HUBRIS, UNMITIGATED ARROGANCE, THIS belief in its skewed confidence that it is lord of all its surveys, has brought the National Front (BN) and its president and prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, to their knees. The BN splits from within, far more effectively than the Opposition could, as the huge parliamentary majority weakens it. No one talks about it, but the BN is now irrevocably split. Pak Lah is caught between two stools, unable neither to take advantage of his unprecedented mandate nor keep his troops in line. The BN has had powerful pressure groups from within, but they are, by and large, kept in their corner. Add to this, two groups none would talk of: the small band of Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah loyalists, and the more widespread but seemingly powerless backers of the jailed Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. But these two groups kept their own counsel, did not attempt to be more than a pressure group, and as equally forcibly distanced from the source of power and patronage. This time, however, the wide split from within comes from an uncertain and weak party president and the state warlords, who exert their authority in ways they would not dare under previous prime ministers.

The Malay ground took to the streets in 1998 after Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim's arrest, humiliation, and jailing. It was brutally put down. Key figures in the Malay ground are arrested, detained, jailed, charged in courts to warn others of their fate if they continue backing the jailed politician. The consequent peace of the graveyard is touted as proof that all is well. But this election unleased an angrier Malay ground: it is convinced all is not right, and holds the Pak Lah government and the EC responsible for it. The BN and UMNO politicians are angry with their leaders and the new cabinet marionettes who dance not to not one puppet master but a hundred. Pak Lah, to be fair, tries to reverse the trend, but it is a task beyond him. He did not have the time to settle in his job, or even reflect on what he ought to do. His first task should be to get this right, but he has no help. His cabinet says what it likes when it likes, policies and plans continue to be announced which commits Malaysia to billions of ringgit we do not have.

The UMNO president knows his weakness, and that the BN parties are now like foxes outside an unguarded chicken coop, ready to swoop when attention is diverted. It is not that easy. The UMNO's brilliant showing comes with a party that threatens to break asunder if this unspoken and unmentioned rebellion takes root. The near total victory can only be managed if there is firm leadership at the top. There seems to be none now. The former prime minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, brooked no rebellion - and he made that dramatically, but with such disastrous results, when he sacked, arrested, humiliated his chosen heir, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim - and, by and large, he succeeded. But he stayed too long, did not allow Pak Lah enough time to succed him in his own right. The warlords flexed their muscles. Even before the general elections. After it, important UMNO leaders joined them. More did after the UMNO supreme council decided that the prime minister and deputy prime minister would be challenged as UMNO president and deputy president. This was unwise. There is no UMNO president and deputy president now. How could the supreme council take it upon themselves to decide the two posts would not be challenged?

The 2004 General Elections should have been no different. The BN would have won with its two-thirds and more majority. The Opposition would have held its ground, or even lose some of it. But the BN realised the old practices cannot work. The Pendang parliamentary and Anak Bukit state assembly byelections in Kedah - it won one, lost the other - two years ago hinted at the dangers ahead: the BN could not depend on the Malay ground, disenchanted with it since Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim was sacked, jailed, humiliated and beaten to a pulp in defiance of Malay cultural rules, and that divide forced it to a new alignment with the Chinese and the bumiputras of Sarawak and Sabah. It was equally important for PAS to be sidelined. In Parliament, it showed up a BN front bench as the Malaysian Keystone Cops, bumbling and bungling its way from one relentless parliamentary question to another, unable to debate the issues, frightened when PAS leaders stand up to speak, unwilling to stand up, running away from the chamber when the issues got an uncomfortably close airing. So it enhanced the advantage it had with the new electoral boundaries with a little skullduggery of its own.

It puts Pak Lah in a spot. Despite his solid victory, he sits atop an uneasy throne. He cannot assign blame to the EC. For it is he who must protest the loudest at this deliberate hijacking of the general election, at the moment by parties unknown, to make his tenure uncomfortable. He should have relied on his personal popularity, and the tremendous goodwill he had as the new prime minister, and built on that. The longer he continues, without addressing the growing doubt that this general election is irrevocably flawed, the more the ground would move away from the BN, and him personally. The Malay ground is furious. It feels cheated. The creative delineation of the constituencies, when large sections of Chinese communities were added to solid Malay seats inclined to PAS and the Opposition has raised a demon more serious than what the former deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim created. The BN and Pak Lah believes they can ride the storm, but they view the world from the eye of the storm, unaware of the violence out of it. But make no mistake, they would slip into the violence if they do nothing about it. For a start, they must consider fresh elections for the Selangor state assembly. But they cannot stop there. They could have in the week or so after the polls. Not now. More dramatic measures must be taken to erase the growing view that we are now descending into the elections favoured of African presidents, where elections are held to vote them into power. God forbid if that should be the fate of elections in Malaysia.

