Whatever he does is a political issue. He visits Pak Lah at his open house in Kepala Batas, in Penang, and deputy prime minister Najib Razak gets political ischemia. He is in Jakarta when Najib is there on an official visit, and corners the headlines; this frustrated Najib so that he requested his host, Vice President Jusuf Kalla, to ask for more media coverage. The latest issue of the Indonesian weekly, TEMPO, interviews Anwar at depth, one of several high profile events that had UMNO, Najib and the embassy in Jakarta tearing their hair in frustration. Najib forgot he got a higher profile in Jakarta than he would in Malaysia's main newspapers, and if Anwar had not visited Jakarta at the same time, it would not have made much difference.

This week the deputy prime minister, Najib Razak and Anwar are in Jakarta as guests of the Indonesian vice president, Yusof Kalla. Each is there for different reasons, yet it is not Anwar who shivers at this prospect.

Tomorrow, the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, arrives in Jakarta for a general border committee meeting. On Tuesday, Pak Sheikh arrives for a five-day private visit. One is an official, the other a private, guest of the Indonesian vice president, Mr Yusof Kalla. The two Malaysians, personally and politically, are like daggers drawn. The prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who has an informal alliance with Pak Sheikh, worries about what could happen, and unusually has allotted a dozen men from his office to surround Dato' Seri Najib in Jakarta.

Kevin Rudd, Australian opposition spokesman on foreign affairs: And what we've foreshadowed is our interest in working closely in partnership with our friends in Jakarta in and other international development assistance partners in modernising and developing further the Indonesian mainstream education system. We can only do this in partnership with our friends in Indonesia and we would only do so based on their advice in terms of what sort of reforms they want in their education system, the curriculum accreditation authorities, the proper training of teachers and also the physical resourcing of classrooms across that vast country. It's a very large scale enterprise this, but if you're going to give the young people of Indonesia hope for the future this strikes us as a practical way to assist in building their future, otherwise if you have the politics of despair and alienation then frankly it just makes it easier for the terrorists to recruit.

AN Indonesian MAID IS tortured and abused. This is not new. Abusing and torturing of foreign maids is taken for granted. No one cares. No one bothers. Apart from a few non-governmental organisations. The government keeps a stiff upper lip. says nothing. Then, last week it comes to light that a teen-aged Indonesian maid named Nirmala Bonat had been horribly tortured and disfigured. It hits the front pages of Malaysia's newspapers. And a hysteria is let loose. Government ministers and others outdid each other to express shock and concern; the NGOs ever shrill to make a point; the newspaper editorials and reports whip up a frenzy; the Attorney-General promises a swift trial and a prospect of 67 years in jail. This threat is part of the trial by hysteria. Law and order has all but broken down. The police cannot do what they must. It forms a 1,000 man force to protect the high and mighty, after a few embassies and residences were robbed. Hysteria led to its formation. But would this help? Not on your life. The police are nowhere to be seen. A mere police presence is enough to deter the wrong doer. The police have decided that the foreigner is more important than the local, his security more important than yours or mine.

The only serious political opposition to the Alliance, as the National Front (BN) was then known, was the opposition Chinese-Malay left wring coalition called the Socialist Front, which remained a political threat even after it was demonised for its left wing, and later, pro-Indonesian, sympathies. When the pro-Chinese Labour Party of Malaya decided it would not contest the 1969 general elections, but would instead urge the people not to vote, it was a threat the Alliance could not ignore. It was after all the Socialist Front, in parliament and the states, challenged the cosy pro-British views of the Alliance, often forcing changes in policy. Many of its leading lights were detained under the Internal Security Act, detained without trial. The Alliance's views on Indonesia's confrontation of Malaysia was challenged to a far higher degree than officially admitted by Malaysian Malays and Chinese. One cabinet minister was detained under the ISA for his pro-Indonesian views. This Chinese political astuteness and exuberance was a convenient foil for Tun Razak to make his move.

