Dato' Seri Anwar, who left for the United States on the night of 14 January 2006, has decided he would be in the Opposiion. He would have rejoined UMNO but his re-entry is an issue. At the last UMNO general assembly, a resolution, hastily withdrawn, would have barred any who left the party rejoining as he would be a traitor if he left. It was meant to affect only Dato' Seri Anwar, but three of UMNO's six presidents, two of whom prime ministers, would be affected by the resolution. On the practical side, many in power in UMNO do not want him in to climb to the top on their shoulders, and then be cut off from the mainstream. He did that once, and lightning, as they say, do not strike twice in the same place. UMNO cannot live with him, nor live without him! But he has thrown in his lot with the opposition, though not which party. But he flies the flag for PKR for the moment, although he does not – indeed, cannot – hold office yet.

THE PUTERA UMNO HEAD, Dato' Azeez Abdul Rahman, has not given a convincing reason he was not caught in a vice raid at the Holiday Villa recently. He has refused to speak to the press then. UMNO leaders do not talk to the press unless they want to. Others who ought to know better spoke on his behalf instead. Even the profile of him in the Sunday Star today, 15 January 2006, portrays him as one who is misunderstood. What the article did not mention is that he is a creature of Mr Khairy Jamaluddin, who appointed him, and it was to save him that he disappeared by the back door in the wake of the police raid. That may not be true. What he says my be true. But the other version has imprimted itself in the public mind. His story is of an Indian, for that is what he is though constitutionally he is a Malay, a former waiter, a former salesman of second hand cars and guns who has been pushed to UMNO national politics as head of Putera UMNO, an organisation meant to Malay youths between 18 and 25.

THE MALAYSIAN CABINET WILL discuss tomorrow (04 January 2006) the sudden and freak death of Dr Liew Boon-Horng of Ethos Consulting, whose work in the Ministry of Defence took away from the defence minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, his powers to buy weapons. Purchases of arms are given to UMNO go-betweens, and Ethos Consulting made sure that it went to the prime minister's son-in-law Mr Khairy Jamaluddin's friends. Divine intervention has stalked Mr Khairy's every recent move. He used Ethos Consulting to make the defence minister have no control over arms purchases. With Dr Liew dead, Mr Khairy has to start again in the defence ministry. But Dato' Seri Najib, like his cousin, UMNO Youth chief and fellow cabinet minister, did not see through Mr Khairy's intentions at first, but now does. Dato' Seri Najib is unlikely to allow this to happen again.

THE 30 January ELECTION is not what is made out. It is not so Washington could leave Iraq in safe hands. It is not to usher representative democracy in Iraq. It is not to prove democracy is inherently superior to dictatorship. It is not so Iraqis can order their lives in conditions better than President Saddam Hussein could ever provide. It is not so the united Iraq under American stewardship would be stronger and everlasting than under Baathist rule. It is not so an Iraqi in a democracy could live his life better than he could in a dictatorship. It is not to elect leaders who would rebuild what Washington destroyed to destroy Saddam. It is not to end the total terror which the terrorists and renegades inflicts as thoroughly as Washington on the Iraqi. Nor is it to prove that Islam is terror incarnate if Washington so decides. But what the 21st century's Anglo-Saxon Don Quixote, known the world over as President George W. Bush, and his side-kick, Sancho Pancho, British prime minister Tony Blair, wants for Iraq.

[My Chiaroscuro column in malaysiakini (www.malaysiakini.com) today, 12 January 2005.]

So when he arrived in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, last Friday (07 January 2005) for a one-day visit, federal and Sabah UMNO did not know how to react. They tried to skewer his itinerary. The MAS plane he flew in had an unexplained mechanical failure once in the air, returned to Subang airport, left an hour later to land late for his meeting with the press, NGOs and others. He met them two hours later. He was prepared for it.

It now believes it can force the election with more aerial bombing, but so it would be impossible to hold one. To this end, Najaf was bombed in August, Samarra in September, Sadr City in October, Fallujah in November, Mosul in December, with Kirkuk possibly in January. The elections will be as scheduled on Jan 30, Washington's quisling, Ayad Allawi, insists.

But what Dato' Noh reveals is more frightening picture than we could have imagined: 1,821 murders between January 2001 and April 2004 (40 months). Or to put it another way, 47 murders a month, or three murders every two days. This is bad enough. But when he then says that only 60 per cent of these murders are solved, it follows that about 20 are not. In the first four months of 2004, there were 172 murders.

