The PPP was brought into the National Front 33 years ago when the tripartite Alliance became the multi-party National Front. After it was taken over by the Indians, the then Prime Minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, created conditions in the National Front for the PPP to represent the Indians as well. This has not worked well, partly because the PPP president, Mr Kayveas, took for granted the support of the Indian community, and is now no worse than the MIC president, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, and both see their presence in the cabinet for the Indian community to be proud of. But the Indian community generally, especially the younger members, reject both. Datuk Samy Vellu owns or controls all the six or seven Tamil newspapers, which usually translates the government news that are published in the main English language newspapers, and publish in detail political and election news from Tamil Nadu in India. There used to Tamil newspapers owned by rivals to Dato' Samy Vellu but now are controlled, or owned, by him.

THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO the Health Ministry, Dato' S. Sothinathan, was suspended for three months because he defied a government decision. He had immunity when he complained, in Parliament. But when ten non-Muslim cabinet ministers protested in public what they had in the cabinet sessions agreed, probably because they had to show their communities they meant well, there was recriminations and explanations, but no action against them. Their Malay ministerial colleagues, notably Dato' Nazri Aziz, in criticising them, said they agreed with an Islamic state. But it showed that the cabinet is split. The prime minister, Pak Lah, said he was unhappy at the move, which was the first since independence. But the more the ministers talked, the more it became clear that the Malay and non-Malay ministers disagreed. In cabinet, these ten ministers – why was another minister, Mr Kayveas, left out? – went along with the proposal. But they had now to take the decision to show they looked after their community's interest. But like the ten ministers, Pak Lah makes confusing statements. National Front MPs make it worse by saying the ten were off base, they did not know Islam, and their protests must be ignored. So the National Front to bring unity to this country brings disunity instead!

The People's Progressive Party is an example. It joined the National Front in the 1970s, after its leading light, D.R. Seenivasagam, died. And it began its downfall. An MCA minister became its president so that he could remain in the cabinet. Its president after that became a senator, but was not allowed to contest elections. When Mr Kayveas, who was known as K.V.S. (for K.V. Sundaram) which he transliterated after his conversion to Catholicism, became President, UMNO negotiated with MIC to allow him to contest Cameron Highlands. He will remain president so long as he remains in the cabinet but whether his successor would be is doubtful. To remain in power and UMNO support, he will do anything. He has acquired many of the bad habits of ministers: he would arrive late at functions, would not go to his stomping ground, does not know his former friends. UMNO could get away with such behaviour, but not the non-Malay partners in the National Front.

The non-Malay knows he cannot get help from the National Front government, His representatives in the government will not fight his case because he prefers to be in the government and would not open his mouth. He will be vocal about extraneous items, but not what concerns his people. There has been no rebuttal to Tun Haniff's statement, and Dato' M. Kayveas is more interested in fighting corruption in local councils. He does not say lthat the Nataional Front controls all local councils. When things are done in secret, corruption festers. The National Front does not allow the local councils to be open.

For Pak Lah's most intractible task is to draw up the list of candidates. The BN fiction is that he and he alone decides. It is convenient. The BN political party presidents evade would rather let the BN president decide than face wrathful members. Over the years, this firmed his hand so he now can drop non-UMNO candidates at will. Power is secured in his hands so thoroughly, and uses it to the full that there is no nonsense that he is primus inter pares, first amongst equals. There is more. The BN parties submit their lists of candidates for his approval. But he interferes to correct blatant inconsistencies and ommissions. The saga of the People's Progressive Party president, Dato' M. Kayveas' search for a parliamentary seat is typical. He was not given it, but Pak Lah wants him to have it. The question is where. He had worked hard for the new parliamentary constituency of Cameron Highlands. But other parties wanted it too: first, the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, then the Malaysian Indian Congress. He was then offered the overwhelmingly Malay constituency of Bukit Gantang, in Perak. But not after some untypical BN arm-twisting. But it is still unclear where, or if, he would. Now the MIC deputy president, Dato' Seri S. Subramaniam, so say his crest-fallen supporters, is denied his parliamentary constituency. He would probably get it. Pak Lah is not known to desert any closely aligned to him.