The bigger and the more serious is internal corruption, the first step in the need to have secret bank accounts overseas. The laws are so framed that when penalities are enhanced, the cost of bribes go up. This is at the counter level. You are stopped by a traffic policeman. If you don't pay a bribe, you are in for a lot of hassle, including spending hours at the police station to settle the summons. So you pay him. Where one it was a pittance, today it is half the maximum RM300 you pay to compound it. Instances like these happen in every instance where a fine or penalty is imposed. The fight against corruption is directed at these instances. The higher you go, the more sophisticated the bribe-giving and -taking, usually done through intermediaries. If you want an Indonesian or Filipina maid, the maid agency pays a bribe to whoever approves it, usually a director or some high ranking officer. He does not delegate this authority. We know why. He does not want to share the loot. He is out of station, no approval for maids is given.

This double standard came to a high point on Thursday, 07 August 2003, when an Indonesian court in Bali sentenced to death an Indonesian Islamic militant to death for his role in the Bali bombing. The court sat as a Roman circus, put on a tight leash to deliver the verdict demanded, with the baying spectators there to ensure it is. Indonesia is caught in a bind. Justice could not be served when the only acceptable verdict is death whatever the circumstances. Amrozi is portrayed as the bomber, and if he was acquitted, there would be hell to pay. He had already been convicted and condemned long before the trial, in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia. It does not matter here if Amrozi is guilty or not. Only the death sentence was. If it had not been handed down, Indonesian justice is at fault. If it did, Amrozi should not have been sentenced to death for that would make him a martyr, a long life sentence would have been preferable.

But this would have had some sympathy if it had stopped there. The Singapore government has now released a recent exchange of letters between the trade ministers of Singapore and Indonesia to counter Indonesian claim the island republic was 'unfriendly' in not publishing bilateral trade figures. This claim is an old one: for years Jakarta had alleged Singapore encourages the smuggling of Indonesian exports, which were not reflected in bilateral trade figures. Jakarta argues because Singapore is less than honest in what it receives from this smuggling and other indirect imports.

Leaders in developing countries see their national oil companies as private banks, into which it can dip in to massage their egos at will. In the 1970s, the Indonesian oil company, Pertamina, was all but bankrupt in a series of shady deals in which its senior officials siphoned off hundreds of millions of US dollars to off shore accounts in Singapore and elsewhere, and allowed its contractors to bilk it dry. It nearly brought the Suharto governemnt to its knees. Nigeria misused its huge wealth from oil, and is so bankrupt that it has to be rescued. Even Saudi Arabia went on a spending spree but the bubble burst brought forth all the ills other countries in similar straits faced. As in Malaysia. We have not reached there yet. But if it goes as it does, that would be sooner than later.

But the more one looks at the Bali bombings, the more the official explanations looks skewed and plainly wrong. Far from Al Qaida and JI being the culprits, subsequent events point to other more sinister groups. There is the nationalist Indonesian with a bone to pick with Australia for its role in forcing East Timor out of Indonesia. There is the Tentera Nasional Indonesia (the armed forces) still smarting from the secondary role they are forced into after President Suharto was forced out of office in 1997. What about those groups which lost power when President Megawati Sukarnoputi took office, and who want to isolate her? It could be comeuppance, as John Pilger says in a commentary, for the close co-operation Australia has with Indonesia in security matters that enables Jakarta to rein down hard on Muslim groups, and this is a retaliation for that. And let us not forget, that it could be a deliberate attempt by the United States to force both Indonesia and Australia firmly on its side in this war on terror that loses steam by the day.

