ASEAN was founded in 1967 so that Indonesia and Malaysia would not ever go to war. When the new members came in, it was not either of these two countries which were important, but the Buddhist nations – Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Myanmar. And so, these two countries did not for it to be relevant. In the meanwhile, a secretariat has been set up in Jakarta, with Malaysian as its first secretary-general and Singapore took up that post as the second. But it is Bangkok which decides whether ASEAN survives or not. It will let it continue, as ASEAN countries are more caught up in internal and bilaterial affairs. It is a fact that Malaysia and Thailand are caught in the problem of Thai Malays, who are ethinically Malays in Malaysia but have Thai citizenship. Malaysians believe that all Malays must be united under its leadership, and conducts its foreign policy to win a march over Parti Sa Islam (PAS), whose control of Kelantan the ruling National Front believes has to do with many Kelantanese having relatives with the Thai Malays.

If it does not, why did the minister make the statement in parliament? He is more than UMNO deputy youth chief, he is Pak Lah's son-in-law, a law into his own hands, the second most powerful man in government. It does not matter if he is in office or not. Recently, he and his wife, Pak Lah's daughter, called on President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, in Jakarta. He was honoured as a state guest, and the meeting carried live on Indonesia radio and television. Who did he represent? The Malaysian government? His father-in-law? UMNO? UMNO Youth? Who sent him there? Why was not stopped from going? Did Wisma Putra, the foreign office, know of it? Why did it not stop him?

THE SINGAPORE Prime Minister, Mr Lee Hsien Loong, visits Indonesia and Malaysia. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia vists Singapore and Malaysia. The Malaysian Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, visits Singapore and Indonesia. Each of these official visits on taking office were dressed up as bilateral visits when it should have been as part of the ASEAN mechanism. But is there an ASEAN consensus now? No. What was once a powerful regional organisation is now a pale shadow of it, with neither Malaysia and Singapore, once its anchor, working hard to keep it going. What saved it was Singapore, which kept it going, with its active interest in it, especially when ASEAN doubled its members to ten, its centre of focus shifting from Jakarta to Bangkok as the Buddhism replaced Islam as its dominant faith. Singapore did not see any point in continuing with this charade, for that is what it became, gave up the ghost, hitched its star as the US's regional proxy in its war on terror and Islam bashing.

Anwar however does. He raised more money for the tsunami victims in Indonesia than Malaysia gave: with a few well placed telephone calls, he had a Boeing 747 laden with a water purification plant and medicines within days of the disaster; when the plane had problems landing in Jakarta, a telephone call to vice-president Junus Kalla, resolved that. He is offered an advisory post with a West Asian ruler which would pay him about a US$1 million a year. He is due to be in Oxford and Harvard for the next few months, during which he writes a book about his lost six years.

The Sabah newspapers reported on his movement enthusiastically. The BN, certainly not KL, could not stop that. He got the press coverage the prime minister would have, the deputy prime minister would not. It is not only in Jakarta that he upstages Dato' Seri Najib. The one sane force, like it or not, to strike Sabah in recent months, if not years, was the hope Dato' Seri Anwar left behind.

He is not alone. The Jakarta meeting is the guerrila force to repair the tsunami damage and put in place a system to prevent it striking again. Like the Paris meetings in the 1970s which stopped the American-led tsunami in Vietnam. And the guerilla forces feebly attempting to stop the American-led tsunami in Iraq. You would notice that this tsunami strikes at nations least prepared: Grenda, Haiti, Vietnam. And it would not leave until its force is spent. The Indian Ocean ended when its force dissipated. The Vietnam War ended when the American military tsunami lost its force. It is this destructive force of nature and man that is ignored. The United States even toyed, in the 1950s, with tsunami bombs to create fake tsunamis.

Pak Lah talks only of help to indonesia when he landed in Jakarta for the one-day meeting to co-ordinate help for the tsunami victims. But he ignored his role as chairman of both the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and the Non-Aligned Movement. The countries affected are members of either or both. He wants badly to be on the right side of President Susilo Bambang Yudhyono than the rest of the world, including Malaysia. He is so caught up in his own survival as UMNO president and Malaysian prime minister that he appears to have little time for other, more important issues.

Earlier this month, he visited Indonesia about the same time the Malaysian deputy minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, arrived for a general border committee meeting. His media coverage was impressive, making the front pages while Dato' Seri Najib had to be content with the inside pages, though, in truth, his overall coverage was better in Indonesia than in Malaysia. The Malaysian embassy in Jakarta moved to restrict Dato' Seri Anwar's access to top officials, including President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and his media coverage. It only reinforced senior Indonesian officials' contempt for those across the Straits of Malacca.

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.