So it does not surprise that panic set in in the runup to the election. The BN is a top-down political party, with its president, who is also the UMNO president, dictating its focus. Pak Lah though could not hold his own. So he had to call for general election as soon as possible, while the country is still enamoured of him as a leader, and before the inherent problems within his administration revealed itself. The negotiations for the seats did not go down well. He finally had to call a halt to it, and demand all obey. The People's Progressive Party (PPP) leader, Dato' M. Kayveas, had nursed the new constituency of Cameron Highlands in Pahang, but it went to the MIC instead; earlier, it was earmarked for the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, whose Pekan constituency revealed too many shortcomings that he seriously considered shifting to another constituency. In the end, he stays where he is. Dato' Kayveas is given the Malay constituency of Bukit Gantang in the Malay heartland of Perak for no reason than that he threatened to pull the revitalised PPP out of BN if not.

This is where the pressure came from an unexpected quarter: Dato' M. Kayveas of the People's Progressive Party. It caused a crisis more serious than the BN could imagine, and it required more than threats to keep him along the straight and narrow. Parliament is dissolved with all the state assemblies except the Council Negeri in Sarawak. How this is resolved is not clear, but a planned meeting between Pak Lah and Dato' Kayveas was postponed thrice, and if they met this morning (03 March 2004), and if he gets the parliamentary constituency he had worked hard for: the new parliamentary constituency of Cameron Highlands. Dato' Kayveas worked hard at it, built local alliances, and visited it regularly. But problems arose in the Pekan constituency of the BN selection committee chairman, the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak. He faced unexpected opposition from his newly enhanced loyalists in Pekan, the Opposition targetted two heavyweights to challenge him. He has a small difficulty with Pak Lah's followers who would rather he be not where he is.

So where could he contest? This is where it turns murky. The BN selection committee, of which he is a member with the BN secretary-general, Tan Sri Khalil Yaakob, and Pak Lah's son-in-law, Mr Ahmad Khairy bin Jamaluddin, decided he should contest the new Cameron Highlands constituency. But the People's Progressive Party (PPP) leader, Dato' M. Kayveas, worked hard to be given it, setting up an enviable organisation there. It is a safe seat. The Opposition does not have an organisation there, and any BN candidate would be returned with a handsome majority. At the BN meeting to iron out the seats, Pak Lah asked why Dato' Kayveas is not given Cameron Highlands. Tan Sri Khalil said the PPP leader could not be given the constituency since that he would lose. The meeting became acrimonious, and Dato' Kayveas threatened to pull the PPP out of BN. The Perak mentri besar, Dato' Seri Tajol Rosli Ghazali, stepped in and offered the PPP the UMNO-held Bukit Gantang constituency, a 70 per cent Malay majority area with less than five per cent Indians.

The People's Progressive Party (PPP) stirs up a mini crisis when its president, Dato' M. Kayveas, claims the BN secretary-general, Tan Sri Khalil Yaakob, offered him the new parliamentary constituency of Cameron Highlands. This is promptly denied. "I never promised anyone any seat," he said. The BN should be quaking in its boots by now: if the PPP did not get the Cameron Highlands seat, Dato' Kayveas warns, his party members would not campaign for whoever is chosen. Dato' Kayveas is an honorable man. He would not lie, but what he said is not the truth either. It was not Tan Sri Khalil who made the offer but the third member of the election committee who is possibly the most powerful man in the country after Pak Lah. The BN team offered the PPP one state constituency and two Senators. As Dato' Kayveas walked away, he was accosted by the third man who offered him Cameron Highlands. But the man cannot be named or compromised, so he prepares the ground to blame some one if he does not get it, and sideline him if he does.

