Mahatma Gandhi in India forced the British to hand over the government to the Indians, and that helped in the decline of the British Empire. It took 90 years – from Mangal Pandey objecting to using lard-encased bullets, which also got the Muslims to side with the Hindus, in 1857 to Mahatma Gandhi in 1947. He had the genius of hitting the Establishment where it mattered, not the carrots the British threw to divert his campaign. He refined civil disobedience. He called it satyagraha, and his movement hit at the guts of the British rule of India. He realised early that the British wanted opposition limited to the non-essentials of its rule. He was clear in his mind that that was unimportant.

THE FORMER FINANCE MINISTER, Tun Daim Zainuddin, is on a rampage after he was implicated in the Metramac scandal, and Mr Justice Sri Ram, about to retire, said some snasty things about him. Metramac's lawyer, Mohamed Shafee Abdullah, is facing a possible contempt of court charges for what he said after the Appeal Court hearings. Tun Daim and his compatriots assume that justice will only be served if judgement go their way. They could be excused if they had said this after the Federal Court had made its judgement, when all avenues of legal proceedings would then be over. But he, and his lawyer, is wrong. People go to court when their versions cannot agree, and the judge decides, as in the Metramac case, on the balance of probabilities. That is if everything is right and proper. Tan Sri Vincent Tan, a friend of the UMNO Establishment then but not anymore, took me to court, arranged for a hearing at double-quick time, without my knowledge. I had some lawyer who called me saying he was going to discharge himself if I did not give him any instructions.

But Dr Liew's freak death has shaken the Malaysian Establishment. Dato' Seri Najib says the government is taking it 'very seriously'. Two reports would be presented to the Cabinet tomorrow. He says that 'if we find the contractor responsible, based on these reports, "stern action will be taken". He goes on, giving the impression of seriousness: "There is also the question of criminal liability" but that would be for the authorities to follow up. Dr Liew died because a two tonne concrete block fell on his car. It should have dropped. The contractor is guilty. What the authorities should be doing is to charge him in court. Instead of the machinery department getting involved, or of a report from them. the Cabinet is discussing it.

This unilateral official rewriting of Islam and its place in Malaysian society has nothing to do with Islam; it has all to do with a BN government caught in a squeeze between a failure of its governance and a Malay ground which finds its place in Malaysian society has declined despite constitutional protection and massive government policies meant for their sole benefit. Thirty-five years after, the Malay is as disadvantaged now as at the start of the New Economic Policy in 1970. The Establishment hijacked the NEP in time, especially in the past two decades when the then prime minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, rewrote the rules to concentrate Malay wealth in a few favoured hands, who took that as a sign to rape and pillage at leisure. The beneficiaries were limited to a narrow band of UMNOputras, cronies of the Establishment and hangers-on, their familes and those around them.

The newspapers do not report parliamentary and state assembly proceedings as they once did: they must now fight for space with the other irrelevant news they carry. They have become large irrelevant as the elected representatives, and can gain attention only when the two quarrel. Both have to blame for this. But even the Establishment begins to realise that they have an implacable enemy to contend: those who voted them in. The New Straits Times' recent attack on members of parliament is only the first. The MPs were stung to protest. Only one MP, Dato' Shahrir Samad, saw the danger. But his is a voice in the wilderness. He alone amongst the BN MPs sees this pointless confrontation as the start of something worse. He is right.

TENAGA NASIONAL BERHAD (TNB) continues to be an example of a privatised utility taken control of by cronies of the Establishment, in this instance, the most powerful 30-year-old in Malaysia who doubles up as the Prime Minister's son-in-law, Mr Khairy Jamaludin. The professional management of TNB is not allowed to run the electricity utility as it is capable of; instead, it is at the mercy of the cronies of this 30-year-old, who line their pockets and destroy what was once Malaysia's best run utility. It was privatised on the flawed principle that the government should not concern itself with making money. But it is here to be robbed and pillaged by its present management because the government did a good job of running it well for all its life.

No one area in Malaysian life escapes it. The public transport is a mess. A well-run system is pared to the bone so it would end up in Malay political control: a new system in place and run by cronies of the Establishment soon withers. Even if it can run efficiently, political control disallows it. When voices are raised, the government insists it knows best, the whistle blowers often enough detained under the Internal Security Act. Public policy is made on the run, often announced as an aside at the official opening of a restaurant or flower shop. Parliament and state assemblies are rubber stamps and for holidays in stealth at public expense. The BN government operates on a simple set of rules: Don't admit mistakes. Don't evaluate decisions. Attack to divert attention. And mumble when caught

In turning the TNB into a plaything of the cronies of the Establishment, it has no interest in what it is to do, only so it can be ripped off. It is run by those who espouse the corporate culture without understanding what it means, to ensure quick profits for the individuals, usually with huge kickbacks, high salaries and perks, share options. They would not stay on for the long haul, moving every three or four years, keeping the balance sheets in the black by asset stripping and not keeping what remains well maintained. The signs of this caused the Sultan Salehuddin Abdul Aziz power station to fail last week.

