He is the right man at the right time. It does not mean he would be prime minister or even be active in party politics after 2008. He is a catalyst to force the government and opposition to reform is thinking, and chart a new course. Much water has passed under the bridge since his detention. But he has kept faith. He has challenged every attempt to consign him to history's dung heap. He survived them all. His accuser, Dr Mahathir Mohamed, continues to believe in his guilt; but few do. If the good doctor is as convinced as he was in 1998, where is the evidence that could have convicted him.

THE FORMER MALAYSIAN PRIME prime minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, was asked to partake in money politics in 1974, in his bid to be UMNO vice-president. He would have none of it, and came in third. He is not correct here in his recollections: He was on the then UMNO president, Tun Abdul Razak's preferred list of three vice-presidents, and his list was returned. Be that as it may, what he said about money politics and vote buying is true. It is equally true that UMNO leaders tolerated it. Within two years, Dr Mahathir was deputy minister, and prime minister in seven. But he did nothing to reduce its spread. He now has a spin to it now: "If you think that corruption is very bad, your friend has to go. I had to decide against my friend once, you know." He admits, offhandedly, that the only corruption he was prepared to make an issue of was the corruption for which his "friend", Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim was unceremoniously sacked, detained under the Internal Security Act, beaten to a pulp by the Inspector-General of Police no less, convicted in a series of trials that continue to raise doubts about the equitability of Malaysian justice.

There are two reasons for this: one is the former BN and UMNO president, and prime minister for 22 years, Tun Mahathir Mohamed; the other is his once-friend and now arch enemy, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. Their mortal combat in 1998 began the slow and deliberate destruction of BN and UMNO. The two unlikely foes must unite before BN and UMNO could unite once more in strength. Especially when divisions within BN and UIMNO reflect this mortal combat. Could that happen? Could an iron tree bloom?

What embarrasses Pak Lah is that it happened when he was deputy prime minister. If the rumours swirling about it has any basis, there is more to it than meets the eye. He must clear it once and for all. For if he does not, it would pit him headlong against his deputy, Dato' Seri Najib, who no doubt savours the embarrassment he is in. This official denial forces him to confront his deputy in ways he never thought he would have to. The recent UMNO elections gave the anti-Pak Lah groups 19 of the 25 supreme council seats. Even with the 10 appointed members in his gift, and even if the three vice-presidents back him (they do not), he is hard put to control it. The largest of the anti-Pak Lah members back his predecessor, Tun Mahathir Mohamed. Dato' Seri Najib is the frontrunner of that group.

In every third, and many a first and second and fourth, world country, this is how business is done. Halliburton is not a third world company. Only the form changes. Why do business men fly around with the prime minister on his trips overseas? Because they want to get close to him, for what they can get out of him, their aim not to establish links with the foreign business men they meet, but the prime minister he accompanies. The former prime minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, once led a large delegation of business men and officials to the United Kingdom for, amongst others, an investment conference. He delivered his speech, and returned to London. The business men, almost to a man, who passes off as corporate tycoons, showed their commitment to their businesses for a few more hours, and quietly left by train to London, where Dr Mahathir, and the action, was.

It is yet another weapon in the UMNO armoury to best PAS. It was concocted by the Government's Islamic adviser, Dr Hamid Othman, and the former Grand Imam ('Imam Besar') of the National Mosque ('Masjid Negara'), Pirdaus Ismail, who now sits on the UMNO youth executive and has decided his future is not in Islam but in UMNO politics. The former prime minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamed, would have none of it. But Pak Lah slurped it up. The spin followed. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Who would win: Pak Lah or Najib? But it was more; to capture the soul of UMNO, what is left of it; and, for Pak Lah, to put to pasture the still significant presence of the former president, Dr Mahathir Mohamad. It was an electoral upset: Pak Lah's candidates were routed by a combination of delegates' resistance, Mahathir's benign influence, and Najib's counter-attack to save his political skin. The vice-presidents – Isa Abdul Samad, Mohamed Ali Rustam, Muhyiddin Yassin – are not his men, nor are more than half elected to the supreme council. Those he wanted in are out; those he wanted out are in. He is caught in a bind, as he admitted to one in his camp who lost on Saturday.

Grace Phan: September has been quite a month for Anwar Ibrahim. It began with his sudden release from prison three weeks ago; he'd spent the greater part of six years serving sentences for abuse of power and sodomy. The imprisonment was the culmination of a falling out between Anwar and the former prime minister, Dr Mahathir Mohammad. Anwar Ibrahim was once a close confidant of Mahathir and likely successor, but tensions between the two over economic policy led to Anwar's sacking and eventual jailing on what Anwar claims were trumped up charges.