As a result, Pak Lah sits atop an uneasy throne, the country divided as never before, more so than after the former deputy prime minister was sacked, arrested, beaten, humiliated and jailed. If this could have got the Malay ground to desert UMNO at the 1999 general election, this time it is not only more serious but this divide could well be permanent unless the BN drastically correct it. There is no hope of that. Especially when both the BN and PAS, in the opposition, miscalculated Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim's impact on the polls. Both lost ground, one culturally, the other at the polls. PAS all but ignored the Anwar impact, conducted a campaign without him. It lost ground badly. It still does not have the killer instict to take the BN head on, although it has a formidable election machinery. It should have rode on the Anwar affair, but it decided not to, and paid the price.

One example will suffice. He says, in a press conference, that 5,000 ballot papers in Lumut were not returned. He said many sailors were out at sea, and could not vote on the day specified. He talks nonsense. If all our naval ships were out at sea at the same time, which is unlikely, no more than 2,000 sailors would be on board. As far as I know, the RMN does not have an aircraft carrier, not do we have plans for one. If we had, Tan Sri Rashid would be right. If they have to vote at a specific point, why were the ballot papers not issued only to those who came to vote? Why was it given out to all and sundry as he says they were? The government cannot keep quiet now. It is in the thick of it as surely as the EC is. Keeping quiet or ignoring the result of the EC's handiwork is not an option. The ground seethes in anger at being taken for a ride. There are no outward signs of it, but talk to the ordinary man in the street, and you would an anger that seems to surpass even at the political destruction of Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. The widespread goodwill the new prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, before the general election is all but depleted. For that he must thank Tan Sri Rashid and the EC. No one else could have done it so efficiently. Certainly not the Opposition.

But Pak Lah and Dato' Seri Najib, acting the vacant posts, do not want to be challenged. What happened in the 1978 UMNO elections is worrying enough. The then president, Dato' (later Tun) Hussein Onn, was challenged by Dato' Sulaiman Palestine (ironically, in the light of subsequent events, the maternal uncle of the ousted and battered former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim). About 30 per cent of the delegates backed the challenger. This threw Tun Hussein out of gear, the remaining three years spent in how to retreat gracefully after this unacceptable feudal challenge. Dato' Sulaiman himself was to claim he did not get what he was promised, and would reveal in clinical detail to any who would listen. Rumours that it was Dr Mahathir who put him up to it was current at the UMNO general assembly.

That had one unintended effect. UMNO to meet the growing threat of PAS, after 1999, had to be seen to be more Islamic than its rival for the Malay heartland. With the multiracial parties sidelined, UMNO had to best PAS on its turf. Malaysia is declared an Islamic state, the judicial system gives equal status to civil and syariah law, and now, the prime minister announces, in the election campaign, that Muslim pupils must study the Quran from the first year of school. This, he insists, would not affect the non-Muslim pupils. As usual, this is a gut reaction not thought out properly. It does not matter. PAS would accept it wholeheartedly. The BN and UMNO is pushed further into changing the character of the Malaysian state in a debate, like in Iran in the 1970s, where the other secular and non-Islamic views were battened down. KeADILan, even with its raison d'etre the release of its eminence grise, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, promised that hope. But UMNO wanted nothing more than to see it destroyed, and is now caught in the islamic dilemma.

He is cossetted between by the unstated but implied pressure on the one side from his predecessor, who is, in typical Malaysian political fashion, a non-person but unlike it wields considerable influence behind the scenes; and, on the other, the twin pressures of a resurgent PAS and the cultural miscalculation that stemmed from how his predecessor, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, was humiliated, against Malay feudal practice. Both are understated now, the BN in fact insists both are non-issues, though it is more afraid of PAS than of Dato' Seri Anwar. His first major problem is to remove Tun Mahathir's influence in UMNO, Parliament and the state assemblies. Many of those removed in this month's general election are to remove his influence. This has worked well, but in the states, he did not find it plain sailing at all. In Trengganu, UMNO division leaders and members not given a constituency contest walked out from its election office, in one case burning it down, leaving the party machinery in a lurch. In Perak, one UMNO division would not allow a BN component party leader to contest in what was always an UMNO seat. In two states, Johore and Pahang, the list was released at the last possible moment, but not after high drama.

