I find calling its help desk often. I have not been lucky to get the person the first time. Each time, I am left holding the telephone, often for ten minutes or longer, hearing the sickening message that "your call is important to us". and being cut off after some time, this time without any apology or message. I have to call again. I have had been cut off two or three times on occasion. Automation is introduced in Telekoms, as with other Government Linked Companies and government departments to free the telephone operators from having to speak to callers. This is regarded as being modern. Funny, though, I could get who I wanted when in London, Tokyo, Paris, Washington, even Bangor, Maine, even if I did not get to the operator. I shudder these days of having to call Telekom to report the phone out of order, or to get help. I must first make sure I am not going out in the next two hours, and I have time to waste. It is more important to have labour saving devices, it seems, than find out it if that benefits the public.

Today, what Mr Khairy says goes in Pak Lah's administration. His only office in government was as his political secretary a few years ago. He is involved in high flying companies because he is Pak Lah's son-in-law. ECM Libra is one such. He does not have any experience after his studies. He got a PPE (philosophy, politics, economics) at Oxford, and LL.M from the London School of Economics. (In Malaysia, he would be a philospher, politician, economist, international lawyer as his father-in-law is a Islamic scholar because he has a degree in Islam from the University of Malaya!) He tried his best to stand for elections to Parliament from Rembau, from whence he came, but was not allowed to. The opposition to him was too strong there. He made a mess in Pengkalen Pasir, for UMNO could have won with a larger majority there in the byelection had he stayed away. UMNO had already lost votes for insisting on Dato' Annuar Musa, who is hated in the state, as the UMNO chief. Kelantan could have three more byelections, as UMNO state assemblymen may have to vacate their seats. If PAS wins any one of the seats, UMNO would be in the state assembly what it was before Pengakalen Pasir.

But this chasing of the 'filthy lucre' makes sure the world goes around. They often acquire a second home, usually more, overseas, with a choice one in London. Their children are sent to exclusive schools overseas, and get government appointments even if they are unsuitable to Malaysian standards. They come back after their education to regard Malaysians are not being 'educated', which in their language mean they are not Western-educated. They may be Malay by race, not constitutionally, the only type the government recognises. They do not behave as Malays, do not habitually speak the Malay language, many imbibe liquor or keep dogs. But by Malaysian standards, they are recognised culturally as Malays. Their children carry five or six credit cards, charging their means and accoutrements for which their fathers pay. The cabinet ministers, for instance, do not trust the education system and send their children overseas. It is a rare person in this milleu who will educate their children locally.

After all, Malaysians of all races gather in harmony to show the country is multiracial. Then why is the country divided into racial communities after a nude Chinese woman has been ordered by the police to do the ear squat? It is in the National Front's interest to show Malaysia is multiracial, the more so as the races live their lives separate from the others. For fifty years, the races have lived more and more separately. The presidents of the MCA and MIC signed the independence declaration in London; do they have any power now? They do the UMNO president tells them. The Chinese do not talk Malay. The Indians do not. The authorities ignore this as it conflict with their hopes, and insist the Chinese and Indian in schools learn Malay or to use the term frequently used here, Bahasa Malaysia". But in stupid ways, which makes no sense to the Chinese or Indian. Nothing happens therefore to reverse the trend. The non-Malays in the government dare not tell the truth, they cannot force policy changes, their ministers are not allowed to iniate policy. They can, and do, however support the policies. The non-Malays in the government are now caught as the Malays are. So they wriggle out of it as best they can. But they do not often know the policy they are defending.

It is of interest to Chinese newspapers of what happens to Chinese citizens in Malaysia. So it carries these reports. If the Malaysian government thinks the report is wrong, it should have told the Malaysian embassy in Beijing to refute them. Has it done so? The Malaysian newspapers carry reports of Malaysians harassed in foreign countries, usually in London or the United States. These reports are written usually by the newspaper's correspondents, maybe to show that Malaysia is civilised while the others are not. Dato' Azmi accuses newspaper reports in China of making the Malaysian government's life difficult. Is it the reports or the Malaysian government's act which led to the negative reports? Dato' Azmi, like many Malaysians, think the world owes it a living, that the world must live according to Malaysia's dictates but at the same time Malaysia need not live according the world dictates. This is part of Ketuanan Melayu. A government official said not so long ago that the 5,000-year-0ld Chinese and Indian cultures can be ignored because Malay culture is a synthesis of both!

