Malay woman, who married a Chinese Buddhist in 1936 and has practiced as one since, has died at 89; she was disallowed to leave the Muslim religion about 15 years ago. The Negri Sembilan religious affairs department want to bury her as a Muslim. She has not been a Muslim for 60 years. Pak Lah, the MCA and the Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia should make a stand. So must Mr Khairy Jamaluddin, Pak Lah's son-in-law, who is from the state (Negri Sembilan), and hopes to be prime minister of Malaysia soon. He is now engaged in making sure the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, would not.

PAK LAH SAYS HE will decide if the Commission of Inquiry on the nude ear squat is made public. He should have decided that before he appointed it. The Commission of Inquiry was told, unbelievably, that the woman in question was not a Chinese national, as the mainstream newspapers had reported, but a Malay woman. In the meanwhile, the home minister, Dato' Azmi Khalid, had apologised to the Chinese government. He says he did not, but the Chinese papers, which carried a report of his press conference in Beijing, said he did. As usual, he has not explained to Malaysians why he did, but told the Malaysian press he did not apologise. No one believes him of course, but two editors from the China Press have been asked to resign for printing the news for which Dato' Azmi had apologised.

THE MALAYSIAN GOVERNMENT IS in disarray. It tries to do what it can, but not what it should. It now takes what it must to divert attention. The Malaysian home minister, Dato' Azmi Khalid, has apologised to Beijing on his arrival there. He went in secret after that telling the press he could go on December 20, postponed after China was not informed of the visit. But the issue of the nude Chinese woman doing an illegal ear squat affects Chinese tourists as well as Malaysians. China does not allow its tourists into Malaysia because government agencies and authorities mistreat its citizens. An MMS videoclip, taken by a policeman probably for enjoyment, has spread like wildfire. The government tried denying, in various ways, that it mistreats tourists. But this is standard police procedure for any woman asked to go to a police station for, for example, leaving her passport at home. Malaysian women - housewives, who believe the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Anwar Ibrahim, students, illtreated over the years - confirm that they had also been asked by the police to undress and do the ear squat. The lock-up rules do not allow illtreating anyone the police had arrested, but the police justify it because the women might be carrying drugs on their person. The MMS videoclip has gone around the world. The official explations to show that the nude woman ear squat did not happen are not believed. It has become a Chinese issue, and even the non-Malay parties in the National Front has commented on it to the detriment of the government. The government accuses the Chinese, Indian and other non-Malays to be racist because they do not support it. Multiracialism in Malaysia means the races would eat together on racial celebrations. At other times, the races go their separate ways. There is nothing in common among the Malay, the Indian, the Chinese and others, who live their separate lives, often oblivious of the others. The government does not understand this. Its education policy, at best aimed at Malay as the language for all. ignores this trend and forces the races to teach, for instance, science and mathematics in English. If a Malaysian does not support Malay, he will be a fish out of water in a government department.

THE DEPUTY INFORMATION MINISTER, Dato' Zainuddin Maidin, has called on Malaysians not to be racialistic, and the deputy higher education minister, Dato' Fu Ah Kiow, urged authorities not to be 'overzealous' as this 'could be misconstrued as targetting a particular group.' No Malay minister has told the authorities not to. Among the non-Malays in the National Front, only the Chinese members of the government has. Perhaps Dato' Zainuddin might tell the Malay leaders in the National Front, especially from UMNO, not to be racialist. The nude woman in the MMS videoclip is Chinese, the government now says she is not a Chinese tourist. But that must be a guess, since it has called on the woman to say she is the woman. The identity of the woman is not the issue, that she was made to do the ear squat naked is confirmed in the videoclip. The police are running hither and thither to prove it is not at fault, when it is. The government is concerned its explanation is disbelieved. So the appeal to be not racialist. But is this believed? In Malaysia, racial profiling is standard: the Indians are vicious gangsters, the Chinese are responsible for many a wrong doing. It is taken as truth when dealing with the Indian and Chinese. Yet the official word is not to profile people racially. If it had not been done, would this nude Chinese woman doing the ear squat have become serious as it has?