The BN lost control of Trengganu in 1999 for one reason and one only: the BN mentri besar there, who having mismanaged the state for two decades, insisted he ought to be given one more term to continue it. It was the best election weapon PAS had to capture the state. Pak Lah must decide if the MIC candidate in the Sungei Siput parliamentary constituency in the general election must be its president - with it the prospect of an Opposition win if he is. Even if he is returned, he must be prepared to remain a BN backbencher. Pak Lah is shrewd enough to realise that enough is enough. He wants, rightly, a clean slate. He prefers the MIC deputy president, Dato' S. Subramaniam, as the MIC minister. Dato' Seri Samy would rather he be anyone but him. Even if it is the PPP president, Dato' M. Kayveas.

But in Pak Lah's new cabinet, which he deferred because of double-duty press speculation, the MIC nominee is reportedly missing. Instead, the name of Dato' M. Kayveas appears. The MIC leaders are flabbergasted. It was the clearest proof yet of the MIC leader's standing, or the lack of it, in Pak Lah's inner circle. So a new spin makes the rounds. That was deliberate, an MIC leader told me when I checked this with him. Dato' Seri Samy Vellu nominated Dato' Kayveas for the cabinet post in a roundabout long-term plan to merge the Malaysian Indian Congress with the latter's People's Progressive Party (PPP). In the new set-up, Dato' Kayveas would be a senior vice president who would succeed him when he decides to call it quits when he is 96. The PPP sources I contacted however had no clue to what I was asking. But if there is any truth in this, it only shows how irrelevant the MIC has become in Malaysian politics.

But he gets into a frenzy if it is suggested that he should do more to unite the Indians in MIC. Nothing incenses him more than to suggest that he should bring into his fold the former MIC members who left the party in a huff when its leader, Dato' M.G. Pandithan, once an MIC vice-president, was forced out. He formed the Indian Progressive Front into a veritable vote bank, and now seeks to find a role in BN. He first tried to merge his IFP with another marginal Indian-based party, the People's Progressive Party (PPP) but its leader, Senator M. Kayveas, like all Indian political leaders, have egos far in excess of their political support and value. That failed. So, Dato' Pandithan now returns to target the MIC yet again. He believes the IPF's future is in BN, not realising he cannot succeed in his task if the BN and UMNO is sure he would not waver in that. The IPF cannot see a future other than as an irrelevant arm of BN, as much as PPP is, and whatever moves he and it makes would as soon be ignored. And says Dato' Samy Vellu is why IPF is not in MIC.

If this was to be a matter of life and death, Malaysians would have risen in unison. Few believe it. Including many UMNO and BN leaders. There is no political benefit in offering to commit seppukku in an orgy of support for a departing politician. The letter that caused the mess is not released. The episode is given a spin which has no basis and to those of us in journalism is to put it mildly stretches incredulity. Otherwise would not political and civic leaders across the board risen to teach a lesson Business Week would not easily forget? Where then are the Ong Ka Tings, the S. Samy Vellus, the Lim Kheng Yaiks, the Kayveases of the BN. That even Dato' M. Kayveas said nary a word on this when he has words aplenty for any occasion is proof that yet again Dr Mahathir is stopped in his tracks. In short, this was an attempt brought to public notice with a hidden agenda, and all but a few misguided souls wanted a part of it. A black day for journalism it certainly was not. But it does tell you how to shoot yourself in the foot and cause the most damage.

The other political parties in the BN with presidents drugged on the perks of office, believe they play a useful indelible role in the affairs of the BN and the nation and, when general election comes, at the hustings. When they often are a hindrance. Self-importance is the first attribute of a BN leader. Even the PPP leader, Dato' M. Kayveas, with no elected seat in parliament and seats in the state assemblies less than the fingers of one hand, believes his role in national politics exceeds that of Dato' S. Samy Vellu. Never mind that his ideas above his deputy ministerial station has transferred him laterally into a dead end. Ozymandias, King of Kings, - as they believe they are - will not be denied his grandeur and, though unlike him, his irrelevance.

