UMNO, as usual, is at a loss for words. The UMNO deputy president (and Malaysian deputy prime minister), Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, could only call on Malays to be wary of PAS for it aims to split them, ignoring the harsh reality that UMNO it is which splits the Malays with its lurch into Islamic politics to counter PAS's growing influence and walking away from its leadership of the cultural Malay, to whom Islam is an important part of his being, to Islam being more important than his cultural heritage. It took this line, as usual without thought, because the Malay deserted to PAS and its Islamic message when UMNO got so caught up in the desire to retain control that it forgot those who voted them in. The revolution and reformation in UMNO is a long way ahead, but it believes there is no need for that so long as there is Dato' Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Islam Hadhari to succour the people. One need not add, that before him UMNO laid its whole future in the hands of Tun Mahathir Mohamed and his skewed modernisation plans for 22 years. As his would be when his successor takes office.

This unilateral official rewriting of Islam and its place in Malaysian society has nothing to do with Islam; it has all to do with a BN government caught in a squeeze between a failure of its governance and a Malay ground which finds its place in Malaysian society has declined despite constitutional protection and massive government policies meant for their sole benefit. Thirty-five years after, the Malay is as disadvantaged now as at the start of the New Economic Policy in 1970. The establishment hijacked the NEP in time, especially in the past two decades when the then prime minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, rewrote the rules to concentrate Malay wealth in a few favoured hands, who took that as a sign to rape and pillage at leisure. The beneficiaries were limited to a narrow band of UMNOputras, cronies of the establishment and hangers-on, their familes and those around them.

Corruption in Malaysia is endemic. It is only the authorities who insist there is none or at best manageable. It is in every sphere of activity. Anti-corruption actions are directed at the lowest rung of the corruption chain, and at those who quarrel with the National Front political leadership. It was this interpretation of corruption that landed the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, in jail. He used his influence as deputy prime minister to order the police to investigate allegations of corruption against him. It was one he could not win. He had to be destroyed, politically if not personally. So, corruption was relied upon to twist the hands of those in whose hands his fate was. And the media orchestrated that he did not have a chance in hell to be acquitted. If he was, it would have forced the then prime minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, out of office. That of course was not the aim in persecuting and prosecuting Dato' Seri Anwar.

IT IS POLITICS AS usual. The animosity, even hatred, between Dr Mahathir Mohamed and his protege-turned nemesis, Anwar Ibrahim, is unalloyed. They punch in different directions, often viciously, but however hard they try, they end up punching each other. Each display an arrogance and overconfidence in what they consider their hour of triumph. One fell victim to it, the other about to. They hold Malaysian politics to ransom. It is, in one sense, an unequal fight. Dr Mahathir had the power and authority to sack, humiliate and jail Anwar in circumstances that precluded a fair trial. Anwar Ibrahim had only public support in Malaysia and overseas.

So he lost several good opportunities to even the score. The former prime minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, is unnecessarily tetchy and cries foul of Anwar restating his sworn affidavit during his trials that that the old man is corrupt. He kept quiet then. Lying in a statutory declaration can land one in jail for seven years. Why does he raise it now? The last thing the good doctor wants in his retirement to return to a public confrontation with his former protege in a climate he cannot control, in Malaysia or the United Kingdom, where any trial would have to take place.

UMNO CAN CHOSE TO ignore it at its peril. With or without the National Front (BN) it leads in tow. It does, not with careful thought or plan but in the self-confident belief in its invincibility in which every setback is seen a victory and every attack on it proof of its resilience. It is a path it always took when caught in contradictions of its raison d'etre. Five years after its founding, its president, Dato' Sir Onn Jaffar, walked out, and with him its religious wing, over admitting non-Malays into the party. The new UMNO president, Tengku Abdul Rahman, castigated Dato' Onn as the devil incarnate. Eighteen years later, in 1969, in the gory aftermath of the failure to heed Dato' Onn's call to admit non-Malays into UMNO, racial riots broke out. The future prime minister, the now ennobled Tun Mahathir Mohamed, was sacked from the party for, let us not kid about it, his extreme racial views.

Since when did the government provide residences for the executive councillors, who gets an allowance in lieu, and the state officials either tied quarters or a rental allowance? You would recall that this was removed in the early years of Tun Mahathir Mohamed as prime minister so the valuable land often in the centre of town could be privatised to cronies of the establishment for a song. Civil servants were given cheap loans to own their own houses. The beneficiaries of the Selangor luxury homes all no doubt have private residences that befit their status. Contrast that with the modest home of the Kelantan mentri besar, Dato' Nik Aziz Nik Mat, where he has always lived, in a modest village on the outskirts of Kota Bharu, the state capital.