THE PRIME MINISTER, DATO' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (Pak Lah) is furious with his deputy internal security minister, Dato' Noh Omar for having said that foreigners could go home if they thought Malaysia was cruel. But he does not drop the deputy minister from his government. He dare not, for Dato' Noh and his supporters may join his opponents in UMNO, which has the power in the National Front government. The home affairs minister, Dato' Azmi Khalid, who had to postpone his visit to China from yesterday to 20 December 2005, blames 'negative press reports". He makes a slur on the Chinese government, which the previous day had protested against Malaysia ill- treating its citizens. The Malaysian public is blamed, and anyone else, if only to tell the world that it is not the government's fault. The Malaysian Government illtreats its citizens and they keep quiet. Those from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Vietnam are, but their governments keep quiet; so it assumed wrongly China would too. Malaysia supports, or vaccilates in public about its departments and agencies illtreating the Chinese tourists, and cannot admit that it has done wrong. In this first crisis of its making, it is in dissaray. It thinks it can explain its side of the story, but no one, especially the Malaysian public, believes it. The foreigners, especially China, disbelieves it. The mainstream newspapers in Malaysia, which by and large is the National Front's public relations machine, has carried articles of police and immigration manhandled foreign tourists. The National Front government has no case, but acts as if it has. It could ask its experts to solve the issue, but they are chosen for their political reliability not for their experise.

THE HOME AFFAIRS MINISTER, Dato' Azmi Khaled, who is going to China on 20 December 2005 and not today as he announced to the press, said it is press reports that paint Malaysia as profiling tourists, not that it does, that is hurting tourism. He said that newspapers in China 'have been carrying negative stories on the treatment of their citizens, and it does not help when local newspapers reprint the stories'. But has there been a believable statement so far that it does not profile tourists? The deputy internal security minister, Dato' Noh Omar, says it does profile tourists. So far he has justified the police case against the tourists. What he says is important, because the minister of his ministry is the Prime Minister, Pak Lah. Journalists go after a story, and the naked tourist doing a ear squat is one. The government is at needles and pins, saying one thing one time, and another the next, giving the impression that it is not in control of itself, that the police and immigration care two hoots of official policy. The police and immigration officers have done what they liked, irrrespective of what government policy is, because they have a hidden policy: ketuanan Melayu or MalayDominance. That is why there are few Malays, Chinese and other non-Malays in civil service. Those appointed are usually to make the Malay look good. So, most non-Malays do not apply and prefer to take their chances in the private sector. Most migrate to other countries. How can Dato' Azmi explain this fact of life to China when he goes there later this month?

THE MINISTER OF HOME Affairs, Dato' Seri Azmi Khalid, will not go to China as planned tomorrow. China has told him to sort out the mess in his department in two weeks, and come afterwards. The government was caught flatfooted when the MMS videoclip of a naked Chinese woman doing the ear squat was published. The police predictably have gone after the person who took the videoclip. The newspapers are full of articles which suggest that the police did the right thing. But the problem of police brutality is not new. The Tenaganita chief, Irene Fernandez, has in her files Indians, Bangladeshis, Nepalis, and others who have been brutalised by the police. The DAP MP, Ms Teresa Kok, has been investigated for having the videoclip. The police wanted to find out how she came to it. The police is not interested whether the videoclip is true until the prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, instructed them to find out the truth of the videoclip. It has become important because fewer Chinese tourists affect Malaysia's bottom line. Genting Highlands casino lost millions of ringgit as a result of Chinese tourist high rollers staying away for two days early this year. Chinese tourists would not come to Malaysia all of a sudden. There has been two-thirds less tourists for the first nine months this year compared to the last.

