But BN, especially UMNO, politicians have dominated state and federal awards for decades. New awards are coined to accommodate this profusion of titles. Business men found it paid to have several dato'ships; one I know have more dato'ships than there are states, with a Tan Sriship to prove his connexions with the BN-UMNO heirarchy. The once careful vetting of recipients of state and federal awards disappeared when political expediency took over. The late Sultan Ibrahim of Johore would offer three dato'ships a year – one each for public and Civil Service, the third rotated among the two every second year – that the awards were respected. He was not averse to stripping the titles if they did not pay their bills or got caught in a police raid of brothels or brought the award to disrepute in other ways.

An apocryphal tale of bribes concerns a state chief police officer who got his post by tender: he offered several thousands of ringgit a month to his superiors and others, and got the post because his was the highest. And of a senior police officer who retired unexpectedly when underworld figures he was beholden to raped his daughter when a sudden police raid netted several of them. Are these true? I do not know. But when retired senior police figures do not discount it, can there be not some truth to it? What should frighten Pak Lah and his government that this practice has now spread to the Civil Service and the armed forces.

Pak Lah is therefore in more trouble than he realises. Dato' Seri Najib's forces are not about to let go. He must act soon, and firmly, if he expects to be more than the lame duck he already is. He is prone to make asinine statements dressed up as considered thought: acquire knowledge, honour your parents, be clean, don't bribe. He has, in less than a year, become a laughing stock. He has become, in one sense, like President George W Bush caught in the thralls of the neo-conservatives. He has made too many mistakes in the past year, and adds to them with issues like the oil-for-food vouchers. He wants to succeed without working for it. He thinks he can keep UMNO at bay if he does nothing. But all this has brought him is a dysfunctional cabinet, a dysfunctional UMNO, a dysfunctional BN helped in no small measure by a dysfunctional Civil Service and government institutions.

The underlying issue in Malaysia, in Pak Lah's words , is corruption. It was all about at the recent UMNO general assembly and its triennial elections. Nothing is done about that. It is all over the business world. Nothing is done about that. It is all over the Civil Service. Nothing is done about that. It is all over the judiciary. Nothing is done about that. It is all over the cabinet. Nothing is done about that. It is all over in the states. Nothing is done about that. When it turns into embarrassment, as now, every one involved, from the prime minister down, beat their breasts in horror. How could it happen in Malaysia? It could in Ougadougou, you understand, but never ever here. But it would when it is encouraged in practice if National Front (BN) politicians and prominent business men are the culprits. The anti-corruption agency cannot act without clearance from the prime minister's department. When some one high is caught, the resulting court trial turns into farce. A cabinet minister was arrested last year and charged for corruption but it does not send shivers down the spin of his colleagures. What he did and what Pak Lah is now accused of are similar. One is charged, the other's denial, proof of his innocence.

Why is UMNO in this untenable position? It picked the wrong man to destroy and at the wrong time. So, when it happened, it brought the Malay ground, tethering on revolution and awaiting the spark, ride all over UMNO. From 1998, UMNO could not govern, could not plan for the future, could not lead, unable to move forward without wondering how the Anwar affair would destroy it, and how it could outwit him. But UMNO had not the will nor the inclination to challenge it. It had grown fat on its laurels, decided it knew best, ignored the people who voted it into power. The coalition it led could not govern, it annoyed the Civil Service along with every major institution with its arrogance. So serious is this that the recent budget had only one aim: to wean back the Civil Service and government institutions by bribing them with more perks and money for the which the long suffering public would yet foot the bill. It is still fearful of what the Anwar lava could do, once it erupts.

Which is why they now pay for it. The Najib gaffe is only one. Why was Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's son-in-law at Dato' Seri Anwar's house on the night of his release? The official spin is to help him obtain a passport quickly so he could leave for Munich. Does he issue passports? What happened to the Immigration Department? If anyone should have gone to see him that night, it should have been an immigration officer, not even its director-general. Or is this a tacit acceptance that the civil servants do not obey the prime minister? Is this why the only beneficiaries of this year's budget is the Civil Service and other institutions, like the police and armed forces?