It would have continued this way but for how the then Prime Minister, Dato' Seri (now Tun) Mahathir Mohamed, destroyed and humiliated in 1998 his chosen successor, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, now reeling in pain in his cell in Sungei Buloh prison. It caused the first major shift in Malay thinking since independence. The Malay, with his acute sense of justice and fair play, and shocked beyond belief, moved away from UMNO's political and cultural protection. He remains on the sidelines waiting to see who the winner is before he commits himself to that side. UMNO and the coalition it leads, BN, has tried its best to wean them back, without success. It is this that enabled the Opposition political parties, especially PAS, to make headway. The Malay vote is split, and the BN cannot depend on it anymore. Hence in the general election, all focus is on the Chinese vote, now solidly with the BN even if the leaders of the Chinese political parties are in bad odour with the new Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. UMNO's strong-armed control of the BN political partners has no principle behind it, but a vague sense of political unity which is not sustained with reasoned thought. This, to be fair, is not with BN alone. Every political party, in BN and the Opposition, are guilty of it. In the opposition it is not as critical since they do not hold power, and it has the luxury of internal debate. Even then, a few, like the DAP, does not allow too much of it.

I am not impressed with many superficial and superflous attacks made on the government, by NGOs and others, because it is fashionable to do so. There is, I believe, an unfortunate tendency amongst them to organise the opposition to a foreign standard, we are blamed because our actions do not meet a higher mythical standard. But sometimes it strikes home. The SCOMI affair for example; the Anwar Ibrahim fiasco, for another. But the NGOs and others would play an important role because homegrown Opposition is stymied and constrained. The Government and the ruling coalition would not meet those who criticise it to explain or challenge what is said.

The UMNO mystique in the Malay heartland is under attack. Pekan, for all its closeness to the state capital of Kuantan and the superficial modernity that marks for progress in present day Malaysia, is in the thick of it. It is a constituency which must be nurtured. His father assiduously did in his years in office. He was deputy prime minister in his thirties, and died at 53, the age when his son became deputy prime minister. Dato' Seri Najib, in many ways a more consummate politician than his father, however, ignored his ground, and allowed the opposition to build a base within it. Not all of it is his own fault, but he must bear a large share of the blame. The urbane sophistication that makes him a welcome guest at No. 10 Downing Street or the White House is seen amongst his constituents as plain old-fashioned arrogance, and this in a society which lays great store on civilised behaviour. The Opposition Party Islam Malaysia (PAS) has made impressive inroads into the state: UMNO is frustrated that many of its older members and leaders left it, especially after the 1998 sacking of the then deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, for PAS and the National Justice Party (KeADILan). The ground was slipping from under him. He did not act quickly to stop the rot.

His UMNO past is brought up for favourable mention: he was a "staunch" UMNO supporter, an assistant secretary of UMNO youth "who was expelled from UMNO on Oct 6, 1998 for taking part in anti-UMNO activities and later joined KeADILan". How could a staunch UMNO member be expelled for anti-UMNO activities? But let us not quibble over it. The report further states that he "has campaigned aggressively" to reinstate Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim as deputy prime minister and UMNO deputy president. To make this defection feasible, the NST adds that a KeADILan 'bigwig' would defect. Then it puts the knife in with a gratuitous comment: With general elections due soon, even KeADILan leaders believe the party is a spent force and would not hold its own at the polls. So, it infers but does not say so outright that Mr Saifuddin has seen the light and would join UMNO.

The Anwar Ibrahim affair, in one sense, is the most important political development since the first general election in that this man, humiliated and incarcerated for a political vendetta, caused the Malay political and cultural ground to move to the sidelines, forcing UMNO, the leader in BN, to have to fight for Malay support that it once got as their cultural and political leader. This is played down now: Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim is a nobody, he is a spent force, without him KeADILan, the political party that came out of what the BN thought was his political castration, is history. But he is not. His name is a dirty word in UMNO and BN, the fear is real of what would happen if he is indeed released. UMNO has to fight to retain its cultural and political leadership of the Malay community because of it, for it breached the fundamental relationship between leader and chieftain by humiliating him.

