The Malaysian government forgot its writ does not run outside its borders, while it can enforce its writ on Malaysians at the centre, it cannot anywhere else in Oxford. But it assumed he could get to Oxford only through its good offices. I had known for weeks – along with, no doubt, a few hundred others – of his plans to be at Oxford and Harvard, that the last British governor of Hong Kong and later EU commissioner for foreign affairs and currently chancellor of Oxford University, Mr Chris Patten, helped him to St. Anthony's College, where he would write a book on his life in jail. That worries many in UMNO for what it could contain.

In this week's episode of The Editors, panellists MGG Pillai, Steven Gan, Editor-in-chief, Malaysiakini and Zoher Abdoolcarim, Senior Editor with Time Asia analyse how the release of Anwar Ibrahim will influence Malaysian politics. In part two of our interview with Anwar, the former deputy prime minister of Malaysia talks about militant Islam. Also our regular commentator on China, Willy Lam looks at the recent elections in Hong Kong.

THE Hong Kong CUSTOMS officials on Tuesday, 04 May 2004, seized a shipment of 2,800 "second-hand" machine guns, 25,000 unloaded magazines and other accessories enough to equip a military division, its largest ever seizure. Hong Kong allows transit of weapons but they must be declared and licenced, suggesting that this shipment from Port Klang to Oakland, California, were not. The Malaysian home and defence ministries, with the police and armed forces chiefs, went into a tailspin, and in their explanations raised the doubt that these "antique" weapons were not for a museum in California but for those it should not be sold to. The Malaysian armed forces chief, Gen. Tan Sri Zahadi Zainuddin, told the New Straits Times yesterday (05 May 2004) said the weapons did not belong to its security forces, not the police nor the armed forces. He was so confident of this that he awaited a report from Hong Kong's Interpol representative. In other words, he is sure that this was a sinistral attempt to besmirch Malaysia's good and fair name. He did not know the name of the ship, where it was registered or even if it was in transit. The Inspector-General of Police, Dato' Seri Mohamed Bakri Omar concurred.

THERE IS NOTHING SURPRISING at the immediate sacking last week (20 November 2003) of the New Straits Times Press group editor-in-chief, Tan Sri Abdullah Ahmad or Dollah Kok Lanas as he is more well-known. The new UMNO president wants his own around in key positions. The NSTP is its public relations arm. Pak Lah does not want his predecessor's men around, certainly not a 'loose cannon' his aides believe Tan Sri Abdullah is. When I asked him at a diplomatic function early October, how long he had left at the NSTP. He enigmatically shrugged his shoulders. Within a month he is out. The official reason of a Saudi Arabian objection to an article he wrote about the monarchy is at best specious. The government, not UMNO, would have complained to the NSTP board. He was sacked after the UMNO management committee met. I heard of it a few hours later, in the middle of the night. Since the article appeared a week earlier, why this rush to sack a man without giving him a chance to be heard? He was in Hong Kong when he was sacked.

Mr Husam thinks this money is not Al-Qaeda funds but the illgotten gains of UMNO bigwigs in search of a golden parachute in foreign countries. He is wrong. Nor is it Al Qaeda money as SBS alleges. The Saudi business man, however rich he is, deals with people he is comfortable with - and would usually prefer a Lebanese or a South Asian. By no stretch of imagination could Dr Adrian Ong, the Malaysian expatriate in Sydney, be mistaken as a South Asian. It is more likely these funds, if it exists, came from Far East sources - possibly from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong,Vietnam, China. Does this matter if the aim is to destroy he who must be destroyed by any means? So the Malaysian end of this elaborate conspiracy saw it an opportunity to put a nail in the political coffin of Dato' Seri Anwar. It was not thought through, and now haunts instead Pak Lah, UMNO and all who wants Dato' Seri Anwar out of their hair.