The National Front (BN) and its leaders, UMNO, are in trouble. Long years of langurous idleness because of its dominance in politics is now challenged from several corners. Its refusal to address the issues that it should have, sweeping it under the proverbial carpet, the deliberate outing of anyone who challenged the political masters, the gradual removal of non-Malay civil servants from senior positions in the Civil Service, shutting out all dissent even internally, makes both BN and UMNO unprepared to meet the challenges ahead.

This and the co-opting of the largely Malay Civil Service into the BN's dominant Malay political agenda rendered the civil and political administration to the whim and fancies of the ruling elite, the UMNO leaders. The citizen had no recourse, not with the prevailing threat of the Internal Security Act and the law when subjects the government does not like discussed are.

OPEN WARFARE HAS BROKEN out in the prime minister's office. The arrogant, even supercillious, Oxbridge coterie ("scholars") around the prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and led by his son-in-law, Mr Khairy Jamaludin, had attempted to sideline the Civil Service ("the Ninjas"). It worked awhile, but as the days went by, his interference and his reach knew no bounds. He was appointed to a high Civil Service appointment at a grade that a score could hope to reach after three decades of service. He had to resign from that post. He was said to be appointed chief operating officer of Khazanah Holdings, the government investment arm.

Whilst the UMNO politician takes the populist route, making nonsense of government and Civil Service procedures, the civil servant makes his service politician-proof, holding the politician to ransom. As the UMNO politician introduced Islam into his policies not because it was right but so it could stop the opposition PAS in its tracks, the civil servant took Islamisation several steps further.

Neither were comfortable with the Buggins' Turn rule in UMNO. Dato' Seri Anwar broke it and reached the top. The UMNO heirarchy brooded, and an anti-Anwar bandwagon began when he became deputy prime minister in 1993. Mr Khairy moved without his own storm troopers, hoping to get it once elected to office. His spin doctors embellished his achievements, painted him to be what he was not, giving the impression that this brilliant young man must be elected to office to shake up the moribund UMNO Youth, and by implication, UMNO, to life. It is now accepted even amongst Dato' Seri Anwar's detractors that it was he who saved Tun Mahathir from defeat for the UMNO presidency in 1997 against Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah. But loyalty to the Leader counts for nothing when the party gangs up, and the president himself is frightened of his deputy. In Mr Khairy's case, his father-in-law is not yet UMNO president; and those who oppose the Prime Minister use nepotism and the meteoric rise of his son-in-law as issues. Mr Khairy ruffled too many feathers. His father-in-law had to act to protect his own position. This began with the March general election. He was to stand for parliament in Rembau. Negri Sembilan UMNO disagreed. He did not stand. He resigned from his rarified perch in the the Civil Service, with his special personal-to-holder Staff III appointment, to be chief executive of Khazanah Holdings. News of that leaked out, it is alleged from his own office. He could not now head a RM150 billion empire and answerable to his father-in-law, who is also minister of finance. Now he will not contest for the UMNO Youth deputy head at the party elections in September. He decides not to contest for it. He had no other choice.

This is not confined to the states. The federal government jumps into the fray. The latest is this half-baked plan to force Malaysian youths to undergo national service. A properly conducted national service is a good thing. But the government had three decades ago decided against it. Included in the programme is of course weapons training. Those who would be in the scheme would include Chinese and Indians. Giving them weapons training, it was argued in UMNO and in the Civil Service was tantamount to racial conflict. The reasons were as usual cock-eyed. But it did not matter. The prevailing view then, as it is now now, is that the non-Malays are dangerous and had to be kept on a tight leash. This national service now has only one aim: a few cronies of the establishment would conduct it, siphon a large chunk of the funds into their pockets, and carry on as usual. The wellbeing of the national servicemen is incidental. The scheme has just started, and it is a collosal failure. We know it is when cabinet ministers try too hard to convince the people, but more often only they believe it, that it is an unqualified successs. It is in one respect. The wife of a cabinet minister has the contract to provide the uniforms and she, I am told, is doing well out of that small scam. The smart schools project was implemented for no reason that one cabinet wife promised to provide the computers and the software. It is as dead as the dodo. Why do we buy expensive weapons? Not for its use in defence, but for cronies to make money out of it.

