The government's fear now of what this means is real. But the roots of it go back to the deliberate Malayisation of the Civil Service and the uniformed services after the 1969 racial riots. A quota system for non-Malays ensured only their token presence in all institutions of state. Twenty per cent of the Civil Service, for instance, ought to have been non-Malay; but less than ten per cent now are. It was a political decision taken after the 1969 racial riots to ensure Malay dominance in Malaysia. What helped it along was the utter collapse of the Chinese and Indian leadership, again not after careful thought but in anger that the Chinese community did not support them in the 1969 general elections.

Thirty years later, it is a political problem. The armed forces, and the police, is almost wholly Malay, as is the Civil Service. The promised fairplay for the non-Malay is a pipe dream. A quote is in place. It began, oddly enough in the education service. When the last expatriate, an advisor to the service, retired under the Malaysianisation scheme in 1965, UMNO and the Malay officers insisted that his successor ought to be a Malay, not the one next in line, a Jaffna Tamil. Tun Hamdan Sheikh Tahir, as he is known now, was way down the pecking order, but he was picked to succeed the retiring expatriate. The man who should have been just withdrew into his shell, and stayed on until his retirement a few years later. That became the norm. After the 1969 riots, it was official policy that the non-Malay be put in his place. Their roles in the heirarchy is a token, only or two Indians and Chinese allowed into the upper reaches. I know of some many civil servants and armed forces officers who were assistants to those they had trained when they joined.

When policeman are underpaid and corruption is the only way to make ends meet, we would get a system like this. When this is combined with a highly corruptible, if it is not already corrupt, Civil Service, and a politician who can cut corners for a price, and the public is told to fend for himself, especially if he needs it badly, anarchy cannot be far behind. A high court judge does not trust his staff that all the files he hands are safely locked in his chambers. When money changes hands for desirable judgements, when files can be made to be lost for a little fee, when Land Offices do no return the change for work done, and its staff berate you if you ask for it, and this is not the odd clerk who does it but widespread, it is proof that our First World pretentions must collapse under the unbearable burden of Third World realities.

The policy is skewed. English is taught only in science and mathematics. How one could is doubtful. The government has lost control of it. It could not get UMNO, which leads the National Front government, to go one board. It was UMNO which insisted it be taught only in science and mathematics, thereby gutting the policy even before it is implement. Add to that the opposition from official sources. Dr Mahathir cannot afford the policy to be debated and discussed in detail, in the Civil Service and outside, for fear that the latent opposition to it is more serious than his worst fears. The Inland Revenue Board (IRB) thumb its noses at this policy. From next year, individual income tax payers would get forms only in Malay. It cut costs, it is time every resident in Malaysia is fluent in Malay, and those who cannot in Malay could employ tax consultants and agents to fill them. English, in other words, is not acceptable in what the government's most important revenue collecting agency.

What Malaysia should be can only be if all communities have a stake in its future. When that is doubted, and pressure put to make them forget their past, amidst stirring statements to the contrary, progress in any form is damned. Without this underlying confidence in a country's social and cultural cohesion, the glue that makes it stick disappears. That is what Malaysia is unfortunately reduced to. The blame for that is not the people but the policies the BN implemented and the licence it gave the civil servants to amend it to ensure its marginalisation. Today, a multiracial, multiethnic, multireligious society is as much a dream as is of an independent judiciary, an efficient Civil Service, a government which accepts democratic norms and practices to govern in the name of the people. Forming multiracial clubs in universities would not redress it one tiny bit.

The Civil Service has all but given up and is as opposed to the government as the opposition in all it does. The police have become a law unto themselves. The fine line between justice and injustice is blurred in the courts and in what the government does. Policies are iniated and carried sans parliamentary oversight. Major development is carried out with parliamentary having no say in it. Ministers announce billions or ringgit for projects parliament has no clue about. Administrative and political atrophy combines with corruption, endemic at every level of administration and politics, the deliberate destruction of the institutions of state, the belief, backed by the Internal Security Act with its detention without trial, in its infallible invincibility, especially when not, ensures the near paralysis and creeping rigor mortis of its body politic.

The BN government looks upon it as unchallengeable. With it comes an arrogance lower down, and a Civil Service which feathers its own nest and ignores what they are paid to do: to be of service of Malaysians. It is now an inalienable pattern to issue a departmental instruction in the morning only to have it revised and corrected in the afternoon. If routine circulars must be revised as soon as it is issued, is it any wonder more weighty policies are adopted only to be amended as quickly. No one discusses issues any more, not even those who must initiate and implement them.

The Elections Commission is a pale shadow of what it once was. Once it chairman could defy the Prime Minister. The first Prime Minister, Tengku Abdul Rahman, irritated at the independence the then EC chairman, Dato' Dr Megat Khas, displayed, insisted he obey. Dr Megat Khas sent in his letter of resignation with his refusal. The Tengku appointed him, he said, because he would exercise his mind fairly where it mattered and not do what the government of the day wanted. The Tengku backed down. But the EC declined in the years since when members are chosen as after-retirement jobs for self-serving civil servants. None would dare defy the Prime Minister of the day, and need their sinecures. Members are chosen for their absolute loyalty to the government of the day, theirs to find exquisite reasons why unacceptable conditions which hobble the opposition are in fect what makes this country democratic. A lifetime in the Civil Service immures them from regarding the Opposition as renegades and rascals.