After the 1990 general election, after Tengku Razaleigh' Semangat '46 failed to make a headway, the government tightened coverage of its activities. The press honed in on the cronies of the Establishment, who then resorted to suing journalists and others for defamation and demanding, and getting, hundreds of millions of ringgit in damages.

He has not said why. But it centres on how the UMNO Establishment conspired to destroy its deputy president, and the country's deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, in 1998. The cultural shockwaves in UMNO and in the Malay community continues unabated as Dato' Seri Anwar fights a brilliant campaign from his prison cell in Sungei Buloh to force UMNO leaders to look over their shoulders in fear even as they insist he is history. The more he looms large, the the more nervous and frightened are those who had even cameo roles in his political and personal destruction. Mr Alies Anor was one of them. His was then already political secretary to Dato' Seri Najib, and headed a sub-commitee to ensure Dato' Seri Anwar's political demise.

When the BN lost its head, after the Anwar Ibrahim affair in 1989, the disenchanted Malays in the Malay states distanced themselves from the state authorities. Nowhere was this clearer than in the mosques. Some mosques the Klang Valley - in Damansara Utara and in Section 14 in Petaling Jaya, for instance - were "anti-Establishment" mosques. Try as it might, the government could not contain them. They represented the PAS view of a religion under challenge and attack. For years, it remained an odd presence in a sea of official conformity. It is not any more. The official view of Islam is challenged in even the old FMS states. It goes without saying that even in the 'official mosques' in Selangor and in the other states, Muslims gather in the evenings to castigate the government for its "wrong doings". The mosque in Ampang Jaya frequented by the late brother-in-law of Tun Mahathir Mohamed was one. He would, when when he was there, put up a strong defence of his brother-in-law's administration, but he was almost always shouted down by his fellow parishioners, several of whom, at least when I went there with a Muslim friends on occasion, had federal and state titles for which a Chinese business man would gladly have sacrificed an arm and a leg and lots of money. There it was the inescapable voice of the Establishment.

Now, basic services are ignored, the public hung out to dry, as municipal services are privatised to cronies of the Establishment on doubtful premises and promises, and found wanting. The local government and housing ministry does not care. So the state governments who are responsible for local and municipal councils under their purview. What makes it worse is that the BN sinecures dare not object to outrageous actions like the parking meters for they could be dropped if the council chairman spread the word to the local government and housing ministry and the state government that they are 'trouble makers'. Their political leaders do not want trouble makers - it does not matter if they are or not, but if some one thinks so, that is enough - in their midst either, and a promising political future is castrated hardly had it begun. When municipal and local councils are run thus, it is those who live within the boundaries who suffer. When once Georgetown and Ipoh had the best run and most responsive city and muncipal councils, they now have about the worst. Ipoh, as the DAP flyer points out, has the highest assessment rate in the country: 16 percent compared to Georgetown's eight percent and Kuala Lumpur's six percent. Political control laced in political cowardice is no substitute for good governance, so it is pointless for the DAP to ask why the MCA, Gerakan, MIC, PPP and UMNO councillors agreed to buy the meters; they would not even if their lives depended on it.

One practical effect of the Court of Appeal decision yesterday is political. The first test of the Anwar affair was in 1999, when the BN government lost ground, and Trengganu because of it. The 2004 General Election is another, the more stronger than 1999, of the Anwar enigma. Dato' Seri Anwar has had five years to prepare for it. His case has unnerved the Establishment as nothing has in 50 years. When PAS met the ambassadors recently to explain its Islamic State Document, the moderator was a solid figure of the Establishment, a well-regarded Malaysian ambassador who was once seconded to the Istana Negara at the request of the then Yang Dipertuan Agung. Defections like these are common place. The former Lord President (chief justice) is a member of the PAS-run state executive council. A former armed forces chief is an active member of PAS, as are retired secretaries-general of federal ministries. The political divide continues unabated.