THERE IS EMBARASSED FACES in the Police as the Prime Minister has ordered an investigation of how a naked woman came to do the ear squat in a police cell. The Deputy IGP, Dato' Musa Hassa, however, wants to find out how the MMS videoclip came to be taken. He has eaten his words now that Pak Lah had said the incident must be investigated. If the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, could be beaten to a pulp by no less than the then IGP, Dato' Rahim Noor, what about the ordinary man in the street? Dato' Rahim Noor justified beating Dato' Seri Anwar because the latter, trussed up, had hurled the word 'anjing' for beating him up. It seems standard procedure for the Police to beat up a suspect. What is worse is that Dato' Seri Anwar was arrested and beaten up because he was on the wrong side of the then Prime Minister, Tun Mahathir. Dato' Musa Hassan is promoted to his present post so that he could forestall Dato' Seri Anwar on his political comeback, that he was to stop Dato' Seri Anwar from rejoining UMNO, whose deputy president he once was. If high ranking Malaysians are treated badly by the Police, then what hope is there for a visiting tourist who is not Caucasian. Caucasian troops are treated gingerly, but they do not bring enough money. Depending on them alone will not fill the hotels and faciliies here. The rich Chinese would.

THE CONTRADICTORY STATEMENTS FROM the Police suggest the ear squat is authorised by the IGP Standing Orders, and is therefore allowed. So what is the fuss? The police give out its information little by little, but they have said, in effect, it has done nothing wrong. The MMS videoclip is therefore not an issue at all. After all, the police have said in effect that a woman caught for leaving her passport at home could also be a drug carrier. If that is the law, then all the Malaysian government has to do is tell the Chinese government that its citizens come here at their risk, that its women will be stripped and made to do the ear squat for minor offenses, and if the Chinese government does not agree, its tourists should go elsewhere. After all, the laws must be respected. The IGP Standing Orders (IGPSO) is brought out to say that the police did the right thing. So, why is the Malaysian government behaving like a cat on a hot tin roof? And allowing the newspapers and media it controls to write to put the police in a bad light. But the police is lying. Unless it says that an ordinary Malaysian woman can be told to strip and do the ear squat for minor offenses. The Pak Lah government is in two minds: it wants to protect the police, and it wants the Chinese tourists to come.

POLICE STRIPPING Chinese TOURISTS is the issue. The visas were valid. Not even the authorities dispute that. Because of what happened to those with valid visa, the Chinese tourists are not coming here. The New Straits Times said on 21 November 2005 said 50,000 tourists come here and disappear. That they disappear is not the issue. Neither is it that those with valid visas break the law. Instead of hunting them, legal tourists are stripped. The news has gone back. Sixty five per cent less tourists from China come here. The government of Malaysia is in a dilemma. It does not seem to know why. The tourism minister is go to China to find out. But the runaway police gives the country a bad name. But the authorities seem to be protecting the policemen in the official statements they have issued. They will probe what happened. They would not have, it seems, had not the newspapers highlighted it. It also is true that the police would not have stripped them had the tourists been Caucasian. They thought there would be no reaction. So far Pak Lah has kept quiet. The Cabinet has not said a word though it would be quick to say something if something goes wrong in a municipal council. The Chinese tourists are going elsewhere. It is costing us money as a result. But this stripping of women is not an isolated incident. A statement that this is prohibited under the law is not the response China is expecting from Malaysia.

THE Chinese TOURISTS ARE not coming to Malaysia. It has dropped to 49 per cent less, if you compare the statistics with the traffic in the first six months of 2004 and 2005, and to 65 per cent less, if you compare the figures of the first nine months of last year and this. As the tourism minister and his officials plan to go to China and find out why, the result for the decline is in the Malaysian newspapers. The police stripped four Chinese national women, three of them married to Malaysian citizens, after they were arrested for not having papers on them, the mainstream newspapers said. The tourism minister and his team need not go to China now. The people who matter know why. Pak Lah says nice things of China at the APEC summit in Busan, South Korea. But Chinese government will not encourage its citizens to visit Malaysia to be harassed. It is as simple as that. The herd mentality is at work, the Malaysians say, but the effect is 65 per cent tourist traffic in nine months. The Chinese have voted with their feet. The Malaysian government is feeling the pinch. The government officials say that the visitors engage in illegal activities, but they cannot prove the Chinese do. In any case, all tourists should not be targetted for the few guilty ones. But the Chinese can show their citizens are badly treated by government officials. The Malaysian newspapers carried stories of the police stripping women Chinese citizens, three of them married to Malaysians. What is worse is that the chief of police has promised an investigation, and then the policemen punished. But the prime minister has not acted swiftly as he must. In normal circumstances. he should already have removed the OCPD for the district, and the police men put on trial if there is any truth in the claim. He must find out why Chinese tourists do not come here, and take steps to defuse the already explosive situation. He has done nothing so far.

