THE FEDERAL COURT, AS expected, today (02 September 2004) quashed the conviction for sodomy and nine-year-jail sentence on Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, six years to the day he was sacked as deputy prime minister. This hearing had been postponed several times, and the decision confirmed recent rumours of both his acquittal and of a deal struck between him and the prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. After his arrest and when blindfolded and manacled, he was beaten to an inch of his life by the then Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Abdul Rahim Noor, causing him now to be in extreme pain and a near cripple confined to a wheelchair. His medical condition is so bad that he had been in hospital for the past five weeks. He would be released from prison today and leaves for surgery in Munich tomorrow on a special flight arranged by the Saudi Arabian government.

He inherited one when he succeeded Tun (as he is now) Mahathir Mohamed as prime minister: the jailed former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. He invited the second – Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah – when he misused his powers to deny his challenger even the right to challenge him. His predecessor could well be the third, if he does not pull himself up and be and act the leader he ought to be. In ten months in office, he has not found his ground. He is running out of time.

The NST lost ground badly after the fall of its former eminence grise, one Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, six years ago. That it re-invents itself to counter it on the anniversay of the eve of his arrest in 1998, is a Freudian slip. Whatever it does, it cannot rid itself of him. In place still is an informal boycott of it in the East Coast.

The UMNO disciplinary board tries to turn the tide against all corruption but money politics. It will not wash. Corruption here is as the courts defined it in the Anwar Ibrahim trials – cash and the misuse and abuse of power to get what one wants. That is the definition the ground demands it be, and any short of it is unacceptable. When confusion abounds on what the word means, is it any wonder that corruption is as rampant as it undoubtedly is? Even the UMNO-controlled New Straits Times newspaper mentions how it works. When a candidate greets a delegate, he makes it known to him if he is willing to pay for vote or not: it is either Salaam Ada or Salam Kosong.

It cannot even be curbed. The UMNO president-to-be himself is not above subborning corruption – as defined by the courts in the Anwar Ibrahim trials – to ensure he is unchallenged as UMNO president next month, and to ensure his favourites are returned. There is nothing anyone can do about it, short of a revolution.

It worked so long as UMNO was united. But in 1998, the convulsions within UMNO after its deputy president, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, was sacked, humiliated and jailed moved the Malay community, on which it depended, to rebel. Its circulation fell rapidly, helped by its antipathy to the man which once controlled it on behalf of UMNO.

It could have survived if its policies were framed in a rigorous intellectual and political thought and overview. But the general Malay distaste for that rode rough shod over any move towards it. The two great intellectual politicians, bar none, found their political passage blocked because of it: Tan Sri Ghazali Shafie, the former home and foreign minister, and the jailed former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

After all, corruption is not only about money; it is also of misuse of power and authority – as the courts decided in the Anwar Ibrahim trials – and Pak Lah, in his bid to be unchallenged UMNO president used his powers to ensure it, is as guilty as the fellow who dispenses cash. He does not see it that way, but that is how almost every one else does.

But this UMNO had no intellectual force to keep it going, and depended on the strength of the president's advisors. That it lasted so long is that Tun Mahathir had one in a man he was once proud to tell anyone who would listen that it was he who brought him to UMNO but would cringe now at the mention of his name: the jailed former deputy prime minister and UMNO deputy president, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. When he was sacked and arrested in 1998, the UMNO Hadhari raison d'etre collapsed, with no one with any intellectual strength to keep it alive. For it fell foul of Malay cultural and feudal tradition, and nothing it does since ever seems right.

The prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, may find this unfair, but the geriatric cabinet he presides over is his most dangerous enemy, not his deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, nor his challenger for the UMNO presidency, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, nor even his predecessor as the jailed deputy prime minister and UMNO deputy president, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

Heather Li: The other big issue leftover from the Mahathir era is the jailing of former deputy PM Anwar Ibrahim, many claim on trumped up charges. M.G.G. Pillai can the Prime Minister afford to ignore the Anwar issue in your view?

He got his first project when the now jailed former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, was finance minister. Though he now denies this link – as anyone now seeking government projects must – many in the Anwar camp at the time remember his mother, the former cabinet minister and UMNO wanita leader, Tan Sri Aishah Ghani, lobbying hard for her son, to even turning up at Dato' Seri Anwar's house to lobby for him. And he lives the part. He is the proud owner of a Yellow Ferrari, which would set him back a million ringgit or so, and a Gold Wing motorcycle another RM70,000. He could still get his wish to be appointed chairman of TNB Berhad, for whom he once worked.

CORRUPTION AND ABUSE OF power is the staple of the UMNO politician. One cannot exist without the other; indeed, the worthy judges has decided, in the Anwar Ibrahim trial, that one is the other, that money and abuse of power go hand in hand. In UMNO, it is used with impunity. If money will not get what an UMNO politician wants, he uses all the power in his command to get it. It does not matter if the politician wants to be UMNO president or branch chairman.

On this UMNO elections hinges the future of several UMNO leaders, the most important of whom is the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak. If Pak Lah gets his way, the current thinking is he and several others would be forced out after the polls. All of them, like all BN leaders, have committed what you and I would be taken to court for. For them it is a sword which can fall at any time. Ask Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

Paradoxically, the one Malaysian politician whom this group has much time for can do little for them: Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, who as you would know by now, is otherwise indisposed until 2008. But the support for him is real: One asked me: "What is UMNO without Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim?" The inference being that since Anwar is not in UMNO, why should they?

The National Front (BN) government believes it. For when it brings an issue to parliament, it is for a partisan political purpose, and it gets stung. The health minister comes to parliament to deny the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim's request for surgery overseas. All he did was to politicise the matter. His successor comes before parliament now to re-state it and to wash his hands off the case if Dato' Seri Anwar does not accept surgery locally. But all it did is to politicise it. The health ministry should have decided upon it. Now it cannot, except to reiterate the government's public position. The government is now hard put to resolve it but on its terms. And that is not about to happen.

But he is not the only power centre opposed to the UMNO leaders. There is another group, which backs the jailed former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. Most of his supporters are in Parti KeADILan, which his wife heads, but many UMNO supports of his remained in the party to fight his battle from within. They are subdued, but remain a significant force, not as powerful as the Tengku's but sizeable nevertheless. This group had swung to the Tengku in his quest for the UMNO presidency. They formed a formidable group. This had to be destroyed at all cost. For if the Tengku went to an election for the presidency with this support, Pak Lah could well have suffered a humiliating defeat.

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 visit to London is no different. To add to his troubles on this trip, the Guardian of London in advance of his trip says the man he wishes did not exist on this earth, the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, could well dominate discussions, especially since the courts continue to affirm his sentences, and play cat and mouse games with his appeals and other applications. But mishaps like this happens when it is done as a media event and not for a higher purpose. To pull it off, it must be done with skill and sensitivity. That skill is lacking amongst his spin doctors.

Pak Lah, appointed as an afterthought to replace the by-then jailed former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, worked in the old man's shadow until he took over in November 2003. He had two impediments to power in his own right: the old man still exercised power behind the scene and he as prime minister had to establish his right to lead UMNO.

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