The Malay government servant can illtreat the tourist. The deputy internal security minister, Dato' Noh Omar, told tourists not to visit if it did not agree with what the authorities do to them. He was castigated, but not sacked, by his minister, who happened to be the prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. But government reaction to the fallout of the MMS videoclip has been at cross purposes. It cannot abandon Ketuanan Melayu policy. So it will fumble. It cannot order the decisions which will treat the tourists from Asia fairly. That would mean it would have to, God forbid, treat the Malaysian fairly! It is under pressure from its backers to get Chinese tourists back. So far, there is no indication that they would make the policy changes that would treat the Malaysian differently. Now the problem over the Chinese tourist is seen in the government at the facilities going to waste if he did not come. If it reaches a solution, it would at best be temporary. Nothing would change permanently unless the Malaysian is treated on par with the tourist. Because China is prepared to fight for its citizens - this is not how Malaysia treats its citizens - the Ketuannan Melayu policy is dented. It would not be erased yet. There will be other occasions when it would be dented further. Chinese tourists being treated fairly, as China demands, is a start. But it will be a long while before a Malaysian is at part with the tourist.

Pak Lah thought the Chinese would be happy to be told that without them Asia would be different. But China looks after its citizens overseas. Maybe it is done so that it is a big boy in the region. Whatever the reason, it is prepared to 'punish' a government for putting its citizens in such incidents as stripping in public. If the tourists are prostitutes, or breaks the law in the countries they visit, the Chinese government would not raise a finger to help them. But if they are harassed by officialdom, as many are in Malaysia, then it would act. The Indians do not. The Pakistanis do not. The Bangladeshis do not. The Sri Lankans do not. The countries in the region do not. So it was assumed the Chinese would not either. But it had assumed it could treat them as the local Indians and Chinese. But the 65 per cent decline in two years because of government wrongdoing will continue if Malaysia does not reform. It is more concerned with the Caucasians than Asians, especially if they are Indians and Chinese. When MAS was bleeding, it thought of hiring Caucasians of. It did not think of Malaysians, because it would have had to call in Malaysian Indians or Malaysian Chinese. Facilties are built not for the locals but for the Caucasian foreigners. God forbid, these people are not Muslims either.

Statements from Washington and London suggest that it is the crusades all over again. President Bush has told Palestinians that God told him to invade Iraq. He seems to be finding creative reasons for the mess the United States created in Iraq. But it would not wash. The Muslim, particularly the Sunni, now takes the United States and the West as their enemy. Islam is not what the Christian nations of its supporters, like Malaysian or Pakistani leader, say it is. Islam today is the religion of the street, and with a mind of its own. Otherwise, President Bush would have such opposition in Iraq, with outside Sunni Muslims coming in to fight. The US and its supporters are trying to get Muslim leaders to go on the bandwagon, but the Muslim street in these countries refuse to do so. They try to get Muslim leaders on their side, like in Indonesia, but the president does not want Jemayah Islamiyah banned, as the Western countries would like it to. Enough in the government there are not certain it should be. Islam in Indonesia is much more gentle, but the Indonesian street, although still not as extreme as elsewhere, is becoming more extremist as Bush and his supporters around the world blame Islam and the Muslim for much of their problems. The fact is that President Bush and his supporters have turned Islam into an extremist organisation, and since there are 2 million of its believers, a quarter taking the law into their hands spell danger for President Bush's plan.

This led him to believe he had regained the initiative. He now characterised his Internet tormentors as 'cyber terrorists', and as he went on to explain it to an incredulous public, he warmed up to insist they were both anti-nationals and treasonous. He got carried away. He now believes, at least that is what I think his speeches mean, that cyber terrorists – whom he does not identify but is taken to mean any one on the Internet who does not regard him as God's greatest gift to Sabah politics – should be tried for treason, and for good measure, hanged. To him, a cyber terrorist questions him on issues and events in his past that he wants kept well-hidden.

It happens right down the line. The civil service, the military, the police, the judiciary, the cabinet, the state chief ministers and mentris besar, have their blood flowing in this belief that Malaysia will drop dead if they should ever, God forbid, step down. One retired armed forces chief told me, after his retirement, how he initiated changes for the better of the armed forces. It was clear he strepped down reluctantly. He is all but forgotten now, often ignored by the very people in whose name he justified remaining in office after retirement. In the police, the IGP is indispensable in office the moment he takes his post, and stays on beyond retirement. It is more difficult for the judges, for they are only allowed a six-month extension when they reach retirement age at 65. No nonsense there about how valuable individual judges are to the country, the judiciary and the law!