For this to continue, the UMNO leadership must be united behind its president. He must rule with an iron hand. This autocratic rule characterised the BN government in the centre and the state. Parliament and the state assemblies were ignored, as policies and law were forced down the throats of Malaysians. Public concerns were ignored, and addressed only when and where the Opposition was strong. For such a system to succeed, UMNO needs strong leaders. The success of the constitutional and political changes after the 1969 riots depended on strong UMNO presidents. The dramatic changes in Tun Mahathir Mohamed's 22 years as Prime Minister and UMNO president could not hold if his successor was not as dominant. He is not.

Long term policies are decided ad hoc, and changed or ignored when they become inconvenient or irrelevant though only after the damage is done. Cabinet ministers, caught by this clear and open resentment of the middle class, threaten the people when confronted with the mistakes of their policies. Profligacy and irrelevance dictate public policy. Petronas spent RM40 billion to build the first phase of Putra Jaya, and cannot maintain it, let alone continue to build the rest of it. The prime minister's residence, a 400-room monstrosity, cost RM200 million to build, but when it became a political issue in Parliament, it was told unequivocally that his living quarters cost only RM17 million. it was a lie. But it was accepted in good faith. Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who succeeded Tun Mahathir Mohamed, orders a RM30 million facelift to his official quarters before he moves in. No parliamentary approval was asked for. Besides, why does a building less than five years old need a face lift nearly twice what it cost? Reason flies out the window, starting at the top.

I think he tolerated me because I would stand up to him and was not cowed by his arrogant demeanour or his temper. By the time he thought, wrongly as it turned out, that he, and not Dr Mahathir Mohamad, would be deputy prime minister under Hussein Onn, I could talk to him in confidence, and he would tell me what he would not to others of the background to events of the day.

The BN knows that if it did not do this, power would recede from it with each general election. It did badly in 1999 when the Malays deserted it in droves, in the aftermath of the arrest and humiliation of the then deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. It was kept in power by a near solid non-Malay support. This would have been too in 2004 but for Tun Mahathir Mohamed's brilliant move to resign and hand power to Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi before the elections. Even UMNO officials admit that had he remained in office, the opposition would have done far better, capturing even his home state of Kedah. But Pak Lah, for his own reasons, had to fiddle with the electoral rules. He did not get what he wanted: annointment in office. He is today as unsure of his position in UMNO as on his first day as prime minister.

Tun Hussein Onn, who followed him, was a senior Johore aristocrat, the son of the first president of UMNO, but even he did not think twice in his time when he had to engage in some extra-consitutional skullduggery in Pahang and Perak. Tun Mahathir Mohamed had but contempt for the rulers, and force-fed a constitutional crisis to removing the sultans' immunity for his private actions, and put a sultan on trial for his private indiscretions. That law is unconstitutional. Now, his successor, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, caused another constitutional kerfuffle when he ordered the transfer of the agricultural park to federal control without discussing it with the sultan or the state government.

Who would lead it? It is sidelined in part by its shortcomings. The former prime minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, is still its target; it should be Pak Lah. It lost its raison d'etre when he resigned five months before last year's general elections. Indeed, the opposition parties, at a two-day retreat, six months before the poll, believed it would do far better, perhaps even capture Kedah, with him as prime minister, but to certain defeat and even annihilation if he stepped down unexpectedly. Dato' Seri Anwar, wedded to the opposition, can be a powerful catalyst to the disparate political parties and groups opposed to the National Front (BN). The reformasi movement should sort itself out to be his stormtroopers. It proved yesterday it could organise. If only it could find its way back to what it was.

I am attacked in the past fortnight by a young obviously well-educated Malay lady who insists that I, as a 'pendatang' (immigrant, which I am not), should not roil the Malay peace by raising issues that would. She hopes all pendatang would leave, for they are a nuisance. I asked her what would happen if the pendatang left, especially since every one of our five prime ministers were pendatang or had pendatang blood: Tengku Abdul Rahman (Thai), Abdul Razak Hussein (Bugis), Hussein Onn (Circassian-English), Dr Mahathir Mohamad (Indian), Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (Sino-Indian). But her objection to me is that I am a non-Muslim pendatang.