What both leaders found in the three states was fratricidal infighting within a leaderless state UMNO; in these three states, it is UMNO that matters. In Kelantan, there is the added problem of a state UMNO leader up in arms for being sidelined. Pak Lah acknowledged that in his speech in Bachok. He called on UMNO leaders to stop the infighting and work as a team to throw PAS out of office. With a solid unified UMNO with strong leaders that would be difficult. In 1999, UMNO won one parliamentary seat of 14, and two state assembly seats of 43. To Pak Lah's UMNO, that one parliamentary seat is as good as gone. Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, who is that MP, is out of the pale, and is not factored in UMNO's calculations for the state. Pak Lah's visit to Kelantan had one purpose and one only: to make certain that one of Dato' Mustapha Mohamed, the state UMNO chief, the UMNO candidate in Bachok, Dato' Awang Adek, or the lawyer, Dato' Zaid Ibrahim, is elected at all cost. Whoever wins is guaranteed a seat in the post-election cabinet. If all fail, it is the more likely that Dato' Awang Adek, would come in via the Senate. As matters stand, it is clear Pak Lah would be happy with the minimum he can get, and if he can hold on to Kedah. This is not to say BN cannot do better. There is many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip, and PAS, confident of victory in Kelantan and Trengganu, and of an upset in Kedah, can do something electorally stupid, and allow BN to draw circles around it. If that does not happen, BN must fight the harder to keep Kedah and return to power in Kelantan and Trengganu.

This would continue so long as the anti-corruption laws are defanged to make it all but impossible for the ACA to prosecute even if they had rock solid evidence to convict. If Pak Lah means what he says, the ACA must be strengthened to what it was in the beginning, when it was on the accused to prove he did not live beyond his means. Under this provision, it removed two UMNO mentris besar. The law was hastily amended to exclude that in future, and weakened periodically as the degree of corruption went up leaps and bounds. Today, it is a matter of strict proof, which is all but impossible for anyone who squeals is invariable in trouble too: under Malaysian law, those who give and accept bribes are equally liable. Over the years, the anti-corruption laws was a useful tool for the prime minister to keep his flock in line. He did not hesitate to use it when it did: that was why the then Selangor mentri besar, Dato' Harun Idris, was convicted in the 1970s, and the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, two decades on. Although in the latter case, evidence had to be manufactured, the court rules made a mockery of, and rules of fair play consigned to the winds.

There was one attempt to set this right. In 1997, the then Prime Minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, was on leave. His deputy, the now-jailed Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, as acting prime minister, got the cabinet to amend the anti-corruption law to give it more powers including the right to investigate all records of whoever it investigates for up to six years previous. Retirement, or resignation, as now did not protect one. When he presented it to the cabinet, it was fiercely resisted until he asked in what now can only be described as political naivete if it does not support the amendments because the ministers have much to hide. It was passed. Two who did were one Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and one Najib Tun Razak. It was presented to Parliament, where it got its first reading quickly enough. But Dr Mahathir returned, reversed it, and it now lies in limbo. Since Pak Lah's view on corruption mirrors Dato' Seri Anwar, he should use that law as the basis, tighten its provision, and earn the undying gratitude of all and sundry that he would beard the goat.

When it does that, it allows the hegemon to decide who should be in power. However one looks at it, that man is not Pak Lah but his deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak. He must know this by now. It was, remember, Washington's public support for the jailed deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, that sharpened the political debate in Malaysia. Tun Mahathir accused Dato' Seri Anwar of being Washington's stooge, amongst others, because the Pentagon gave him a right royal welcome, even inspecting a guard of honour, as it did not Dr Mahathir. If you extend this to the present situation, so did Dato' Seri Najib in Washington on a recent visit. Would Pak Lah get a similar welcome when he visits Washington? He might or he might not, depending on how loyal a poodle he could be. Dato' Seri Najib's credentials on this cannot be faulted: when he called on Mr Tenet, the great man had his legs on the table and slumped to his chair, telling him that the US is a greater power than the Roman Empire. He was insulted and, yet, he did nothing about it. Washington, I should think, knows the SCOPE factory cannot be a major link, but it is enough to unnerve Pak Lah. Why should he be rattled?

Pak Lah cannot stop now. He must show he means what he says. If it takes the ACA between five and ten years to investigate corruption, how efficient can it be? It has little to show how successful it is in rooting out corruption. Its high profile case to show it can do its work without fear or favour collapsed spectacularly when it recommended the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, be charged with corruption. This is its next chance to redeem itself. Yet it steps in for a clear political purpose. The investigations began when Tun Mahathir Mohamed was prime minister. It kept quiet. It did not act until his successor needed wants a few scalps to prove he is serious about rooting out corruption.

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