It is not all Pak Lah's fault. The rot began much earlier, well before the Mahathir administration, when this view took root that since it has the absolute majority in parliament and the state assemblies, and the Opposition not worth bothering about, the BN and especially UMNO had the unfettered right to be lord of all they survey.

The theory is that If Pak Lah gets what he wants, several cabinet ministers, including the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, could have to fight for their political lives. He appears to want to make it an UMNO Hadhari tradition that the UMNO president should remove his deputy as Dr Mahathir removed his. He would not be able to.

UMNO FIGHTS FOR its political life; what it once stood for slips from its grasp; is shunted into irrelevance as the Malay, its main support, cannot accept being told what is best for him. What was once the unquestioned political party of the Malay is reduced to re-work its political agenda to win back that support. Its troubles began in 1987, when the Gua Musang MP, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, came to within a whisker of defeating the UMNO president, Dato' Seri (now Tun) Mahathir Mohamed.

Dato' Seri Samy however does not thing so. He is only concerned to shift the blame from the contractors and consultants to the government and by extension the long suffering tax payer. The Middle Ring Road project, of which this is a part, is one of dozens of crony-laden projects issued without tendering for it and the first to suggest it, with the cost blown skyhigh with no thought of its safety or other technical and political considerations. It is yet another example of the Mahathir epoch's extravagance, waste, and the belief that the crony business men could survive only if the taxpayer and voter is made to suffer.

Heather Li: But first to Malaysia where Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi has spent his first nine months in office cutting an image very different from that of his predecessor. Where former prime minister Mahathir Mohammad was often outspoken and an advocate of grand projects, Abdullah Badawi or Pak Lah as he's affectionately called, is more measured, more moderate.

THE PRIME MINISTER, DATO' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, is about to eat his own words. He insists all is well, the government is flush with funds, all that is needed to distance himself from his predecessor, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, is to right the excesses of that regime. One is this practice of negotiated contracts worth billions parcelled out to favoured business men and cronies. In this, price was no object, only that they be given the contract, and they in turn charged what they could get away with. When projects are tendered for, it gave the government a choice at a price that was brought down by the need to win it against competition.

Look at those who made the cut for the UMNO vice-presidency and supreme council: those who got the most nominations invariably used their financial and political clout; those who scraped through, did not. This is the one fundamental difference between UMNO that was declared illegal by the courts and the UMNO Hadhari (or Progressive UMNO) of Tun Mahathir Mohamed and Pak Lah. In the old UMNO, every one had a chance to contest, subject to a nominal hurdle of two nominations.

The former prime minister and UMNO president, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, managed to maintain the stranglehold with an autocratic governance that brooked no interference. The jailed of his former deputy prime minister and the sacking of assorted cabinet ministers for challenging his views was enough to keep the cabinet and state UMNO leaders in line. Pak Lah, or at least his Oxbridge advisers, believed he could and better than Dr Mahathir. That was its first mistake. From then on it was one mistake after another.

When Tengku Razaleigh, after this court decision, filed to re-register a new UMNO, the Registrar of Societies held his application back until the then prime minister, Dato' Seri (now Tun) Mahathir Mohamed, could file his, to take control of UMNO's assets, and deny Tengku Razaleigh a role. In the light of this, a new political party, Semangat '46 was formed, but it was neutralised in the same way he was in his attempt to be UMNO president this year. Eventually he dissolved it and rejoined UMNO. He was kept out deliberately, but he represented a sizeable view in UMNO, with a devoted party machine, but kept in the wilderness until he decided UMNO is in its death throes if nothing is done about it.

THE QUIET JUBILATION IN in Washington at Malaysia's unwise offer to send a 'significant' medical mission to Iraq tells it all. The prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, has firmly joined Washington's tattered, and fraying, coalition of the willing in Iraq when he acceded to President George W. Bush's request. The Asian Wall Street Journal was quick off with an editorial which reflected this change of mood, how a recalcitrant Malaysia under the former prime minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, is not under his successor, and how that bodes well.