So the tragedy that has struck Dato' Aziz is normal if you are on the outside. In the course of finding out what happened, I was told he was a 'mamak', which is not what he would have described him. In Malaysia, Malay means a Muslim as well. Dato' Aziz's ancestors became a Muslim perhaps a century ago. In Singapore he would be known as an Indian Muslim. By identifying himself as a Malay, he thought he rise up the civil service ladder. He did. But because he was an Indian Muslim, he was identified and regarded as an outsider by the Malays in the civil service. The ancestors of some Chinese became Muslims long before Islam came to the Malaysia. But they are kept aside because they are Chinese. That is why PAS has decided to field Chinese and Indian candidates for elections in their control. PAS realises that they cannot isolate Muslims other than Malay. The spin we hear is that PAS is doing that for political reasons. What does the National Front say about the Malays treating the Muslims as "mamak" and worse? In this rush for racial purity, the Malays are making nonsense of race. The Filipino Malay can be a Christian, a Muslim or any religion. It is so for an Indonesian. Lieut.-Gen. Benedict Loudevik Murdani is surely of the Malay race. But a Malay Christian in Malaysia cannot be. The brother of the former rector of the Inslamic University was an Anglican priest. He was driven out of his residence in Petaling Jaya. Another served time in jail under the Internal Security Act. An English Catholic became a Muslim before he married his wife but retained his name. He spent time under the ISA.

WHEN A NATION FORGETS its history, when the only acceptable view is of the Prime Minister of the day, when the old agreements not worth the paper on which it is written, when history is rewritten to reflect current political orthodoxy, with the view that the past is best forgotten, it has the combustible ingredients for disaster. Twelve years after independence, the 13 May racial riots broke out, one that on reflection was one waiting to happen, when two xenophobic communities, the Malays and the Chinese, fought for political supremacy. What caused it had to do with a typical Malay political quarrel: the deputy prime minister, Tun Abdul Razak, felt that it he did not become prime minister soon, some one else was waiting in the wings. The relationship between the prime minister, Tengku Abdul Rahman, and Tun Razak, had soured. The Chinese demand, backed by the hartal in Penang, in 1967, for English to continue as official language beyond the ten years guaranteed at independence, provided the spark.

TWO NATIONAL FRONT (BN) POLITICAL PARTIES, the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) and the Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia (Gerakan), are as different as chalk and cheese. One is a Chinese racial party, the other nominally multiracial but in no doubt of its Chinese base. For three-and-a-half decades, since the Gerakan-led coalition defeated the MCA-led Alliance government in Penang in 1969, each tried its best to force the other off its political perch. The MCA attempted a coup d'etat after the 1999 General Election when it weaned two Gerakan state assemblymen in Penang to defect to force its claim to have an MCA chief minister. UMNO would not agree. The bad blood is so severe that the Gerakan eminence grise, Tun Lim Chong Eu, once an elected MCA president, is not listed as one in the MCA headquarters. Then last month without warning the MCA and Gerakan talked of a merger as a first step to unite all Chinese political parties under one banner. The past is forgotten, a new Chinese dawn is all that matters, and what better way to start, say the MCA and Gerakan presidents, Dato' Seri Ong Ka Ting and Dato' Seri Lim Kheng Yaik.