This political destruction struck an uncommon chord amongst Malays, who moved away from UMNO after its president, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, defied Malay cultural tradition and mores by humiliating Dato' Seri Anwar with sordid unproven tales of sodomy and adultery. Since UMNO presidents after the first, who walked out in disgust in 1951, have in the years since strengthened their feudal power. But Tun Mahathir exceeded the bounds: he destroyed the mass movement that UMNO was when he realised that divisions within UMNO, which he had ignored, especially in the controversial presidential election in 1987, would reassert in the next, and formed UMNO the political party and no different from any other. His partner was his ambitious deputy, Dato' Seri Anwar. So when he was humiliated a decade later, the one man who could have held UMNO was in jail, the tenuous UMNO on the skids and its leaders not knowing if they are fish or fowl.

This now comes to haunt him. He succeeded Tun Mahathir Mohamed as prime minister in November 2003. Instead of reshuffling the cabinet – for two reasons: to have his own men in, and the bad blood between the two men at the handover – he retained Tun Mahathir's cabinet. He would change it, he said, after the general election for the sound reason that his hold on the party machinery was tenuous at best. The party warlords – chief ministers, mentris besars, and others – flexed their muscles. To short circuit that, his advisers and hatchet men colluded to ensure a resounding electoral victory in the March 2004 so his hold on party and government is unchallenged. It did not. The differences widened. The party is all but split in the middle. He feared the cabinet ministers he sacked would join the other side. He did nothing. He lost more ground.

THE SELANGOR MENTRI BESAR, Dato' Seri Mohamed Khir Toyo, is hunted like a cornered rat. Few in UMNO shed a tear for him, and fewer if he is sacked. UMNO wants him out. He has his supporters, notably the former prime minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed. If he is forced out for that, the new UMNO president, and Malaysian prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, would know what Dato' Seri Khir does: uneasy is the head that wears the crown. The usual reasons are not enough. Abuse of power and corruption are expected of those in office. If Dato' Seri Khir has to be sacked for that, so should all elected officials.

The Baling talks failed principally because the Tengku and the British insisted that Chin Peng's offer to lay down arms meant surrender. In the way Chin Peng (right) used it, it meant he would lay down arms, and fade away; if he had used the other word, surrender, the Malayan government could punish the CPM and its members as it wished. When the talks began in 1989, the then prime minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, said if that is what he wants, let it be so – but we would regard it as a surrender.

Mr Khairy, however, has but added fuel to the fire. He has acted, in his personal life, in ways that arouse the wrath of his father-in-law. Recently, Pak Lah had to call his daughter and son-in-law to confront him on his alleged involvement with a young part-Burmese lady. Friends of his daughter provided her the documentary evidence, and though she had not intended to inform her father, an UMNO cabinet minister who knew of it did. He was furious, but little he could do. Worse was to come. He has all but taken over UMNO Youth from its leader, Dato' Hishamuddin Hussein, and is to all intents and purposes, the leader. He has ruffled the normally sedate UMNO Youth so much that a challenger emerges to challenge him in 2007: Dato' Mukhriz Mahathir, the son of the former prime minister, who has begun his campaign. He has weekly meetings with ANSARA, whose members studied in one of 30 Mara colleges nationwide, through which UMNO worked to bring them into the party.

THE FORMER PRIME MINISTER, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, is an angry man indeed. His successor, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, pulls no stops to ensure he is put to pasture once and for all. He does not want another ghost hovering over his shoulder. One, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, is bad enough and, try as he might, cannot shake him off. Dr Mahathir says his undoubted role in Malaysian history is besmirched with unfounded allegations he bankrupted the government with his government, and of cutting Pak Lah down to size.

Pak Lah (1364)   United States (636)   Straits Times (412)   Samy Vellu (224)   Putra Jaya (200)   Chief Justice (200)   Saddam Hussein (188)   Vincent Tan (164)   Civil Service (154)   Parti KeADILan (148)   Islamic State (118)   Johore Bahru (100)   Sungei Buloh (94)   Bukit Tinggi (88)   Abdul Razak (80)   Pengkalen Pasir (68)   Ting Pek (64)   Armed Forces (59)   Soviet Union (58)

Malay Dominance (58)   Yong Teck (56)   Hong Kong (56)   Human Rights (56)   Syed Hamid (54)   Puteri UMNO (52)   Islam Hadhari (52)   Royal Commission (51)   Hussein Onn (51)   Rafidah Aziz (48)   Indian Congress (48)   Open House (44)   Vision Schools (44)   Shah Alam (44)   Malay Unity (42)   Chua Jui (42)   Abdul Taib (42)   Ampang Jaya (36)   Ras Adiba (36)

Osama Bin Laden (36)   Nik Aziz Nik (20)   Ling Liong Sik (18)   Lee Kuan Yew (18)

High Court Judge (14)   Wan Azizah Wan (9)   Lim Kit Siang (9)   Megat Junid Megat (8)

Mahathir (2960)

Anwar (2399)