THE AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER, Mr John Howard, picks a needless if understandable, in his view, necessary, fight with Southeast Asia when he insisted, in a radio interview this month, on his nation's right to pre-emptive attacks against terrorists in foreign countries. The Bali bombings provided the backdrop. About 200 died, half Australians, as many Indonesians, and a smattering of other nationalities. Seven or more groups, including dissident Indonesian armed forces, even a high-level power play between the armed forces and President Megawati Sukarnoputri, and one to warn off Australia for its overt and covert meddling in Indonesian politics, could have been responsible. But within days, the elusive Muslim Pimpernel, Osama bin Laden, is proclaimed guilty, condemned, Indonesian Islamic clerics allegedly linked to him are arrested and quickly blamed. So far, nothing is proven. When Mr Alexander Downer was asked, in a BBC interview about the involvement of Al-Qaida, he fudged it. The best President Bush has allowed in apportioning blame is he "believes" Al Qaida is responsible.

Three years ago, the retired Malaysian armed forces chief, Tan Sri Ismail Omar, built a house in the vicinity. On 20 November 2002, a mudslide in heavy rains in the wee hours of the morning reduced it to rubble. The general, chairman of Affin Bank, was dug out of the rubble, but six of his family, including his wife, and two Indonesian maids, died. He was rushed to nearby Ampang Puteri hospital, muttering incoherently about important documents he needed to get his hands on. The MPAJ rushed in to flex its muscles: Residents in nearby houses were ordered evacuated, and if they did not, be fined RM250 for every day they did not. Meanwhile, technical experts explained how this building on slopes of hills already upset from its geological foundations was a tragedy waiting to happen.

The Australian Government this month raided two homes, in Sydney and Perth, searching for Muslim terrorists linked to an organisation it once supported and backed, the Indonesian Jemaah Islamiyah. The Malaysian prime minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, to burnish his questionable credentials as a Muslim leader, cries foul, and accuses Canberra of being anti-Islam as President Bush, in Washington, calls Muslims anti-semetic. Canberra and Kuala Lumpur agree with Washington that JI is a terrorist organisation, hoping none would remember that all three once supported, and backed with funds, JI and other now-damned radical Islamic groups including Osama bin Laden'a Al Qaedah. New enemies are capriciously created in this ubiquitous war on terror, that even Muslim nations -- Malaysia is not a Muslim nation but Dr Mahathir insists it is, so let us take that as read -- are in hot soup over it.

All we have so far is this demonising belief in Washington, Singapore, Canberra that it is JI and Al Qaeda that did it. It fits in with the official view of Islam as an enemy. So it is not challenged. For Islam replaces the Communist as the ogre of the day. Unfortunately, when battle lines are drawn on such simplistics basis as if you are not with us, you are against us, a lot of people would, and do, get hurt. In the Bali bombings, other factors could well be at work. Osama, Al Qaeda and JI could have done it; so could the nationalist Indonesian angry at Australian meddling in East Timor in the runup to its independence from Indonesia; the armed forces in an attempt to provide the conditions of utter chaos which only they could resolve; internal religious conflicts; to destabilise the government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri; an extension of the religious conflicts that have emerged in Indonesia in recent times; a deliberate Machivellian act by the US government -- not necessarily officially but through one of its agencies, like the CIA -- to warn Indonesia of the dangers of waffling in the face of a threat Washington insists she faces, with the side product of getting the Australian peoples mad and angry enough to agree with what their prime minister, Mr John Howards, as Washington's sergeant major in this war on terror.

It is the declared view of all who matter in this war on terror that what happens anywhere in the world that smacks of Muslim terror must be the handiwork of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaida. Any group in Washington's, and its satrapies', eyes, linked to Al Qaida is ipso facto true. So Singapore has a newly discovered terror network of Al Qaida fanatics who were in it years before it was set up. Malaysia has its Kesatuan Militan Malaysia, many of whose members she once encouraged to study Islam in Pakistan but are now convenient scapegoats. In Indonesia there is Jemaah Islamiah. In the Philippines, the Abu Sayyaf. Last week, A French oil carrier on charter to Petronas was attacked in Yemeni waters. Over the weekend, a powerful carbomb blasted two popular foreign haunts in Kuta, in the Indonesian resort isle of Bali, killing 182 and wounding 300, mostly Australians and other foreigners. No one has claimed responsibility, but Washington and Canberra, and Al Qaida experts, are quick to label it an Al Qaida outrage.

