So, Dato' Chin's cliche-ridden comments talk of unrequited love, worried the disinterested suitor would run loose when sworn in. He wants us to believe Mr Gore would spend his working hours to destabilise Malaysia. Issues of Israel, Palestine, Middle East, relations with Japan and China, multilateral trade talks, and others that regularly pile upon his desk would be set aside to squash Malaysia. Should Gore win, Malaysia gives notice, writes Dato' Chin, that relations would not improve until he apologizes. An ant, proving his, ah, anthood, makes love to an elephant which bellows when its foot gets caught in a trap. The ant, solicitiously asks her: "I am sorry I hurt you, dear!" Malaysian officials behave like that ant. A retired secretary-general of an important ministry talked recently on United States-Malaysian relations, in which he dismissed the United States disparingly, a country of no consequence, while he extolled Malaysia's virtues. He was sure Washington spent its waking hours to destroy Malaysia's unassaillable peace.

Dato' Seri Abdullah's muscle-flexing reveals hidden truths in the government's economic and political policies. No one addresses them these days, decisions taken ad hoc than after careful thought. The government flounders. The Prime Minister would leave the country if only to keep his mind away from the ever-increasing myriad of problems which his cabinet ministers and officials would rather he decide. And the visits does not comfort him any more. The Anwarists stalk him in overseas locations: their reception of him in the United States this could well spread to his other favourite locale, Japan, where a FreeAnwar chapter has just opened. This reduces to number of countries where he could go to without hindrance. Africa wearies of him. His influence, unmentioned but widely presumed, in the Zimbabwean land grab, with its contentionous anti-colonial overtones not as policy but to remain in power, has got Africa's statesman, especially former South African president Nelson Mandela. Something must give. If he does not return to take charge, he would lose control of the political quagmire he sits upon.

Compulsory mediation requires mediators. As we have seen in the Marriage Reconciliation Committee, which rules the marriage irrevocably broken when one party fails to turn up thrice. Its members are those the National Front political parties nominate for local government council vacancies, retired civil servants and social workers of proven inxperience in marriage concilliation. This could well happen if mediation is compulsory, and no penalties exist for failure to turn up. In Japan, there are four stages in a law suit -- mediation, concilliation, arbitration, and only when all three fails, litigation. In Singapore, the judge sits with the parties to resolve the dispute in chambers, moving to open court as a last resort. It reduced its seven-year backlog of cases with the courts sitting until 10 pm that it is only two years now. Mediation in Malaysia would spawn more corruption -- let Dr Rais tell me this is absent, when to extract a judgement from the court registry invariably involves a little-talked of exchange of case for the order. Go to any Commissioner of Oaths on the last day for filing in income tax returns, and you would see one clerk with as many as 60 applications for the CO to attest that he had personally witnessed the signatures. The form becomes more important than the substance.

Whether there was US complicity in what happened is now irrelevant. The sharp decline especially in currency values now threatens to affect US interests. If the uncertainty and declining regional currencies continue, the US would inevitably be affected, for its goods become rather more expensive, and certainly not competitive to goods from Japan and South Korea and even Europe. The cheaper currency enables them to acquire emerging industries in these countries at garage-sale prices, and get more than a toehold they could not otherwise have. The initial gloating at what they saw as comeuppance for the likes of Dr Mahathir now makes way for concern, especially if their own industries get hurt. The problem, as we all know, is not confined to Malaysia alone.

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