THE PRINCIPLE IN THE Anwar Ibrahim affair, for which he was convicted and is in jail, is that power abused for personal benefit is corruption. The traditional meaning that corruption involves money is stood on its head. The federal court affirmed this principle when it dismissed his appeal on the first set of charges. It is reluctant to hear the second set. It does not matter why. But it warns all in high office not to abuse power for personal ends or gains. Why Dato' Seri Anwar is in the mess he is in is irrelevant, even if he would not be if he had not defied his mentor and then prime minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed.

But other leaders did not have this luck with their deputies. Tun Razak died too early in office to have a problem, although he could have if the forceful and temperamental deputy, Tun Ismail Abdul Rahman, had out-lived him. Tun Hussein who succeeded him chose the man now known as Tun Mahathir Mohamed, who in time manipulated behind the scenes to force him to retire.

TUN Mahathir MOHAMED; DATO Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi; Mr Morarji Desai; President Francois Mitterand: they were all Yesterday's Men at one time of their political lives; but they became in time prime ministers and presidents of their countries. So when the New Straits Times yesterday (03 July 2004) dismissed Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah as one, it was carefully designed to stab him in the back - not because he is yesterday's man but because he poses a potent challenge to one of yesterday's men who is now prime minister. It was to put a knife in.

The first, Dato' Sir Onn Jaffar, walked out of UMNO when his plan for a multiracial UMNO was challenged; the second, Tengku Abdul Rahman, resigned rather than face a challenge after the 1969 general election and the riots which followed. The third, Tun Abdul Razak, died before his time, but if he had to leave, he would gracefully than challenge his opponents. The fourth, Tun Hussein Onn, when challenged for the presidency in 1978, his wings were clipped, and he made a dignified exit three years later. The fifth, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, decided that this was not how it should be done, insisted he is president if he won by a single vote, and defended his ground so thoroughly and forcefully, and put in place rules and regulations that made it all but impossible for anyone to challenge him.

This leaves Parti Keadilan Rakyat or KeADILan. The Registrar of Societies insists it be known as PKR, not KeADILan, but how is it going to enforce that? It was formed after the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, was jailed on trumped up charges of sodomy and corruption when he showed his metier and frightened the BN prime minister of the day, Tun Mahathir Mohamed. He is its eminence grise. But for too long he was its raison d'etre. But if it wants to exist as a political party it must go beyond commitment to its eminence grise. This is where the difficulty begins. Too many among its leaders want this to continue. But it cannot if it must have a role in Malaysia's larger affairs.

The New Straits Times notes (21 June 2004, p1) two instances when the party was split by factionalism and camps: in 1987 and 1993. It did not, of course mention, that Pak Lah was with the challenger, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, in the first, and in the second, with the official candidate, Tun Ghafar Baba, in which the challenger, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, won. It came after years of disallowing debate as the then Prime Minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, rode rough shod over Malaysia to turn it on its head to force feed it into the industralised age. He failed, and UMNO with it. What is not mentioned is that Pak Lah was with the challenger in 1987, and Dato' Seri Najib was on the point of defecting to the challenger when he decided not to.

Pak Lah and Dato' Seri Najib play games. Each is at pains to strip and trip the other, but it is done the usual Malay way: Public cordiality and inner private enmity. Pak Lah's boys privately complain that this is all Dato' Seri Najib's ploy. Although both are agreed they should not be challenged, and be allowed a free ride. Why they had to go to this extent, annoying and upsetting the traditional UMNO ground, is inexplicable. They did not see the writing on the wall: that Pak Lah on succeeding Dr Mahathir took over the office, not his iron-fisted power. And pays the price.

What Dato' Soh forgot and we must not is that the National Front (BN) government looks after its own, allows them to do what they want but with one condition: absolute loyalty to the Prime Minister. Tun Ling did not waver. When the MCA ground wanted him out as president, the prime minister of the day, Dr Mahathir Mohamed, insisted he stay. He did. When he left, a political sleight of hand kept his rivals out and for his poodle to succeed him. Then it turns that the new MCA president, Dato' Seri Ong Ka Ting, had recommended a few upright Chinese business men for state dato'ships, but who turned out to be involved in nefarious activities like gambling, prostitution, gangsterism and the like.