THERE IS NO DOUBT: The most powerful 28-year-old is an Oxbridge graduate with the brilliant foresight to be son-in-law of the Prime Minister. Or at least he was, until his arrogance and his belief that he is God's great gift to Malaysia, for which Malaysians must be eternally grateful, got the better of him. There is no doubt about his qualities: he is brilliant, he is well connected, he upset the UMNO and Civil Service heirarchy in a much overdue shakeup, his word the last in his father-in-law's office. But he has also the impetuousness of youth, a brilliant Malaysian version of the hapless 21-year-old Lynddie England leading a naked Iraqi prisoner by the leash in Abu Ghraib prison. He stepped on too many toes in his rush to fulfill his declared aim - as he told the television crew of NTV 7 some time ago before their interview with him - of being deputy prime minister before he is 40 and prime minister eight years later. No wonder than that he collects enemies as a dog collects flies. He flaunted his power when and where he could, collecting political enemies for his father-in-law who, to limit the damage, asked those he had, or could not refuse, to meet, to go through a senior civil servant in his office.

UMNO is in a dilemma. National Integration is now alleged official policy. This presumes that the national cake, in all its variations, would be split in the ratio of 6 Malays, 3 Chinese, 1 Indian. But when push comes to shove, it is a political statement of a Prime Minister still stuck in a quagmire and which his officials are disinclined to implement. He did not think it through. An informal Civil Service policy requires every head of department to make more Islamic than when he inherited it, and he gets brownie points when he sidelines the non-Malay and non-Muslim. So it is applied in piece-meal hopes: more headmasters that reflect NI goals, more policemen, soldiers, airmen and sailors, civil servants.

It reflects one ignored problem: the Malay civil servant and UMNO politician has a vested interested in ensuring their joint survival. This is more serious than it appears in the surface. For the New Economic Policy, which brought the rural Malay into the frontline of Malaysian life, is now turned on its head. Jointly, these two groups have shortchanged the Malays in the heartland, and suffers the non-Malay only when they need him for their survival. What the EC did in this poll is not unexpected. Nor is it the first time it had. But in the past, the essential professionalism of the Civil Service and a shared belief in the country's destiny while making sure the government remained in office was done so seamlessly that no one could be blamed for allegations of poll rigging. Not this time. It was done so hamfistedly that even the Malay is angry at being denied his right to vote. The EC chairman, Tan Sri Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman, tried to explain what went wrong, gave up the ghost, and called for a royal commission no less. Fresh from his unbelievable victory, Pak Lah was in no mood to consider it. He had won fairly and squarely, and if the EC had made a mess, how is he to be blamed for it. So he holds his ground.

By the way, the one charge, notably by the MCA, against Mr Lim is that he moved constituencies often. But this is a cast of the pot calling the kettle black. The former MCA president, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, was in search for a safe seat, from Penang to Perak to finally Labis in Johore. His successor, Dato' Seri Ong Ka Ting, safe in his Pontian constituency in Johore, but is a refugee from Perak. The defeat of his elder brother, Dato' Ong Ka Chuan, in the Batu Gajah constituency, showed how volatile a Chinese majority constituency is for an MCA leader. MCA and Gerakan leaders need Malay majority constituency to get them home high and dry. In the last parliament, the civil servants on call during parliamentary sessions were highly impressed with the PAS MPs and how they conducted themselves in the chamber. With the Civil Service generally at odds with the BN government, this was not a good sign, and it had to be cut sharply. How did the BN go about to ensure victory beyond its wildest dreams? Victory was all that mattered, and no price is too high to pay. The end justifies the means. With this mindset is the frightening realisation of what would happen to it should it fall.

Pak Lah rests on his record after he became Prime Minister. There is not much to talk of, although he announced several policies, but mainly stuck because of internal opposition, within the cabinet and the Civil Service. The widespread attack on corruption has ground to a halt, after three high profile arrests. When the candidates are known this week, several accused of rampant corruption, investigated by the Anti-Corruption Agency, but which could go further because the Prime Minsiter of the day would not allow it, would be candidates. The Tok Guru has opened one more issue that Pak Lah must answer. What has upset the BN is that PAS directs its attacks and taunts on its leader, forcing him to justify whatever is claimed about his religosity by his spin doctors. If Islam was not the issue, the Tok Guru would have been justifiably criticised. Not this time. But instead of taking on Tok Guru, the BN and Pak Lah decided to be defensive. Why?

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