Thirty years on, the Malay is even more handicapped than after the 13 May 1969 riots. The non-Malay adjusts on his own to survive in a country where public policy is hobble him. The Malay, after his initial success, found he could not survive in a competitive society. It is one thing to have ill-educated members of a highly politicised Civil Service, another to have them represent the country in sensitive negotiations with foreign countries and organisations. Especially under a prime minister whose foreign policy in his 21 years in office was to make him look good to foreign nations. This personality of the cult survived in the first decade and a half because civil servants and diplomats selected for their competence were around. Many of them have disappeared, and their successors are caught in the trap the prime minister set as education minister. In a decade, if drastic measures are not now taken, we would be the laughing stock of the region. Indonesian, Vietnamese, Thai and Laotian diplomats already speak better English than Malaysian diplomats. The crunch would come in a decade when the last of pre-1969 civil servant would have retired.

What gives hope is that pockets of conscience, in every institution, will not give up the ghost. They fight back. A well-ordered set of institutions, amongst the best in the Commonwealth at independence in 1957, is now destroyed beyond repair. With no replacement. The Singapore Civil Service is cast in the image of its ruling party, the People's Action Party. It replaced the British administrative practice with one of its own, so wholly obsequious to it, but the result, to the layman is one it can depend on for the basics.

The Universiti Utara Malaya in Kedah is one of Malaysia's forgettable institutions of higher learning built for a political purpose in the northern state of Kedah. It is staffed, as universities are these days, by timeservers from the Civil Service and academia, with no pretense to be good at anything but to send out into the unemployment market thousands of graduates who should not have been allowed to pass the Higher School Certificate. Academic research is discouraged, lecturers no more than bored, clueless civil servants.

The aim to neutralise the non-Malay failed because UMNO and the Civil Service implemented this by a numbers game in which it was more important a Malay got a degree than if he was educated. Thirty years on, the Malay is told he is useless, do not study hard, is content to live in his 17th century world, and depends on the government to bail him out if he fails. The Malay entrepreneurs the NEP created are failures, even after they are bailed out with public funds. They were given incentives so that by selling off their project to a non-Malay they could make millions. They were rentiers more than entrepreneurs. They became inbread, dependent on the government, noted for their flaunting of wealth and wives. In one high profile divorce, a wronged wife demanded RM500 million in alimony, one which UMNO got involved and resolved for a figure a few hundred million of ringgit less. The tycoon is since deprived of both wife (though he has acquired a new one) and empire in a few years.

The Civil Service was on its toes, every helpful to the concerns of the citizen. The police could be trusted not to break into your house when you told them you were going away on leave for long periods. The citizen was happy he was not subjected to unnecessary extractions from corrupt public servants. But all this is now a relic of the past. Today, what is promised is often a mirage. Malaysians do not complain as they should, so the government smugly goes about as if nothing ever goes wrong. The newspapers would not raise the problems, especially if it puts the government in a bad light.

BN and UMNO adopted an Islamic worldview to divide PAS's hold on the Malay rural ground -- it does not, but even UMNO perceives it does, so let us accept that as settled, for the sake or argument -- but all it did was to make the character of government decidely Islamic. It adds another lawyer in administration that keeps the non-Malay out. Already, the character of the administration is changed for ever. The non-Malays and non-Muslims are the outsiders. They have no recourse and are bluntly told they would rise high if they could only convert. But are these problems raised in the cabinet? No. The glass ceilings a non-Malay must accept is not new: Any minority faces it in any society. But that glass ceiling is now reinforced with an Islamic identity, so that the racial and religious discrimination now traps them lower down the Civil Service ladder.

First, the Malaysian police create a panic to insist out of the blue that traffic summonses issued as long ago as 1999 be settled forthwith. If motorists did not, they could not renew their driving or vehicle licences or both. The newspapers shrilly echoed the police threats, and crowds swarmed police stations to wait up to eight hours to settle their summonses. With 700,000 summonses outstanding and the police working to Civil Service hours, few could meet the deadline of 1 May 2002. When it is extended to 16 May, the crowds disappear. The Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Norian Mai, is incensed at this and blames it on the 'typical Malaysian attitude'. It it was, why did he not have a campaign which allowed for this? But it is not, Tan Sri! It is police threats, arrogance, callousness. It now turns out what it did is also illegal.

The MCA crisis therefore reflects a worsening malady and malaise in the country. No one dares second guess Dr Mahathir, who believes if he orders that it be done it would. He knows it does not. The Malay anger at this grows by the day. He dare not travel within the country as freely as he does overseas, even with the tightest security and protection given him. The Civil Service sells him short. When ministers should be looking after their portfolios, they look for post-retirement jobs. Almost all, like Dr Ling, have long lost reason why they should be where they are. But they are kept on for the damage they could create within UMNO if they are out. And Dr Mahathir cannot clean up the non-UMNO parties in the National Front and let UMNO fester in its own irrelevancy. This is the dilemma he faces in which Dr Ling is about to be the latest casualty. Even if he continues as MCA president after the party elections.

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