At the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) head office, there are photographs of its past presidents. Is it a historical record? No. Three names are missing. Two had been since the 1960s: Tun Lim Chong Eu, when he resigned as president in 1959, after 16 months, when the UMNO president, Tengku Abdul Rahman al-Haj, rejected his demand for more state and parliamentary constituencies to contest in the general elections of that year. Dato' Cheah Toon Lock, the Kedah MCA chief, was appointed acting president and held office until Tun Tan Siew Sin succeeded him. The other name missing is of Dato' Seri Neo Yee Pan, president between 1983-85. It cannot be an accident. It is a deliberate act to remove from its past those whom the present has no time for. Tun Lim's crime is that he joined two political parties in opposition to the MCA after he left, the United Democratic Party (UDP) and the Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia, where he found his niche.

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 ROYAL MALAYSIAN POLICE IS IN a quandry. The Chinese and (though he does not mention it) the Indians do not join it as it believes it should. The Chinese make up less than five per cent of the 85,000-strong force, the Indians even less. The man in charge of recruitment, Deputy Commissioner of Police Dato' Talib Jamal, wants them to have a police career in mind when they seek jobs. Why? "It would make it easier for [the] police to communicate with the Chinese community." He does not talk of the need for Indian policemen for the simple reason it is not critical. And why in his opinion do Malaysian Chinese not join the police force? He gives three reasons: the Chinese belief that a policeman or soldier in the family could only bring trouble to the man and his family; a policeman's lot is regimented with less freedom; that it could not make him rich as, say, a fried noodle hawker could. As usual, he conveniently ignores the most important: a deliberate government policy of keeping the Chinese and Indians out of not only the police and armed forces, but in every facet of Government activity.

One thing is clear. Dr Mahathir has decided that Dato' Seri Lim should not succeed Dr Ling now, before impending general elections, even if UMNO welcomes him. No reasons are given, but that his appointment, popular with UMNO and MCA and even with Dr Mahathir, accentuates the political divide in UMNO. He is known to be close to one Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, a view he has not disabused, in and out of office. Dr Mahathir cannot have that. Not now, when he is under pressure to let his weakening tentacles on Dato' Seri Anwar. This, the uncertainty of Dato' Seri Lim as an UMNO lapdog, and the nature of the huge reservoir of political and cultural Chinese support, frightens Dr Mahathir and UMNO. One thoughtful UMNO division leader said that should push come to shove, the consequences of the MCA confronting UMNO for candidates and cabinet positions, and firm commitments, is too frightening for the UMNO leadership to contemplate. Not that Dato' Seri Lim is about to align himself with the opposition under any circumstances. Or voice open support for the jailed former deputy prime minister.

Does he really mean what he says? In the Trengganu state assembly earlier this year, when the PAS government tabled an administration of Islam bill, by the Prime Minister's reckoning, the BN (mostly UMNO) opposition should have voted against. They did not. They abstained. Why? And why did not the BN or UMNO initiate disciplinary proceedings against them as they now demand against the Penang duo. Or is what is allowed UMNO disallowed MCA? Besides, the BN chief whip did not instruct the BN state assemblymen in Penang as, almost certainly, in Trengganu on how it should vote. When he did not, the accepted parliamentary rule is vote according to one's conscience. The BN cannot act against the duo for two reasons: it has no constitutional authority, and the BN whip slept on his job. The more the BN harps on it, the more Chinese support it would lose.

THE MCA PRESIDENT, DATO' SERI LING Liong Sik, is in a spot yet again. The MCA presidential council had directed its disciplinary committee to look into the National Front (BN) deputy president, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's demand that two MCA state assemblymen in Penang be disciplined for abstaining from voting on a routine opposition motion. But the BN has no power to discipline a member of its component parties. Having raised the political flak, with even UMNO demanding their expulsion, and tow which he, in his actions, agreed. He did not challenge Dato' Seri Abdullah's demand. After having defied the UMNO demand about teaching science and mathematics in Chinese schools, he should have gathered his opponents in Team B and take a principled stand. Instead, he continued to isolate his deputy president, Dato' Seri Lim Ah Lek, who has returned to active politics and boycotted, with his supporters, the president council meeting over it.

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