THE GRAVE HAS BEEN DUG at the National Mosque, and those who went to the National Mosque in Kuala Lumpur were told it is for the former deputy prime minister, Tun Ghafar Baba, now in Pantai hospital where is undergoing medical treatment. He is weak. He has been out of ICU for about ten days, and looks poorly. He may not survive his stay in hospital, as Tun Razak did not in a London hospital, but the officials have decided he would not return from hospital alive. But the grave. ghoulishly, had to be dug three times because the length of the grave each time not correct. The National Mosque has graves for six who laboured for Malaysian independence. The former deputy prime minister, Tun Ismail bin Abdul Rahman, was first, followed by the two prime ministers, Tun Abdul Razak Hussein and Tun Hussein Onn. The man who should be there and the first prime minister, Tengku Abdul Rahman, a member of the Kedah royal family, decided before this death that he would be buried at the royal family masouleum there. Another man, Dato' Sir Onn bin Jaffar, is not counted by the officials, and died a lonely death because he was in the opposition. His son, Tun Hussein Onn became prime minister, and his grandson, Dato' Hiihamudin, sits in the present cabinet. But Dato' Sir Onn, who was related to the Johore royal family, is buried at the royal masouleum in Johore Bahru.

It is so with the other parties in the Alliance. The Malayan Indian Congress was formed in 1946 to fight for Indian independence. When India did become independent the following year, the MIC president became India's ambassador to Rome and the Vatican while several committee members became the first ambassadors to other countries. It reoriented itself to Malayan independence only after the next president, a KL lawyer named K. Devasar, took office. In 1952, Malaysia ceased to be an immigrant nation, and those who had come before 30 April of that year was allowed to become Malayans. Those living in the country were allowed to become subjects of the ruler and automatically became Federal citizens. My father became a Johore subject that way. He had included my name in his citizenship as I was 13 at that time. I could use that in 1956 to get my federal citizenship. He was not an MIC member because the prevailing rules then gave preference to the North Indians as it is the Tamils today. He was a Dato' Onn supporter, partly because he knew the man, and hosted him in our house when he stood for what is now four constituencies in the 1955 federal elections. The MIC took a downturn with the third president, Tun V.T. Sambanthan, who took office in 1954, was in the Alliance team which went to London to negotiate for Malaysia's independence, and was in the cabinet on independence, but remained 20 years as MIC president till 1974, when he was forced out. The next president, Tan Sri V. Manickavasagam, in office for about five years, drew up plans to uplift the Indian community, the Blue Book, but he reasoned rightly that it had no money. He died in office, and his successor, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, in office since 1979, implements the ideas contained in the Blue Book to his benefit and to the detriment of the Indian community he leads. He is hostile to those who wrote the Blue Book. Which is why he did not have a good word for either the late S. Pathmanaban or the current deputy, Dato' S. Subramaniam. He now takes a leaf out of UMNO by not wanting his deputy, and has his own choice in this year's election. He is in the cabinet where he could ask for the Indian community to be helped. But he dare not if it means his position in it is affected. So he goes along with UMNO, and the Indian community must fend for itself. The People's Progressive Front, formed by the Seenivasagam brothers in the 1960s, and a Indian party with multiracial members was brought in to keep the Indians within the National Front. But it does not work.