Pak Lah made it worse with a drifting and bumbling administration, a cabinet of deadwood, and to insist that what they say is, only to be second-guessed by facts or other ministers. If the aim is a vibrant administration that would right the wrongs of Tun Mahathir Mohamed's administration - which is what Pak Lah promised - this is not it. Then to issue Olympian orders that Zeus must be unchallenged would cause the Gods, let alone lesser beings, to rebel.

Even now, the UMNO disease takes root. Leaders want to be elected by acclamation, not by election. The leaders are afraid of putting their popularity to the test. It is a view that runs deep, right down to the election of branch chairman. You need to win one of these seats - which one depends on your ambition and your belief in what you are good for - to be a player. Losing one is not a fatal blow, nor as Tun Mahathir Mohamed would tell you, is expulsion from the party. But unless you have the inner track, a setback can be fatal. Dato' Hishamuddin has decided to stay put for two reasons: the crowded vice-presidential pack will mean that most are likely to be disappointed; after all, only three can be elected vice-presidents. If he did not make it, he is out of the UMNO supreme council, unless the president decides to nominate him to one of ten seats in his gift.

UMNO discourages open challenges for the leadership. But times have changed. The old staid rule that leaders are invited, not elected in a rumbustious free-for-all campaign, into the party pantheon is now challenged. The former president, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, did not hesitate to use force when one so much as dissented to the prevailing view. But his successor, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, has yet to consolidate his leadership. He thought his best chance was to romp home to a runaway victory in the March 21 general election, and that would all but sideline his rivals in the party. It did not. The Election Commission, with its creative use of the rules, made Pak Lah weaker after the best results ever the governing coalition, the National front (BN), had. Pak Lah shivers on the knife's edge. The gloves are off.

We had had such a tradition until the advent of Tun (then Dato' Seri) Mahathir Mohamed as Prime Minister in 1981. He did not believe in tradition, developed Malaysia as a bull in a china shop, casting aside traditions and long-standing civic and civil practices, consigning meritocracy to the birds, to remake a Malaysia in his own image, with all organs of state, the military included, beholden to him and him only: one who owed no respect to the past, believed history was bunk, traditions are best consigned to history's dustbin, the present is the best indicator of what is to come, not one's past. He was afraid of the armed forces, so he emasculated it, with, let us mince no words about it, the help of his brother-in-law, General Tan Sri 'Freddy' Hashim Ali, who stayed on as armed forces chief for too long after retirement, and destroyed the army cadre. In turn, he got a poodle of an army, waxing fat of the land, with nothing to show for it.

The then prime minister, Tun (then Dato' Seri) Mahathir Mohamed sacked him more than a decade ago because he was among the few who would stand up to him, and say his piece. He went into business, made a moderate success of it, but his heart remained in UMNO and how it could be reformed. He did not have the traits of a young man in a hurry, as Dato' Seri Anwar. He calculated his moves with precision, and acted only when he had a reasonable chance of success. He is not one for grand gestures, but when he speaks he is listened to with reason.

IN THE RUNUP TO the 21 March general election, a controversial advertisement appeared in the Chinese newspapers which raised many an eyebrow: Tun Mahathir Mohamed ran an administration for 22 years - it was coyly described as 'previous government' - that was 'corrupt and rotten to the core' ... with no aspect of life untainted by corruption', but that of his successor, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, is suffuced and cloaked in integrity and righteousness. It pledged an open and transparent system of governance. There is nothing unusual about it. It is standard practice for the new BN and UMNO leader on taking the highest political office to claim he cuts a new path, that his predecessor was wrong, and he would not make those mistakes.

THE DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, is to the political manor born. An aristocrat, a major Pahang chieftain, a relentless ambition to emulate his late father, an awesome political machine, makes him an useful ally in any political ally. He survived many an attempt to have him sidelined, but he has deflected every attempt. He nearly did not make it as deputy prime minister when Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi succeeded Tun Mahathir Mohamed as Malaysia's fifth prime minister. For all his feudal plus points in Malay society, he is weighed down with unfeudal and uncharacteristic personal, character and familial flaws that would have sunk many a lesser man.