How do you become a party president in a BN party? First, get elected without an election. Then annoint that as a universal draft of the members. That gives him the legitimacy to be annointed for life. Then select deputies who cannot perform or not politically agile to succeed. And you have a leader who could defy every principle of political organisation and why they are where they are. Sometimes, this is not easy. Look at Dato' M. Kayveas. He cannot win an election. So he is brought into the government as a senator. He is made deputy minister. Now he wants to be a minister. How could a BN party leader be only a deputy minister. He does all he can to make himself unpopular in his party, and work hard to prove himself a buffoon. For that would give him the gravitas he needs to join the cabinet. He does not try hard enough.

Then there is one appointment both the MIC and PPP presidents are upset about: the appointment of Dato' M. Kayveas as deputy minister in the Prime Minister's department. The MIC president is unhappy the party is left out, the PPP president that he did not his minister in local government and housing. After all, he did, in his considered impassionate neutral view, brilliantly highlighted corruption in the Ampang Jaya municipal council. Why is he now swats flies in the Prime Minister's department. For one, in his publicity-seeking rush to contain corruption, he laid it at the feet of senior UMNO leaders. That is verboten, and inimial to his political health. Did he not know the natural progression for a BN politician who wants to swat corruption is to swat flies? Or if he is important enough, he gets to swat those flies in Sungei Buloh. That he is where he is shows both how lucky and how unimportant he is in the BN scheme of things. He should count himself lucky if he was transferred to Sungei Buloh after a sparring match, when blindfolded and manacled, by no less than the Inspector-General of Police. There is only one problem. He would be forgotten by the people at large, as he would soon be in his new position.

In office, temptation mounts. The administrative accountability and confidence is smashed so thoroughly that it cannot be repaired. But the fiction that it exists must be maintained. So, Dato' Seri Rais lauds it. But there is resistance to this uncontrolled corruption, and it reveals itself in unknown ways. The deputy minister for local government and housing, Dato' M. Kayveas, had a vested interest to attack the Ampang Jaya enforcement officer of corruption. If he really meant what he did, he would have done this more effectively by instituting action against the officer, and had the man charged and jailed. No, that would not do. He would get no publicity for it as a conscientious politician. He wants to be minister, and what better way than to show he can do it. He also wants a parliamentary constituency. And for the benefit of the prime minister-to-come.

WHEN THE SELANGOR MENTRI BESAR, DATO' Seri Mohamed Khir Toyo, dismissed the Ampang Jaya Municipal Council's enforcement chief, Capt. (rtd) Abdul Kudus Ahmad, it revealed not a desire of one to correct the wrongs of the other, nor the seriousness with which allegations of corruption and wrongdoing are addressed by those in authority, but a crass political act. The deputy local government and housing minister, Dato' M. Kayveas, jumped into the fray to show how "concerned" a politician he is when all else believe they are in office to line their pockets, and at the behest of whoever egged him on. This crisis is orchestrated for a purpose. For the nonsense that goes on - it does not mean that one dismissal would cure the rot - in Ampang Jaya is replicated, in more or less severity, in every municipal council in the country.

In the games UMNO plays, it decided, and MCA accepted, that since Dr Ling was 17 years in that ministry, it is the ministry of future MCA presidents in the cabinet. No doubt future Gerakan presidents would be primary industries minister, MIC presidents works minister, and Sarawak and Sabah in their irrelevant portfolios. If Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu succeeds in his bid for a second Indian cabinet post, that would come not from the MIC but from an equally irrelevant Indian party, the People's Progressive Party (PPP); not the MIC deputy president, Dato' S. Subramaniam but the PPP president, Dato' M. Kayveas. Unless Pak Lah would rather play his own games.

Why does BN political parties want to set up universities? The Gerakan president, Dato' Seri Lim Kheng Yaik, talks of one. So, no doubt, the PPP president, Dato' M. Kayveas. It is political one-upmanship so that the public suffers. When the government is uninterested in higher education, and wants its political partners to set them, it is education but commerce that is at the root of it. Private universities are set up so money can be diverted to private pockets and make rip-offs easier and hidden. It is part of the Malaysian dream. It does not matter which educational college or even if politicians are behind it.

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