IT IS FORTY YEARS SINCE Singapore was ejected from Malaysia, on 9 August 1965, less than two years after it was formed on 16 September 1963, though in Malaysia the date is August 31, and the publication two months ago of the late Patrick Keith's book, Ousted. We have different opinions on the affair. We are told, officially and in the history books, that it was a cordial affair. The Star repeats that canard. It was anything but cordial. The two prime ministers - Tunku Abdul Rahman of Malaysia and Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore - though were from Cambridge, did not get along. The Tunku, 62 at the time, believed in nature and Mr Lee, then 43, in nurture. Mr Lee upped the ante throughout, let people who were opposed to separation lead the negotiations, did not read the signals from Kuala Lumpur as he would now at 80. The talks were bound to fail. The Peoples' Action Party saw itself as replacing the Malaysian Chinese Association in the Alliance, as the National Front was known at that time. The main Singapore negotiators, which included the then culture minister and later deputy prime minister, Mr S. Rajaratnam, did not want to leave Malaysia. Neither did Mr Devan Nair, the PAP MP for Bangsar later President of Singapore and now living in exile in Canada. Whatever the history books might say, the fact is the Tunku took the decision in London while he was recuperating for shingles in the London clinic. It took Mr Lee and his cabinet by surprise when Tun Razak, then Malaysian deputy prime minister, informed Mr Lee about it. There were furious negotiations between Malaysia and Singapore in the run up to the negotiations. The then Singapore deputy prime minister, Dr Toh Chin Chye, wrote to the Tunku and saw him, but he was told Singapore could stay if Mr Lee was out of the picture. Dr Toh's decline in Singapore politics began then in independent Singapore.

The Iraq Saddam built was along the lines of a bad European nation, but the United States have turned it into a wasteland. It came in with intentions to use its oil to pay for its upkeep and did not foresee the ravaging insurgency, especially among the Iraqi and the Sunni who know the old Iraq is gone and they would not rule. So they destroy it so that the foreigner cannot rule. What we see on television and read in the news reports is not what is happening in the ground. There is already a civil war raging, and it will get worse when the United States and Britain withdraw. Future governments in Washington and London will win the people in their countries on how quickly they can pull the troops out. And talk to those opposed to them. But the United States and its cohorts have made that difficult. In Vietnam, I was told the Americans did not destroy the system. They behaved as a state talking to another state that it was fighting against. The North Vietnam and the Vietcong could use the American built telecommunications system when the Americans were not using it. So although the Americans lost there, they are good friends now. For that to happen in Iraq is a lot more difficult. Especially when we are told the next target is Saudi Arabia. If Iraq is so much trouble, how much more difficult will be Saudi Arabia. And if the Muslim holy shrines in Mecca is damaged, as they are in Najaf and Karbala in Iraq, there is hell to pay for the US and its cohorts in this war on terror. The Sunnis in the Middle East are in arms.

PRESIDENT JALAL TALABANI HAS left the "security" of the Green Zone for the "security" of London. He wanted to tell the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, of his government's plan for the referendum on October 15. But neither he nor members of his government has visited the people of Iraq of what the referendum brings. It is too unsafe. He and his ministers have not ventured out of the Green Zone for fear of being killed by the people. In President Talabani's terms, those people who are against the referendum and those who create mayhem in Iraq are terrorists, and should be eradicated, preferably by the United States or Britain or by the other countries who are part of the US-established multi-lateral force. But the insurgency would not last if locals do not support it, as President Talabani should know by now. First the country is invaded, then the election is set so that the elected are kept isolated in the Green Zone, and those elected ask those who put them in power to remain. President Talabani was "thankful" in London for the multinational effort in Iraq. He blamed Iraqis for protesting against the US-led invasion, as "Saddam Hussein as a bad man". But the United States dealt with the "bad man" for nearly 30 years, had made him a prime CIA source, like Osama bin Laden, and then turned against him, because he did not agree with Washington's plans for the region. President Talabani now faces Saddam Hussein in this attempt to turn Iraq into a US colony. The British tried it earlier, turning the Kurdish, Sunni and Shia provinces of the Ottoman Empre, and called it Iraq after the first world war. They knew their Middle Eastern history, and made sure the Sunnis, who formed 20 per cent of Iraq, as the rulers. They formed Iraq to defeat the French colonial power, who took Syria earlier, and established a Shia president there although he was from a minority Shia sect, the Aluwaites. Nearly 80 per cent of Syrians are Sunnis. The Prime Minister of Iraq, dressed in a woman's dress and flayed alive in Baghdad in 1958 was a Sunni Muslim. The governments that followed is Sunni, of which the latest is Saddam Hussein, which the Americans, like a bull in a China shop, erased, and brought about the present civil war.