THE MALAYSIAN DEPUTY PRIME minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, insisted last Tuesday, 25 May 2004, the UMNO supreme council had decided the previous night the party president and deputy president had been elected unopposed. One can understand why he made it. The National Front (BN) had had its best ever results in the March general elections, but in circumstances that suggest massive fraud to which the Election Commission actively bent the rules. It was to affirm Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi as Prime Minister in his own right, and allow him to be his own man, not an appendage of his predecessor, Tun Mahathir Mohamed. It did not. So a new plan is hatched to ensure he would be UMNO president come what may. The UMNO secretary-general, Tan Sri Khalil Yaakob, read a statement he did not sign, though it was issued in his name. Dato' Seri Najib explained what it meant and why. The mainstream newspapers reported it parrot-like on the front pages in banner headlines. But the UMNO supreme council did not unanimously decide the UMNO president and deputy president be returned uncontested. In fact, it did not even discuss or raise it. Tan Sri Khalil and Dato' Seri Najib lied. Why?

Besides, if this is Dato' Seri Najib's raison d'etre, why did not the Supreme Council decide that all its members be returned unopposed, with elections only for those not returned in the general elections and those who retired. The UMNO divisions and branches certainly did not decide what they cannot on elections for the other offices. So, why did the supreme council insist only the two top officers be elected? If it is UMNO's victory, should not every supreme council member partake in it and be declared elected. Or is it a creative way to ensure only the party president - the deputy is just ballast in this exercise -- is unchallenged. The president of the UMNO party cannot be elected, it seems, if special rules do not apply. Tun Mahathir Mohamed lost the 1987 election as president of UMNO the mass movement, but in a deliberately planned sleight of hand ensured he won. He then sat by while the courts declared UMNO illegal. And weighted the rules in the new UMNO so no one could ever challenge him. He retired last year, and his chosen successor is as frightened of a contest in UMNO as he. But the unanswered question is the point of elections for the other positions when an appointed president can ride roughshod over them? As invariably he does.

WHEN THE UNITED STATES adopted, in the wake of the jet plane attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington on Sept 11, 2001, detentions without trial for those suspected of terrorist attacks, the then Malaysian prime minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, was ecstatic.

This is not to imply that Dato' Seri Anwar himself did not make mistakes. He believed that when Tun Mahathir Mohamed retired as Prime Minister, he could have a better chance in the courts. He did not understand that he is an icon that reeks of the injustice meted out to him. So dangerous is he that the authorities could not even allow him out on bail. He has stood his ground, refusing to budge, and excoriating those in authority for the bad done to him. He has refashioned himself into a Malay icon, a victim of an un-Malay vendetta, and in so doing put the Malay leadership of UMNO and BN as outcastes. It is a role Nelson Mandela took on during his 27 years in jail, and his reputation grew the longer he stayed in jail. Dato' Seri Anwar has done likewise, aided in no small measure by the small-minded UMNO and BN leaders whom he cleverly brought into his trap. The intractible BN and UMNO dilemma over Dato' Seri Anwar is self-inflicted. They did not think through their plans, that today they would lose ground if they agreed to one demand of Dato' Seri Anwar. And lose ground if they did not.

Malaysia has long seized to believe in the sanctity of the law and of justice. The Anwar Ibrahim trials and high profile cases where the chief justice goes on holidays with the lawyer for a prominent business man but would not recuse when requested topped the public's contempt for justice in Malaysian courts. There are hundreds more. It is reflected in peculiar ways. Malaysian corporations, when signing contracts, insist on disputes adjudicated by foreign arbitration. The system has broken down. The blame for that must be laid on the former Prime Minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, who did not have a sense of history, did not understand or care how the system worked, and cared not if it broke down the system. All that mattered to him was this his dictates were implicity obeyed. He did not understand government, nor its workings, nor its history. It is system that provides continuity. In any endeavour the individual should fit into the system, not the other way around. If the system must be changed, an alternative must be at hand. This is what the People's Action Party did in Singapore. This is what Malaysia did not do. This is what the United States did not in Iraq.

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