One is not surprised then at the party election results. The New Straits Times calls it "shock results". It is to Pak Lah and the newspaper, but not to those who have followed developments closely. What shocked him though is that those aligned to his predecessor, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, were amongst the victors. The three vice-presidents – Tan Sri Isa Samad, Dato' Seri Ali Rastam, Tan Sri Muhiyuddin Yassin – are not his men. In the supreme council, half the incumbents including three cabinet ministers, many aligned to Pak Lah, were defeated, those whom he wanted out are returned, to tie his hands in the new supreme council. Those who should have been in were defeated for no reason than they would not be involved in vote buying. The breast-beating aside, it was also clear that if a candidate was unprepared to bribe the delegates, he would not win. At one look, it appears none who did not bribe were returned.

It should not matter they were UMNO presidents or much beloved national leaders. Treachery is not the preserve of the fallen. UMNO should not honour these traitors by continuing to accept them as their past presidents and honoured leaders. A traitor is a traitor. If Dato' Seri Anwar can be judged one, so should they. In moral righteousness and outrage, their portraits at UMNO headquarters should be taken down, all references of them destroyed, and history rewritten. If they were alive, they should have been metaphorically drawn and quartered as UMNO has Dato' Seri Anwar. Not only that, all existing traitors in UMNO – as Dato' Hishamuddin defines it – should be expelled without by your leave. Who could they be? The former prime minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed; The prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi; The UMNO secretary-general, Dato' Radzi Sheikh Ahmad; Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah; Dato' Seri Rais Yatim; Dato' Shahrir Samad; Dato' Zainal Abidin Zin; the list is long but we shall stop here: All but one joined opposition parties and all actively campaigned on opposition platforms, Dr Mahathir on a PAS platform. He did not join PAS? Nor, as far as I know, has Dato' Seri Anwar joined a political party after he was expelled from UMNO in 1998.

This is why nothing he says about his plans and hopes is relevant or believed. UMNO believes he and his coterie has taken control of the party and government with the same cynicism he and his predecessor, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, tried to destroy Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. Things went awry from the start, and with each passing day, the Anwar factor looms heavily on UMNO, BN, the government it leads, the leaders. And this eats into the UMNO psyche. When UMNO would not address it, but the Anwar supporters would, the battle is lost. The only people who have come out publicly to condemn Dato' Seri Anwar are UMNO leaders, not even the BN leaders, but what they say is disbelieved. It is not that those who can address it are not UMNO stalwarts who genuinely believe he is guilty as hell. But they know they would be struck down by UMNO before they start: if any one shows intelligence or political brilliance in defending UMNO or attacking Dato' Seri Anwar, he would be destroyed. Leave that to the leaders, they would be told, and punished for their insolence.

But this UMNO belief in its invincibility is fiction. It is pulled in all directions by forces it cannot control. The seeming calm that prevails in UMNO belies the raging fires beneath, a volcano ready to explode. What caused it to spout in 1998 was its humiliation of its deputy president in 1998, breaking the social contract between the feudal leader with its subjects by humiliating one of his chiefs. UMNO has sacked its leaders before, but had not treated them with the humiliation the former UMNO president, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, heaped on Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. The Malay ground rebelled, the extinct volcano became alive, the leaders held its ground which when it could not hold, fueled the volcanic fire by assuring the world all is well. It ignores the volcanic fire, dare not mention its name, but the lava it spouts reduces UMNO and its leaders to mortal terror.

For all the UMNO-led National Front (BN) government's commitment to information technology, its espousal of the Multimedia Super Corridor that is bigger in area than the Republic of Singapore, there is not a single UMNO website that takes on the numerous sites that look at local politics that challenges its world view. It is not that UMNO does not have the means or the tools to do so. But because it believes that power comes from nowhere but the "wahyu" (breath) of the Great Leader, no one dares to take on its challengers. I speak often to several UMNO intellectual heavyweights. I respect what they say. I urge them to come out arguing the attacks against UMNO intellectually, and force a changing of the mind. They would not. There stand to lose too much. When Dato' Seri Anwar was appointed deputy prime minister in 1993, the then prime minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, assigned senior civil servants and intelligence officials to his personal office. When he was sacked five years later, so were they; for many their businesses, lives and family life were ruined; they remain pariahs to this day as Dato' Seri Anwar is. It is not the life they aspire. In any case, why should they put their families at risk for saying that UMNO must re-orient to survive?