THE UNREST IN THE four Malay Muslim provinces of Southern Thailand, simmering for decades but in earnest since January, was one waiting to happen, with the added complication as a witting pawn in Washington's global war on terror. All the ingredients are there. A restive Malay population historically at odds with Bangkok and with close familial, racial and religious links to its neighbours to the south, in a poor south-east corner of Thailand that now faces the prospect of offshore oil and gas discoveries bringing new found wealth and encouraging a fresh cauldron of irredentist fervour, a renewed interest in Bangkok in keeping it firmly within its borders, and a belief amongst Malaysian hotheads, in the the governing National Front (BN) in Kuala Lumpur, and the Opposition Parti Islam Malaysia (PAS), of backing the irredentism. But Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok ignores a more powerful nationalist element, that the four states of Pattani, Yala, Songkhla and Narathiwat would want be independent, and which it can sustain with the expected oil and gas discoveries in the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea.

Once the short campaign caught the Opposition political parties short. But they have learnt over the years to live with it. When the BN government plans a snap election, it must first spread the world to the ground. The Opposition now knows when polls are around. The guessing game that BN ministers play has no impact but to threaten its own component parties to unite or else. The Opposition generally had begun their preparations in January, two months earlier, and are better poised to strike than the Government. The BN knows it. It cannot afford surprises. It needs to be returned in all the states it controls. With PAS putting on the pressure in Kedah, where it had over the years built a formdible presence, and in Pahang and Selangor, the BN cannot afford to slacken. The eight-day campaign is more for its own security: the shorter the campaign, the more difficult for the Opposition to highlight its missed steps.

PARLIAMENT IS DISSOLVED, AS are all state assemblies but Sarawak's Council Negri. The National Front (BN) government had played a cat-and-mouse game with itself on when it would be called since Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi became Prime Minister. The Opposition this time read the signs early and began preparations for general election in January, earlier than BN. So much so that it surprised UMNO leaders when Parliament was dissolved. The Election Commission would meet soon to decide on the polling day. The originally widely believed date of 21 March is out: on that day the second leg of the F-1 motor racing season is held in Kuala Lumpur. It would be a few days or so after that. It is Pak Lah's first general election since he became prime minister in November. He needs to do well to strengthen his chances, and cut out all opposition, when UMNO chooses its president at its annual general assembly in June.

The BN had planned this general election since September, thwarted each time by calculated leaks or internal crisis. Since Pak Lah took office in November, at least two dates were seriously discussed, in December and January before the March date is all but firmed. He needs this election to appear before the UMNO general assembly in June with a firm national mandate. It is election year in UMNO too, and his showing at the polls would determine if he would be challenged. The rush to elections now is forced upon him. The Sabah assembly's five year term ends in April. The fractious state of Sabah BN and UMNO prevented early polls there. There were plans for the election there first, so that Pak Lah could come to general elections with one state firmly in its hands. But that had to be discounted when PAS, which controls Kelantan and Trengganu, suggested it would too. The BN is under pressure in Kedah, it remains touch and go there, but the odds of being returned in high. If Kedah goes, the BN would face far more problems elsewhere than it could handle.

Last week, he inaugurated the Kedah BN election machinery in Alor Star with a blatantly political invective on the Opposition, deliberately fudging the issues and blaming all and sundry, in an attempt to get the well-dressed BN faithful to do what he now did, and drive the Opposition out of Kedah. He poured scorn on the Opposition's efforts to wrest the state, libelled and belittled his Opponents. He is brilliant when he is in control of his audience, however angry or fed up it might be, and here he was in control. But the audience listened, said little, clapped listlessly, and hoped this speech would not bring their party candidates a drubbing at the hands of PAS. But what he said, in one sense, attests to his nervousness in Kedah after the polling. The range of his below-the-belt attacks were wide, But of such crassness that his reputation would have sunk a bit even amongst the BN leaders and worthies who were there on Friday (31 January 2004).

But it did not work to plan. The Court of Appeal last week (21 January 2004), which heard his bail application, denied it, would not read the judgement for the rational reason that it lost control of its own court. All it could was to walk out in a huff when faced with the mayhem. The political decision of Tun Mahathir Mohamed, the former prime minister, to destroy his protege for daring to tell him it might be time to go, by having him convicted on still unproven charges of corruption and sodomy. Dato' Seri Anwar was arrested in September 1998. Five years later, he is still, in Malay and Malaysian eyes, wrongly convicted, and puts the BN's electoral plans at risk. The BN election machinery remains unstuck with the General Election widely expected before April.