The critics had no plans either. It got the publicity for no reason than that it would give the MIC president a black eye. This demand and campaign against Maika Holdings had the political nod from up high in the political Establishment. Any attempt to put him in his place was seen to be not only good but desirable. Which is why the mainstream press in all languages continued to unearth more damaging information about the company and the MIC president. Until the DAP got into the act. It got together a committee to force the Maika Holdings board of directors out and replace it with its own team of "selfless" individuals who would work for the Indian community through Maika Holdings for nothing. Given the tradition of Indian leaders, especially in the trade unions, who bankrupted them by offering to work for a pittance, that rang alarm bells. The DAP wanted political capital out of it. Its role, as BN's and UMNO's, was political gain by targetting Maika Holdings. The political cynicism of all parties could not be redeemed.

THIS IS THE BROWN-NOSING MONTH TO prove to the world how much we love our soon-to-be-departed Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed. These days one cannot watch television, listen to the radi or read the newspapers without people and organisations falling over each other to prove who can praise the Old Man better. It turns one's stomach at these puerile attempts to show how servile and subservient Malaysians can be and are. In these extravagant praises, usually by men and women who cannot string two decent grammatical sentences in any language, it is clear that underneath it is another agenda: that he would not stay back. It is that he might which shivers the Badawi camp. But the consequences can be disastrous for them if these men and women do not swallow their pride - which they would parked in their car boots years and even decades earlier - and rush to prove their loyalty by brown-nosing the Old Man better than any rival. He ordered an editor-in-chief of the New Straits Times group sacked because he was not "200 per cent" loyal to him. It is verboten for anyone who has dealings with him and his Establishment to even suggest it is time he slowed down.

Then there is the Bolehland standard: the CEOs run a company that specialises in gambling or are cronies of the Establishment and push their share prices up the roof when times are good, and scrape the bottom of the barrel when misfortune strikes. But the CEOs will continue to be paid as handsomely no matter how badly the shareholders have done on their shares.

He realises what would happen when that section of the US policy Establishment that still smarts at Dr Mahathir's straight talking when it gains ascendancy in Washington. Malaysia sits on a power keg, ready to ignite, as its sinews of Establishment is reduced, for a narrow political agenda, to be beholden to the political authority in power, Dr Mahathir. He destroyed this so thoroughly that there is no one in the government who has the political wherewithal to right it. This is so in Myanmar as well.

THE MENTRI BESAR OF PAHANG, DATO' Seri Adnan Yaakob, was so hurt by the grant of a second casino licence in his state that he complained about it to the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed. It would redound on Pahang UMNO, he warned, to ward off a determined challenge from PAS. I had, in my last column in the PAS newspaper, Harakah, written of it under the heading: Pahang Darul Kasino. The licence was issued to that super-crony, Tan Sri Vincent Tan, last seen riding a horse with one Dr Mahathir Mohamed. It caused a furore in UMNO as its leaders rushed for cover. Dr Mahathir, on his return from two months' leave, summoned the second finance minister, Dato' Seri Jamaluddin Jarjis, who brought along the cabinet minister who orchestrated it, Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor. Tan Sri Vincent's pseudo-French Establishment was only allowed slot machines, but the licence issued provides for a virtual casino, with computerised baccarat and roulette and other games of chance. The Prime Minister was not amused.

The Court of Appeal also denied Dato' Seri Anwar's request for bail while the appeal for the sodomy charges went to the Federal Court. His appeal against corruption, for which he was jailed for six years, is not completed, although his six year's sentence has. He had asked for bail against the nine years jail term for his sodomy convictions. The simple truth is he could not be out on bail without turning that into a political campaign. The courts, more so in Malaysia, is the conscience of the Establishment. Which is why politicians are convicted of criminal offences, so to mask a political confrontation into something criminal. The courts would side with the Establishment in any political confrontation. And, however much Dr Mahathir might insist it is, the Anwar Ibrahim affair is not criminal, but political. The Malaysian courts, and Dato' Seri Anwar, believe so too. In any political confrontation before the courts, the courts would side with the Establishment. And so it has, in the Anwar affair.

BANK NEGARA MALAYSIA (BNM) AND THE ROYAL MINT of Malaysia (RMM) it privatised to an Establishment crony are in what can only be described as a scam to sell the idea of coin collecting to children - who to them are not children but the younger generation - and, here comes the sales pitch, turn them, I kid you not, into entrepreneurs. As a child, I did not collect coins, stamps, matchboxes because I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I collected them because it was one of the more pleasurable things one did as a child. When I outgrew it, I gave the collection to my sister who has passed it on to her child. As no doubt tens of millions of children all over the world. But nothing can stop an entrepreneur from an idea from which he can make money not by his skill but how he can turn an idea into an easy way to make money. The BNM and the RMM have hit on children, turned a common school children's hobby into a money-making proposition. To help it along, BNM has released a new 25 sen coin series. If it is currency or only for numismatic collection it does not say.

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