Relations between nations are defined by protocol and diplomatic conventions. When Lee Kuan Yew retired as Singapore's prime minister in 1989, he wanted to visit the Asean leaders. He was told in no uncertain terms that his hosts in Jakarta would be the vice-president and in Kuala Lumpur, the deputy prime minister. He decided not to visit the two capitals.

In Malaysia, democracy such as it is is in mortal danger. The democracy we have is a genteel description for the autocracy we have. The BN government has made it increasingly difficult for the opposition to spread its views, rushes elections through in less than a fortnight, all in the name of efficiency and cost. But when we look at how other countries, perceivably in worse shape than Malaysia, we see strains that we can only wish for: a vibrant press that would challenge the government, as in Zimbabwe and Ukraine; a judiciary that would call the government to account; an opposition leader who can be heard in his country's newspapers. In Malaysia, even those in his cabinet perceived to be against the prime minister gets short shrift in the media. Look at how the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak's recent visit to Jakarta was reported in Malaysian newspapers; never mind that his visit was upstaged by the Malaysian nemesis-in-chief, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim; but he got better play in Indonesian newspapers than he did in his own country.

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.

It was the Tengku in the early 1960s who persuaded the Achenese fighting for independence from Jakarta to transfer its government-in-exile from Holland to Malaysia: its ambassador, in his 80s, lives in quiet retirement in a town outside Kuala Lumpur. With him came 10,000 Achinese, peopled in the Felda agricultural schemes. Kuala Lumpur had also encouraged the Muslim Moros in southern Philippines to secede from its government in Manila, and allowed about 100,000 of them to settle in Sabah. But this interest is half-hearted. Less than four decades later, Kuala Lumpur pulled the plug, sending back Moro and Achinese rebels to certain death or continued rebellion; among the leaders it deserted were Nur Misuari and Hashim Selamat. There is a suggestion that Kuala Lumpur's interest in south Thailand is mired in its political problems with PAS, and therefore one of imminent danger to the Thai Malays, if this equation should change.

Tan Sri Mohamed believes that those who had completed three terms in parliament and state assemblies must way way for new blood. But when it was Tan Sri Mohamed's turn in the early 1980s to heed his words, he fought tooth and nail to ignore it. He was first elected in 1969, entered the government immediately, and rose steadily to cabinet minister in the 1970s, He fell foul of Dr Mahathir when the latter became prime minister in 1981. So shortly after the 1982 general elections, he was dropped from the cabinet and appointed the Malaysian ambassador to Indonesia. He would return often from Jakarta, hold court at his Chinese father-in-law's Hotel Equatorial in Kuala Lumpur, spewing his venom of Dr Mahathir to all who would listen. [It was incidentally at his table that I learnt how Dr Mahathir primed Dato' Seri Anwar's maternal uncle and an UMNO veteran, Dato' Sulaiman Palestine, to challenge the then Prime Minister, Dato' Seri (as he then was) Hussein Onn for the UMNO presidency.]

Who caught Nurjaman Riduan Isamuddin aka Hambali? The Thais and Malaysians claim credit. The suddenly-invisible Malaysian Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Norian Mai, is proud of his role in it. But the man was caught in Ayuthya, the ancient capital of Thailand in a joint US-Thai operation, so says the Washington Post. He was flown to Indonesia, Bangkok said. He was not, said Jakarta. Washington said a special flight picked him and his wife for an undeclared destination. The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed insists, in Swaziland, it was Malaysian intelligence that ensured his capture. If Malaysia had that intelligence, why was he not brought to Kuala Lumpur, where we are now the intellegence agencies would like to have a word with him. [Meanwhile, it is important for Tan Sri Norian to come forward in public or at a media conference to dispel swirling rumours that he is on enforced leave and may not be IGP, despite the extension granted him and the good work he has done to prop up the regime, for much longer.]

Few noted or bothered that the death sentence on Amrozi would attract similar jihadi attacks as on the JW Marriot Hotel in Jakarta before the death sentence was affirmed. Or that Amrozi was condemned under a retroactive law passed after the Bali bombing, and unconstitutional. The appeal process puts the Indonesian government more at risk. Indeed, Jakarta is caught in a conundrum in which the people would turn against it. It does not matter now what happens to Amrozi: the Indonesian state is caught between the proverbial devil and the deep blue sea.

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.

There is no political debate or discussion about this fearful spectre before us. When Malay hopes and promises are not met, in this highly charged atmosphere of a Malay cultural community alienated from the Malay-led government, it would be the non-Malay, especially the Chinese, who is targeted. One does not need to look far. Whenever a riot breaks out in Jakarta, it is the Chinese quarter which is attacked first. So it would here. Could this volatile pressure cooker be released so it could be minimised? Yes, but there is no political will.

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