It sent the frightening message to the world that in Malaysia anyone who challenged the prime minister or the BN coalition he heads, be he politician, businessman, citizen, foreign or local, should expect short shrift at the courts. For as the years go by, it was Dato' Seri Anwar's challenge of the then prime minister, Tun (then Dato' Seri) Mahathir Mohamed, that landed him in Sungei Buloh and as a near paraplegic. All else is spin. The government insists he is a common criminal. He is not, although the courts convicted him. He is convicted not for his alleged crimes but for his politics.

What is inexplicable is why he sought publicity this way. If he was as incensed as he is reported, then he should have shown it at a general press conference, not just for Malaysian reporters. I understand the sensitivities involved, but to go off the handle as he did in Paris reflects the Mahathir administration's penchant for making policy on the run.

For Pak Lah moved in to drive a wedge through the divided community. His legitimacy within UMNO and the Malay community, as his predecessor, Tun (as he now is) Mahathir Mohamed's, is shaky at best and veer UMNO away from its cultural roots to a high pressure brave new world of reason, logic, media manipulation, cynicism, the highest bidder.

Even in UMNO Baru, the forms were kept, though how the leaders were selected was hemmed in with conditions that made it all but impossible for a rival or challenger to break through. Whatever opinions one may have of the UMNO leader of the time, Tun Mahathir Mohamed was autocratic but challenge was restricted by constitutional fiat, not in breach of it. The forms were kept though not the intent.

There were talks of defections. The monolithic structure the UMNO leaders built began to crack. The intelligence agencies had told them the Tengku had garnered at least 68 nominations. That if nothing is done to stop it, he is a candidate. He has not held office since 1987, when he resigned after he lost the presidency to the then prime minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, as he is now known. He wound up his Semangat '46, formed after the High Court declared UMNO to be an illegal body, but disallowed to exist when Dr Mahathir formed the UMNO Baru, joined the new UMNO, kept in limbo, but built an impressive political machine that has its roots at every UMNO nook and cranny.

THE UMNO WAY IS CLEAR: the leader is the state, so he should be unopposed as party president; the deputy leader would soon be, so he should as well. In times past, UMNO was the state, its president the prime minister. Today, UMNO is a sideshow, to be shaped at will by the leader who is there by virtue of being the state. The cock-eyed philosophy was forced upon UMNO the political party after UMNO the mass movement was declared illegal by the high court in 1988. An event as momentous was not challenged on appeal. But that is understandable: the then UMNO president, Dato' Seri (as he then was) Mahathir Mohamed, did not want his challengers, notably Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, in UMNO for it was clear even then that in a future party election, he would lose.

Why he did not is not the issue. Why the police did not march into his house and arrest him – as it would happen to any of us unconnected with power or has parents connected to power – is. Especially since he is firmly in the camp of the internal security minister, who as prime minister, wants UMNO to elect him president because he will return the country to what it was before his predecessor, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, messed it up.

This flowered in the 22 years Tun Mahathir Mohamed was prime minister. He disliked civil servants, and amongst his first tasks was to destroy their influence on his administration. He succeeded beyond his dreams. The civil service, and all administrations of governments, the police, the armed forces, the judiciary, were putty in his hands.

The wider issues he raised – that UMNO presidency is vacant, for instance – is pointedly ignored. The last president of UMNO is Tun Mahathir Mohamed. When he resigned, the post is vacant until elections for it takes place. The deputy president is Pak Lah; Dato' Seri Najib, is vice-president acting as deputy president. If the status quo is to remain, Pak Lah should stand for deputy president. Since the presidency is vacant, anyone with the required nominations should stand. The deputy president is not, so he should be unchallenged.

Let us look at the election paraphernalia scandal. Orders were placed shortly after Pak Lah took office in November last year. It was then decided to hold general elections soon so could move away swiftly from the suffocating shadow of the former prime minsiter, Tun Mahathir Mohamed. The election paraphernalia were printed well before the general elections so that it alone among the political parties were ready for the seven-and-a-half day campaign period.

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