The war cries from Washington and London does not carry weight these days. The occupation of Iraq is a disaster. British carved Iraq out of the Ottoman Empire, and ruled through its cronies, till from the early 1920s until the then British-lodged Prime Minister, Nurul Said Pasha, had run away in a woman's dress, and was flayed alive by the people. The people in Whitehall did not know their history as to why Iraq was structured the way it has been. The British were trying to outdo the French, its colonial rivals then, which had already carved Lebanon and Syria from the Ottoman Empire. While the leadership in Syria was Aluwait, the majority was Sunni Muslim. In Lebanon, a concord was reached by the French in the 1940s, by which the president was Maronite Christian, the chairman of the National Legislative Assembly was Sunni Muslim, and the Prime Minister a Shia Muslim. It was British power play that gave the Sunni Arabs power for reasons that had to do with currying favour with the majority Sunni Muslims in Arabia. The United States, with British help, is now trying to reverse this. Britain does not have the power it once had. None of the British territories in the Middle East joined the Commonwealth of Nations, and there are more nations outside the Commonwealth than in. Those in are led by British educated locals, and today, the Commonwealth is not what it used to be. While the British civil servant was better Arab-educated, the Arab Muslim did not prefer to be British-instructed.

When he interviewed Jomo Kenyatta, after his release from prison in the 1960s and unpopular in Britain, on the origins of the Mau Mau movement in Kenya, he noted at one point in the interview that the Mau Mau rebellion was led by uneducated tribesman. "I would not know," he replied softly, "I have a Ph.D from London University, Tom Mboya graduated from an American university ..." and as he listed the educational pedigrees of the other Mau Mau leaders, the camera shifted to Mr Freeman reeling in shock at the response to his question. It was a moment to be savoured. Mr Kenyatta went to be President of Kenya. There was none such in the Hard Talk interview with Anwar Ibrahim.

The Bush-Blair spin to the Iraqi election, like so many in this ubiquitous war on terror, is tendentious and wrong. The election is sold in Washington, London and elsewhere around the world as Madison Avenue sells toothpaste. These lies and distortions are spread by their newspapers, controlled by industrial behemoths, to control post-election Iraq and create a political climate at home so it could continue to dominate at will. Washington has set up its largest ever embassy in modern times in Iraq, to be on hand, after the elections, should the elected government decide it has other priorities than dancing to the Anglo-Saxon tune. Control of Iraq, now and after Sunday, is and will be from the Green Zone, from which Saddam once exercised his control over Iraq. As the transitional assembly would be. The Iraqi is forgiven if he continues to believe his life was better under Saddam Hussein than under American-British control.

The government cannot fight corruption alone. All must join in, insist of ethical values and integrity. Or all will come to nought. Societies like the KLSTI works with the government to root out corruption. Pak Lah said what was expected of him. He went off to attend the ASEM meeting in Hanoi. It did not take long for his words to be challenged. The Iraq Survey Group, which for 18 months had investigated Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, found instead weapons of mass corruption. There were no WMD, they found, embarrassing the two totem poles who insist Saddam must be destroyed at any cost because they had. This report is causing political waves in the US and Britain. So, the spin moved sharply to what Saddam did with the UN oil-for-food programme, which allowed Baghdad to sell its oil to buy food for its people. The sanctions continued in the meanwhile, and the ISG, in its trawling of official documents, found countries and inviduals all over the world who allegedly benefited, for personal gain, by partaking in it. It provided the much need diversion from the political flak in London and Washington.

To turn it into a tabloid is not. It cheapens the reader yet again. The broadsheet Times of London has a tabloid edition: on the surface, it looks the same, but look deeper and you find the nuances and emphasis different. It is a matter of time before the readers find out. For in the end, what matters with readers is content, not weight or size. There is no sign of that yet.