Once the National Front (BN) governments could pull this off with equanimity and aplomb. The political repercussions on the citizenry to challenge official dictates became too fearsome to contemplate. The BN government instilled the collective fear that walls have ears, and the collective view that the citizen's sole right is to elect the BN to power, that he stands to lose his self-respect in society if he should ask too many intrusive questions or, indeed, if he should vote those it does not like to Parliament or, God forbid, elect an opposition to power in a state.

SABAH chief minister Musa Aman sups with the Gods. He, as state Umno chief, led the National Front (BN) to another stunning victory in last year's general election. He is as powerful as the other megalomaniac in Sabah politics, Tun Mustapha Harun. His political patron is Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. He controls all that matters in the state, ignoring advice, consultation, the law.

A deus et machina could reverse it. It is Latin for "a God let down upon the stage from the machine", the "machine" being part of the stage equipment in ancient Greek theatre; when an unlikely or providential event happens just in time to avert a difficulty or calamity. It has in Malaysia in the form of Anwar Ibrahim.

UMNO IS CAUGHT IN its own trap. Since before, during and after at its party elections in September, it insisted bribery or, as genteel political circles would rather describe it, money politics, was an isolated aberration. But the evidence was all over the place, even if incontrovertible proof was not fortcoming. It would not call in the anti-corruption agency or the police, it could handle this minor piffle itself. But try as it could, few accepted this in good faith. The elections saw more money changing hands than many listed companies in a year of busy sales. But unlike the companies, those who gave and accepted bribes did not bother about receipts and paper trails. And as any first year law student would tell you, without evidence there is no case. It was not law students though who repeated this elementary mantra of proof: it was those who administer the law, the highest authority in the land, the prime minister no less and his ministerial and political minions. In Malaysia Boleh, that is proof that no judge would dare ignore even in the face of evidence to the contrary. That being so, bribery does not exist. The Gods have spoken.

WHEN CABINET MINISTERS DEFEND the indefensible, they first blame others. They are deemed incapable of sin and wrongdoing; and others, including their cabinet colleagues, are culpabale beyond belief. Appointment to the cabinet makes one a demi-God; his words – however asinine, stupid, or wrong – reported with the gravity of voice when reading off a thousand-year text, but which makes an untutored one wonder, listening to the rubbish, if he has lost his marbles. But when ministers are appointed as a life-time appointment, they get ideas beyond their station, and soon begin to believe that they are elavated not into the laps of the Gods, but as Gods. Blame is transferred to even cabinet colleagues, when it is rightly and properly laid at his foot. Is the newly built hospital unusable? It does not matter who built it, it is the health ministry who must take the blame. A flyover has collapsed? It someone other than who built it. Landslips on the highway? It cannot be the works ministry. The privatisation contracts after all are given out by the Treasury.

What makes it easy is that those who report have to watch their backs too; a slip and they are out of a job. No one wants that, so when an important BN personage is interviewed, only a senior editor and several of lesser rank could; a single reporter is dangerous, for if the perspective is not "right", the jobs of their seniors are on the line, too. This is God-sent. First, there are several news stories of that interview; then the full interview. In these days of a distinterested public wanting to read the mainstream press, a brief summary is all one reads, the full interview often on their Internet web pages.

He means what he says. For he made this astounding statement as official statements are made, in between such onerous duties as declaring some singers as "drug prevention ambassadors". He had more: God forbid, the rogue police officers are involved with seven "outlets" on monthly retainers. It is his Herculean duty to clean the police of bad hats. "There are traitors in our midst but be forewarned that we are taking this matter seriously." The IGP has to be told some home truths: the traitors in "our" midst must be made to tremble because "we are taking this matter seriously." The few bad hat police officers will tarnish the 80,000 men, you understand, so these rascals must be threatened. No doubt they are.

But could UMNO afford such upright leaders, when they do not understand the venal world around them, and shocked beyond belief when faced with the evidence? Some leaders could not understand why, in spite of loyal service of decades and undoubted popularity among the delegates and members, they were defeated, and cry foul. These failed leaders have found, to their utter shock, that they have been defeated by the forces of evil known in UMNO as money politics. In God's honour, they aver, they did not bribe or shorten the odds as their opponents, especially those who won, did.