Tenders for the airport construction close on Thursday, 02 September. One foreign construction company declined to tender: it could not build it at RM250 million for a profit. The airport is designed like the old Kai Tak airport in Hong Kong and the runway juts into the sea. To construct it the loose sand on the beach must be dredged and filled with 250 million cubic metres of rock, most of which must be brought in barges from elsewhere in the peninsular and beyond. Even the workers must be brought in from the mainland. Much of the work has to be built over water. The variation orders could easily double its cost to RM500 million. It is clear this airport would be a white elephant for a long time to come. As the Kuala Lumpur International Airport is proving to be. Even if foreign airlines are allowed to fly into the new Tioman airport from outside Malaysia. To make it profitable a dozen and more return flights daily is an absolute minimum from not only the peninsular, Sabah and Sarawak but from countries beyond. A holiday resort cannot generate that sort of traffic. When people fly into the airport for only reason, what happens when that reason collapses or when its owner is in bad odour with the government of the day?

It is part of a campaign to show his opponents to be men of no principle, that they would stoop so low as to to bribe their way into power. He embarked on a theme the MCA secretary-general had declared in a speech: he said it was so common these days, and took the form of dinners, gifts, trips to Genting Highlands, Langkawi, Haadyai, Hong Kong, Guangzhou and study loans for members' children. If money is a criterion for selecting leaders, the MCA is in deep trouble. Some leaders are so obsessed with 'image-building' that they neglect their work. "By looking at these symptoms, we know the MCA is sick. But it is not terminally sick. It can be healed because its enemies are not outsiders but from within," he added. It is this theme that Dr Ling picks up: the enemies of the party are the loyal MCA members who believes Dr Ling has outlived his usefulness and damages morale every day he is in office.

We have a spanking new check-in counter for travellers flying through KLIA. But it is only for MAS flights. Even then some luggage could be checked at the airport. Those on other flights get no concession. That is not what we were told. We could check our luggage at KL Sentral, no matter which airline we travelled in, and collect them in Los Angeles or Tokyo or wherever you were headed to. But travelling by MAS is a hassle: you do it a favour by travelling on it. A friend who travelled to Hong Kong last week for an urgent meeting could not return the same day because his MAS ticket could not be endorsed to a CPA flight leaving then because the MAS office was closed. So he stayed the night. But he could not take the CPA flight leaving at 0800 nor at 1100 because the MAS officer decided she would come in at her convenience just before the second flight was due to leave. When he finally boarded the flight in the early afternoon, the counter clerk asked him why he did not take the early flights! Since it was a code-sharing flight, it was a CX plane that carried an MH flight number as well.

The tiger prawn project looked good on paper, to be a major supplier of tiger prawns to Thailand, Hong Kong and Japan. It is the Malaysian government's belief that any export project must be of large scale, when projects like these are best handled by smallholders with a company providing technical help and buy the prawns from them at a reasonable price. Which is why every government attempt at large projects invariable fail. Tiger prawns are exported in large quantities, often without government help, to countries further afield, and they face no problems. One of the most successful is run by a renegade Islamic preacher who turned to it after his organisation, Darul Arqam, was banned. He is in restricted residence, recently transferred from Rawang to Labuan, but his tiger prawn export firm makes him as successful as Darul Arqam ventures in Central Asia and China.

An insiduous counter-attack by Malay civil servants is to remove, by fair means or foul, the names of buildings and institutions named after non-Malays. Officially denied, but it happens all the time. Many a departmental head is now under pressure to leave his department more Islamic or more Malay or both. So, the Ipoh city council, with the active help from UMNO, MCA, MIC, Gerakan councillors, renamed Jalan Koo CHong Kong, named after a Malaysian hero killed by the communists, to Jalan Tabung Haji. In the resultant furore, the change was annulled; the mayor's excuse that he did not know the man was a Tan Sri! It is a matter of time that name would disappear.

In Malaysia, Renong and its linked conglomerate, United Engineers Malaysia (UEM), were given government privatisation projects without due diligence, and the two companies, who could have made billions out of it, ended up in unrepayable debt and bankrupt. Every project it was given ends is in debt or bankruptcy. The government rescues every one, retires the debts and hands the companies back to those who caused it to fail. Tan Sri Halim Saad took a personal loan in Hong Kong for US$800 million to buy the now bankrupt National Steel Mill in the Philippines admist negotiations in which he was involved for a Malaysian company to buy for it less than half. The venture collapsed. But the Malaysian government takes over that private debt for what turns out a scam. There is no uproar, even the opposition kept quiet.

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