The extraordinary scenes at the Court of Appeal last week, when the three-man coram dismissed his application for bail in scenes of utter chaos but could not induce decorum in the august halls of the Istana Keadilan aka the Palace of Justice, has put paid to justice for Dato' Seri Anwar. The public gallery, Dato' Seri Anwar, and others, openly challenged the coram, which could not make itself heard above the din and the shouting. It is the likes of which no Malaysian court had to contend with in its two centuries of existence. In happier times, when it sent Dato' Seri Anwar to jail on false, unreliable and unproven allegations, it would have found all in court that Wednesday, 21 January 2004, guilty of contempt and jailed them. All it could do was to walk out in a huff, and refuse to read the judgement in open court. It is yet another unmistakable sign that the National Front (BN) must convince Malaysians it did right to destroy and humiliate its former deputy prime minister, and deny him the legal courtesies extended to ordinary prisoners, like bail for offences for which he is in jail. Besides, the courts take an extraordinarily long time to decide routine applications from him.

DATO' SERI ANWAR IBRAHIM'S CUTTING remarks, after the Court of Appeal turned down his appeal for bail this week (21 January 2004) and his appeal against a conviction for sodomy, about kept judges and of a judiciary beholden to political pressures, struck home. The three judges should have struck him down and charged him for contempt of court. Instead, they walked out. The judiciary has kept silent on that extraordinary scene. If it had to respond, it should have been the three judges or, even, the chief justice. But the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, did, which raised more questions than answers. In his defence of the judiciary, he stuck to constitutional and judicial principles, not how the judiciary is or could be independent when its chief justice, or Lord President as he was known then, was drummed out of his own court for believing in its independence, and judges are not promoted, on political pressure, because they are too independent, or others are rushed through the ranks to the highest positions for no reason than they are pliable and respond to what the Prime Minister wants, and a chief justices goes on holidays with his favourite lawyer, when they have appeals pending in his Court.

THE COURT OF APPEAL DID what it must. The injustice must be allowed to fester. The man in the centre of the storm, the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, did what he must. The judicial system is injustice personified. Nothing changed therefore when Dato' Seri Anwar is denied bail and his conviction for sodomy dismissed. Take a step back and view what happened at the Court of Appeal yesterday (21 January 2004), and notice that nothing unusual happened. Each side stuck to its guns. It proved conclusively that as long as the Anwar affair is not resolved politically, every non-political move is mere drama, an opiate for those who do not want to resolve it politically. For at the root of this affair is the deep divisions within the Malay community over it. This cannot be repaired until the Anwar issue is put to rest once and for all.

The New Straits Times report today (21 January 2003, p1) of a public fury and public demand for "tough and swift" action. Dr Rais jumps into the fray and cites statistics to show that two-thirds the rape victims are under 16. He wants stiffer penalties - one wonders is death by hanging is not severe enough - to reflect the crime. Public flogging, in his view, is about right. The former Prime Minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, had suggested public flogging for incest and rape a year ago. It was not put into law then because of public objections. But he believes the time is ripe. As for swift justice, he looks into amending the Criminal Procedure Code so the cases must be brought to court within a time limit.

WHY DOES TRENGGANU HAVE a PAS government? The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, blames the prisoner, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, for it. Why is UMNO in fear of its future as General Election nears? In public and on the record, it is not; but in private and off the record, it is the injustice it meted to the former deputy prime minister. Why did not Tun Mahathir Mohamed go out in a blaze of glory after 22 years as Prime Minister? It is for framing his then deputy for sodomy and corruption. His successor, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, begins his term on a sticky wicket because he would not address the one issue that firmly divides the Malay community: its firm belief that Dato' Seri Anwar is convicted and jailed by a kangaroo court. The Court of Appeal hearing in Putra Jaya this morning (19 January 2003) and the utter confusion there is one more sign that it does not matter if he is guilty or innocent; he must remain in jail, no matter what.

But as the New Sunday Times (18 January) reports the BN leaders now sing a different tune. The UMNO acting president, Pak Lah, steps in to tell UMNO divisions to stop bickering over the new division leaders and get ready for elections. He had to step in because the UMNO vice presidents could not contain the incipient revolt and now threatens its election chances in Kelantan and in Penang. Pak Lah insists they were appointed in the best interests of UMNO and approved by the leaders. In other words, the UMNO infighting over the appointed division leaders is far from over. He says all must join hands to ensure a solid BN victory, and should not be distracted by interal squabbles. But UMNO members are wary of yet another contentious problem pushed under the carpet, and unresolved over time.

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