Malaysia is, always has been, a good neighbour. She does not interfere in our neighbour's affairs, nor does our mature leaders comment negatively on another's internal affairs. She helps her neighbours by offering tens of thousands of Indonesians over the years. Her leaders would not make scathing comments of a neighbour as the speaker of the Indonesian National Assembly, Mr Amien Rais, did. The Indonesians are terrible people, we give them jobs and they burn our flag. They should be grateful for the honour, as Malaysians must to the National Front (BN) for what it wrought to Malaysia, and any who questions, be it a Malaysian, an Indonesia, a Thai, a Filipino, must be severely dealt with. Mark you, no one should question Malaysia's right to pass any law it deems fit. Foreigners should stay out. This is the gist of a comment in the New Straits Times today (29 August 2002, p12) on the burning of the Malaysian flag in Jakarta. But how should the United States view Malaysia when UMNO Youth, an adjunct of the main party in the governing BN coalition, burns the US flag in front of its embassy in Kuala Lumpur for an act that has nothing to do with bilateral ties -- Israel's treatment of the Palestinians?

MALAYSIA'S INTEMPERATE decision to cane and jail those illegal workers who did not leave the country by 31 July turns into a fiasco. With one fell stroke, she quarrels with her immediate neighbours, insisting she is right which none should object. But when domestic policy is enforced without thought to relations with foreign countries, especially when their citizens are involved, its repercussions would cause more than diplomatic fury. This has happened. Southeast Asian countries are horrified not so much as the caning as the speed with which the new rules came into force, without negotiations and forcing the illegals to rush out to escape the punishment. Indonesia and the Philippines sent warships to rescue their citizens from certain caning. When this policy is defended in injured anger at suggestions of foreign interference in domestic matters, it spills over into domestic reaction in those countries which affect Malaysians. Indonesians now target Malaysians for abuse and manhandling. So widespread is this that the Malaysian foreign minister, Dato' Seri Syed Hamid Albar, asks Malaysians not to visit Indonesia.

Malaysia's honour is besmirched. An Indonesian pressure group -- or as the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, described it, "a small group of radical Indonesian nationalists" -- burned the Malaysian flag, the Jalur Gemilang, in Jakarta in continuing protests over Malaysia's caning of illegal workers, many Indonesian. He is sanguine about it. Malaysia would not seek an explanation. "We cannot respond to the action since it is not reflective of the Indonesian Government's stand," he says. But his response reflects not confidence but impotence. During Indonesia's confrontation of Malaysia 40 years ago, Mr (later Tan Sri) Melan Abdullah, then editor-in-chief of Utusan Malaysia, led a band of UMNO ultras to the residence of the Indonesian ambassador in Kuala Lumpur and burnt the Indonesian flag. Indonesia took umbrage, the name calling became worse, reacted by airdropping Indonesian commandos in Labis, Johore. Tan Sri Melan, of Javanese descent, would not go to Indonesia until decades later though he was the editor-in-chief of the UMNO-owned Utusan Malaysia and had risen to the inner circle of both UMNO and the then Prime Minister, Tun Abdul Razak Hussein.

Dr Mahathir ate humble pie and rushed to Indonesia to meet President Megawati Sukarnoputri to get them back. The Malaysian media tells of an emboldened leader who told the Indonesian president some unpalatable hometruths. That is pardonable since its primary task is not to report the news or report about the Malaysian conditions but to put the Prime Minister and his policies in a favourable public relations light. Our super-efficient cabinet made him do it. It could have asked for caution and deeper thought. It did not. The policy was skewed from the start. But since it made money for lots of people, it was the best policy, in the Cabinet view.

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