When two brilliantly elusive traitors spent their waking hours to destroy an institution its its 58th year of existence, how else could it be otherwise? If the traitors are not reined in, God Forbid, they would go and infect the Opposition. UMNO could not have that, could it? The Opposition could well be the stronger because of it, and the election system could descend to that in the Philippines, where every political party has equal chances to cheat to win the elections. So, other important issues got short shrift. Malay unity, Malay rights, bumiputra privileges, how they interact with the non-Malays upset at this continued mollycodding of the Malay and bumiputra communities, and what this means to the Malaysian polity and community were discussed almost as an aside to the main discussion on the twin traitors.

THE WORKS MINISTER, DATO' Seri S. Samy Vellu, is what the Malaysian cabinet is: he is there by the Grace of God; he can say what he likes and get away with it; he does not care how stupid he can be and often is nor how outrageous his statements; he represents the might of a geriatric cabinet that should have been; and believes that two decades and more in office gives me the right to ignore political and other realities.

Now this refusal to accept criticism is demanded of all in politics and public office. The New Straits Times, for instance, is deeply upset that the prime minister's son-in-law is unfairly criticised, that he is God's gift to Malaysia, and if one cannot see that one is then jealous and angry that one so young with a good degree from Oxford could rise so high. He is not. If you list the Oxbridge graduates by order of merit, he would be somewhere in the bottom quarter.

DATO' SERI ANWAR IBRAHIM faces imminent paralysis, neurological, kidney and urinary failure, and, God forbid, sudden death. This is the medical diagnosis. But how and if the jailed former deputy prime minister is treated depends on politics, not medicine. That he is in this state is not his doing. An existing spinal injury kept in check is worsened when, after his arrest on 20 September 1998, when the then inspector-general of police, Tan Sri Abdul Rahim Noor, attacks him, blindfolded, manacled and trussed up, with karate chops that brought him to an inch of his life. He was denied, as it became known later, medical treatment for a few days, when he was left as he was after the attack.

His strength is his uninvolvement in the Mahathir epoch's financial and political shenanigans. More important, he represents the traditional Malay cultural worldview, which challenges UMNO's deliberate ignoring it for God and Mammon, this belief that UMNO must change its stripes from culture to Islam to keep at bay its main political rival, Parti Se-Islam Malaysia (PAS). In other words, he represents one important even if sidelined pressure group in UMNO. He has much support for this view, and he would not come a cropper as UMNO wants to ensure.

Pak Lah made it worse with a drifting and bumbling administration, a cabinet of deadwood, and to insist that what they say is, only to be second-guessed by facts or other ministers. If the aim is a vibrant administration that would right the wrongs of Tun Mahathir Mohamed's administration - which is what Pak Lah promised - this is not it. Then to issue Olympian orders that Zeus must be unchallenged would cause the Gods, let alone lesser beings, to rebel.

Pak Lah (1364)   United States (636)   Straits Times (412)   Samy Vellu (224)   Putra Jaya (200)   Chief Justice (200)   Saddam Hussein (188)   Vincent Tan (164)   Civil Service (154)   Parti KeADILan (148)   Islamic State (118)   Johore Bahru (100)   Sungei Buloh (94)   Bukit Tinggi (88)   Abdul Razak (80)   Pengkalen Pasir (68)   Ting Pek (64)   Armed Forces (59)   Soviet Union (58)

Malay Dominance (58)   Yong Teck (56)   Hong Kong (56)   Human Rights (56)   Syed Hamid (54)   Puteri UMNO (52)   Islam Hadhari (52)   Royal Commission (51)   Hussein Onn (51)   Rafidah Aziz (48)   Indian Congress (48)   Open House (44)   Vision Schools (44)   Shah Alam (44)   Malay Unity (42)   Chua Jui (42)   Abdul Taib (42)   Ampang Jaya (36)   Ras Adiba (36)

Osama Bin Laden (36)   Nik Aziz Nik (20)   Ling Liong Sik (18)   Lee Kuan Yew (18)

High Court Judge (14)   Wan Azizah Wan (9)   Lim Kit Siang (9)   Megat Junid Megat (8)

Mahathir (2960)

Anwar (2399)