The Malaysian government, to bring PAS-administered Trengganu to its political knees with its dog-in-the-manger view of petroleum royalties due to the state, threatens federal-state relations. The finance minister, Tun Daim Zainuddin, in his budget presentation Friday (27 Sept 00) raises the ante to taunt Trengganu to test it in the courts. Meanwhile, Kuala Lumpur would allocate special funds to the Trengganu to destabilise PAS, a policy Trengganu is unsubtly told to respect; guarantee Civil Service salaries in the state, though not in others; allowing it a special allocation denied others; blinks when, after disallowing it an interest in oil extracted offshore outside the three-mile limit, hands back in cash half the RM800 million in royalties due. It piously intoned it, not the state, would decide how it is spent. Kuala Trengganu, on the other hand, stoically stands aloof, with its principled response of federal arrogance raising a constitutional confrontation over federal-state rights. The anguish in the other -- all National Front-controlled -- states is too real for Kuala Lumpur to ignore.

As I have argued before, it does not matter what happens to Dato' Seri Anwar. The movement he spawned, not deliberately but as a consequence of what happened to him, took a life of its own and remains a thorn in the Prime Minister's shoe. The momentum is not what it was, but it energised the Malaysian Malay diaspora to demand changes in his political and cultural worldview. Many of its websites are dormant, as are many organisations that rose in sympathy. But an active core of webmasters and political supporters act, sometimes impetiously and mistakenly, at other times brilliantly, that the National Front and UMNO is kept on its toes. UMNO, whose deputy president Dato' Seri Anwar once was, is vitrified, unable to function because the Malay political and cultural ground, even amongst its members, cannot disabuse from their minds the horrendous injustice meted out to its once leader-to-be. Not only UMNO. The Civil Service openly defy the Prime Minister, with senior adminstrative and diplomatic service officers openly telling him, as they did in December last year, he must go, that the Anwar imbroglio upsets them all, and that he if he did not go soon, the administative and political doldrums must continue. All because a man changed his residence from the deputy prime minister's to Sungei Buloh prison!

More serious problems face him at home. The Civil Service, normally docile and subservient, has told him bluntly where he got off. After the November 1999 general elections, he called in 250 senior civil servants to Putra Jaya to tell them what he wanted from them and to find out their views on the government. He got more than he bargained for. They told him bluntly what they thought of him, that he handled the Anwar affair badly, that they did not like his ways not the rampant corruption his long term in office spawned, with the Civil Service, from top to bottom, distancing themselves from his excoriation of the former deputy prime minister, now in Sungei Buloh prison. They did not like the deliberate isolation of those who did not support him wholeheartedly or, worse, suspected of being friendly, let alone support, He Who Must Be Destroyed At All Cost. The Prime Minister clearly did not expect what he got. The top ranks of the service, except those who back him wholeheartedly -- a figure one civil servant put at "one percent loyalists and about 10 per cent hangers-on", move away from him, and by extension his administration. This does not, of course, account for the large group of civil servants who would rather duck out of the discussion: but they would shift their support for survival when the Prime Ministerial ship sinks. Today, it is not unusual to find PAS and Keadilan members in this group. In the lower ranks, the PAS intrusion is so widespread that officers holding sensitive posts are ordered to deliver sensitive messages and files themselves.

The education ministry knew years ago the million ringgit annual lease and rentals were unacceptable. But did it plan for cheaper and better premises in the suburbs for Malaysia Hall to relocate with little disruption? It did not. It only now talks of the costs involved. The vision and smartness that two successive education ministers wanted to instil in Malaysian students is missing from their own officers. Planning is not the Malaysian Civil Service's forte. All that matters is what the Leader says. Our foreign policy is shot to pieces, our ties with regional nations under heavy strain, our transport policy dictated by well-connected individuals running into heavy debt to ensure those who use it too are. Our town planning is a shambles. What happened over Malaysia Hall is not unexpected. To then turn bureaucratic bungling into a public loss into public sentimentality that cannot stand close scrutiny is the cynicism Malaysian officials imply the Duke of Portland's managers treat its request to retain Malaysia Hall without paying what is demanded.

The Attorney-General, Tan Sri Mohtar Abdullah, was, until recently, widely tipped to succeed Tun Eusoff Chin as chief justice. Not any more. A former High Court judge, he was chosen five years ago over the president of the court of appeal, Tan Sri Lamin Yunos. He was under 55 and Tan Sri Lamin not, and the authorities did not want to upset the Civil Service applecart by appointing someone beyond retirement age. The then outgoing Attorney-General, Tan Sri Abu Talib Osman, had nominated another, but the former Lord President, Tun Hamid Omar, who remains, despite his indiscretions, a powerful figure behind the scenes on matter concerning the judiciary and the legal service, opted for Tan Sri Mohtar. And Tan Sri Mohtar it was. He quickly immersed himself in the perks of office, going off on holidays with such eminent counsel as Dato' V.K. Lingam -- the holiday company of the chief justice who returns the favour by not allowing him to lose a case -- and eminent business men as Tan Sri Vincent Tan. But such actions, which would raise many a legal eyebrow, is commonplace, or was until He Who Must Be Destroyed At All Cost's excoriating diatribe in court against the chief justice and the judiciary in general.

Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim deflects every attempt by his former mentor, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, to destroy him politically, morally, personally. The vendetta is made all the more vicious, and Dr Mahathir all the more nervous, because every official attempt to destroy Dato' Seri Anwar backfired. The young man fights back with maximum calculated damage. He is now jailed for six years for corruption but not more his trial exposed the utter unprofessional behaviour of the instruments of power and governance: the police, the Attorney-General's chambers, the judiciary, the Civil Service. The sodomy trial now under way is mired in a procedural quagmire. The strained attempt, during the recent UMNO general assembly, to damn the Anwar cronies simply because the overkill ensured it would be disbelieved. The Anwar riposte was to demand a list of the Mahathir cronies, yet to be produced. Dato' Seri Anwar last Friday forced the Prime Minister yet again into the corner he has become accustomed to. He lodged a police report accusing him, the Attorney-General, and Dato' Abdul Gani Patail, a deputy public prosecutor for failing to press charges against a senior member of the Malaysian cabinet. The Harakah, the PAS newspaper, in this morning's edition named the minister for international trade and industry, Datin Seri Rafidah Aziz, as the minister involved.

The land and co-operative development minister, Dato' Seri Osu Sukan, silent about his portfolio when it was being raped by Bolehland's business men, has suddenly found his voice. He has a sure-fire way -- which cabinet minister does not? -- to reduce prices: set up "pasar rakyat" -- people's market, which would sell goods directly from the producers, wholesalers and co-operatibes. So convinced is he of this half-baked that he has ordered all co-operative developments to set them up pronto. (I am always bothered when tails wag dogs; but then I live in Bolehland where ministerial tails wag the Civil Service dogs; only here do civil servant wait for orders before they do what they have been paid to do, but I digress.)

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