But the reality is that Dato' Seri Anwar's release has split the top UMNO leaders. Many, if not most, were in the conspiracy that lead to Dato' Seri Anwar's dismissal, arrest and conviction. The UMNO deputy president, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, headed the "Destroy Anwar" committee, which manufactured a videotape which showed Dato' Seri Anwar in compromising homosexual positions. But when the supreme council was shown it – at which both Pak Lah and Dato' Seri Najib were present though not Tun Mahathir Mohamed – several pronounced it so badly done that few would believe it. It was shown nevertheless – to senior civil servants, armed forces generals, ambassadors and others of high rank. At several showings, similar questions were raised. One ambassador asked, after he saw the video with others flown in to watch it, why Dato' Seri Anwar had long hair "on the job", but not when he was tired and resting after. Few remembers the botched effort but the perpetrators, now in high political and cabinet office, fear an Anwar backlash now that he is free.

But since the government insists he should not have been acquitted, and it believes the judges' obiter is correct, would it not fail in its duties if it did not instruct the attorney-general's chambers to charge him afresh for the same offence? After all, it wants the man politically dead. This is its golden chance. And it has support from the usual quarters. The former prime minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, is convinced the federal court in wrong, and he is guilty as charged. (This despite his twaddly belief that his successor, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, engineered the acquittal to make him irrelevent.) It was he who first accused him of corruption and sodomy, sacked him from UMNO, where he was deputy president, and the government, where he was deputy prime minister, had him charged and convicted in a political conspiracy that now slowly reveals itself. The attorney-general and chief justice of the day did his bidding to convict him by playing fast and loose with the law and its procedure. But all underestimated him. If any other member of the cabinet had been damned, he would have stayed damned. Instead, as we know now, all they did was to disturb a wounded tiger.

UMNO DID NOT KNOW what hit it when it sacked its deputy president in 1998; nor that it would fight for its life today because of it. That intemperate misjudged vendetta is the cause of its misfortune and its lingering death. The UMNO president, Dato' Seri (Tun as he now is) Mahathir Mohamed moved to destroy his deputy president who he felt had grown too big for his boots, and did by denying him his rights. Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, in short, was drummed out of UMNO, and sacked as deputy prime minister. He and his supporters took to the streets. That led to his arrest, he was battered to an inch of his life, he was charged with corruption and sodomy, convicted of both in what is a traversity of justice, jailed. It should have destroyed him. It did not.

But the truth is far from this. Pak Lah opposed Dato' Seri Anwar's release until the end. On the morning of Thursday, just as the judges were getting ready to go into the Federal Court, a final futile attempt was made to deny him his freedom. The judges independently had decided that enough is enough, but they must act to restore the politically-castrated judiciary of the past two decades into the independent body it once was. Their self-respect is now questioned, and Dato' Seri Anwar would have been a free man no matter which coram sat. The National Front (BN) government was, to put it mildly, caught flatfooted. Except for the former prime minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, who insisted Dato' Seri Anwar was guilty, every one else rushed to take credit for his release. The public comment and the reports entrenched this view but the judiciary aside, what forced this change was the long term dangers of continuing to defy Saudi Arabia, which had requested Malaysia to take charge of Dato' Seri Anwar's surgery overseas, with a promise to return him to his prison cell. The Malaysian government ignored that. A fortnight ago, the request was renewed. It was ignored until the court decision.

THE MORE ONE LOOKS into Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim's dramatic release from prison yesterday (02 September 2004) the more one realises politics, not law, that ensured it. He was charged, humiliated, convicted in a political vendetta. The only way he could be released ahead of time only by political intervention. The prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, like his predecessor, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, wanted him in jail for as long as possible. The rules were stretched so he could not get what others charged for similar offences would as a matter of right. The judges, their hands tied, could do little but convict. The speed with which he goes for his surgery – he leaves tonight – raised many an eyebrow. That appears to be part of the deal, that he would leave immediately after his release, and not return for a while as Pak Lah tried to firm his rule. What forced Pak Lah's hand was the fear Dato' Seri Anwar might die on him – horror of horrors – before the UMNO elections in three weeks. Dato' Seri Anwar held his ground, and did not want a deal in which he would lose out politically.

He inherited one when he succeeded Tun (as he is now) Mahathir Mohamed as prime minister: the jailed former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. He invited the second – Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah – when he misused his powers to deny his challenger even the right to challenge him. His predecessor could well be the third, if he does not pull himself up and be and act the leader he ought to be. In ten months in office, he has not found his ground. He is running out of time.

THE MENTRI BESAR OF Selangor, Dato' Seri Mohamed Khir Toyo, booked a RM79,000 flat in Salak Tinggi ten years ago. He was not in politics then: if he was, he would not hve looked at a flat ten times costlier. He was a dentist then, clawing his way, with not much hope, up the greasy pole of politics. His fortunes changed, if you recall, when his friend, from the bin Mahathir clan suggested to the patriarch he is a good man to be Selangor Mentri Besar. But we are running ahead of the story. The flat remains unbuilt, the developer has gone bust, or as Dr Khir coyly puts it in the bureaucratic English beloved of politicians and bureaucrats, "the company closed down because of financial difficulties".

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