MALAYSIA IS BEHOLDEN TO the United States more than ever. The prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, after a call on President George W. Bush in Washington, announces a "sufficiently big and not just a token" medical mission to Iraq. But in Paris en route to London shortly after the Philippines Government withdrew its token medical presence from its armed forces in Iraq in exchange for a Filipino truck driver it held hostage and threatened to decapitate.

For the US war is predicated to information control. Only its voice must be heard. Everything must be checked against an official source. It works so long as that information is tightly kept. But a rogue element often appears and destroys the carefully built edifice of moral righteousness and invincibility. The My Lai affair is one. The photographs of US prison abuses of Iraqi prisoners is another. It puts the US on the defensive, and is a convenient foil to divert attention from the disaster building up in Iraq. But it is an irrelevant debate that takes place in Washington and, to a lesser extent, in London. In the larger context of the US in the Middle East, the huffing and puffing over the photographs is an irrelevant diversion.

A TALE IS TOLD OF A Chinese emperor in ancient times so fearful he would be overthrown and killed that he systematically killed, and destroyed the families of, his real and perceived enemies, and later, the intellectuals, those whose word and deed could turn against him, those who had the implements with which they could, at a pinch, be used against him. The fear was so pervasive and destructive that the mandarins stepped in and asked his favourite mandarin to tell him that his paranoia put the throne at risk. He thought deeply and at length, and as the Emperor and he were walking in the royal gardens he espied a gardener at work. He turned to the Emperor and said: "Your Majesty, kill that man now!" The Emperor turned to him in surprise and asked why. "Sire," he replied, "that man has the implements of rape on him." Fast forward to the 21st century, and variations of the tale is played out in London and Washington in their decision to invade Iraq. President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, was a danger to the world, had to be destroyed. He did not have, but he could, at a pinch, acquire them. So they had to destroy him and the state he ruled. Like the Chinese emperor, President George Bush and the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, had to destroy their presumed enemies. Like in China then, both now find their explanations unaccepted, seek a plausible reason to insist they are right, so far without success.

Malaysia had a similar system until it was destroyed in the political vendetta against the then Lord President, Tun Salleh Abas. He was brought before an international panel of judges headed by the man who would succeed him if he is found guilty. What is not known is that the judges studied law in London about the same time as a well-connected ally of the then Prime Minister. A coincidence perhaps, but in the light of judicial persecutions since, including that of Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, unlikely. It destroyed the much vaunted judicial independence Pak Lah now talks about. Just as Dato' Seri Anwar is persecuted for his political naivety in wanting to force Tun Mahathir to resign as Prime Minister, so was Tun Salleh for his decision, which he told a senior government official who travelled with him to Mecca, about his plans to call for a full court to decide on a politically contentious issue. He was drummed out. When the chief justice does not have control of his court, what judicial independence are we talking about? What happened to Tun Salleh is enough for any chief justice to think twice and more before he exercises his judicial independence as he is sworn to. With Pak Lah coming in to bat for it, he has made it decidedly political. As Dato' Seri Anwar wanted.

WHEN A CENTURY AGO, CHINESE agents seized the rebel leader, Dr Sun Yat-sen, as he walked past the Chinese Legation in Portland Place, London, and held him captive in it, he managed to throw a scribbled plea for help on a scrap of paper out of this third floor prison. A priest picked it up, alerted the newspapers, questions were asked in the House of Commons, and his arrest soon became a cause celebre. The Legation called a press conference to insist Dr Sun is a prisoner and would be tried in China. This raised a political furore. The head of the Legation tetchily replied: "He will get a fair trial in China. First the trial, then the execution." The British Government stepped in. That saved Dr Sun, who went on to overthrow the monarchy a decade later. What the United States want to do with Mr Saddam Hussein is no different from China's over Dr Sun. When the Malaysian Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, demands a free trial for Mr Saddam, he conveniently forgot the injustice to his own Saddam or Sun - his predecessor, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, rotting in jail by the same judicial standards the US wants in Iraq to try Mr Saddam and China for Dr Sun.

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