In the 30-odd years between Genting and Colmer Tropicale, the country shifted from Malay Dominance to Islamic dominance. The world view has changed. No Malay politician can survive in Malaysia if he does not wear his commitment to an Islamic state prominently on his shirt sleeves. It is this that puts added pressure on UMNO and the BN. UMNO has not thought through its Islamic credentials, nor allow Parliament to debate it for fear of what could come out of it, especially with PAS forcing the pressure. It has declared Malaysia is an Islamic state, and that, in its view, is all that is necessary. It had hoped that by labelling Malaysia an Islamic state, it would soften the PAS pressure. But its scatter-brained approach could not last. Within UMNO, there is a demand to be told how it differs from PAS's worldview, and why. But UMNO leaders cannot explain or debate it, except in generalities, which is neither here nor there. The issue of a second casino licence in Pahang, which can only be issued by the Federal ministry of finance, opens yet another can of worms which UMNO must wriggle out of to survive - in Pahang and in Malaysia at large.

Col. Syed Hamzah was a marked man from then on, though he retired a brigadier when he should have risen higher. He was saved for "for not defending the Malay race" (the charge hurled at him by his fellow officers for the rest of his service career) because he was a nephew of the then Prime Minister, Tengku Abdul Rahman Putra, and a cousin of the CAFS, General Tengku Osman Jewa. The mood had changed, even in the armed forces, which saw itself, although its top brass had not until decades later, as the armed vanguard of Malay Dominance. It takes about three decades for the effects of a major policy changes as this transition from a multiracial government led by Malay to a Malay-led government to a Malay-only government. We see today the effects of that deliberate policy after the 1969 riots to hobble the non-Malay, especially the Chinese, for not knowing his place in Malay society. That battle continues.

For 30 years, the Federal Government did all it could to strengthen Malay Dominance and keep the non-Malays in check. English was removed from the curriculum to hobble the non-Malay. And policies were imposed to punish him. But it now comes to haunt the BN government. Since the Anwar Ibrahim debacle in 1998, the Malay is not with UMNO and BN. The younger Malay is more likely to join or vote PAS and the Opposition than UMNO. This widens with each passing day, and UMNO and BN is in such total dissarray that conditions must worsen before it can get better. The BN leaders now accept that it can be returned to power in the next general elections only with massive Chinese support. But this deliberate policy of the past three decades to hobble the non-Malay stands in its way.

For when the aim is to entrench one group or race even when they are not ready, mediocrity must rule. It was also to punish. The political overview after the 13 May riots and Malay Dominance was to punish the non-Malay for daring to confront the Malay to defend the rights promised him after independence. As usual, when the Malays reacted, the non-Malay collapsed. And did not challenge this deliberate worldview in which they were officially relegated to irrelevance. This Malay Dominance led to the policies that Admiral Ramly now worries about. Let us look at industry. The Proton car, for instance. The Chinese is deliberately excluded from it, except peripherally as an adjunct to the Malay stake holder. The workers are, like the civil service, predominantly Malay. The non-Malay who has a brilliant idea can only make it to the market place if he has a Malay partner, whose share he often has to pay, acceptable to the government. It has become so bad that many just move to, usually, Thailand, and make his fortune there. A key figure in the motor industry in Thailand is a Malaysian Chinese, who went there after he was rebuffed in Malaysia.

This emphasis on a multiracial society is deliberate. A side product of this is to demonise the opposition parties as being racist or fundamentalist Islamic. As the BN damns the opposition, it cleverly hides an unpalatable truth: that it is more racist and Islamic than the opposition every could be. It is in power, so it could camouflage its practices. UMNO's prescription for a multiracial Malaysian society is anchored in its demand of its unquestioned accepted of Malay Dominance. It is made worse by a deliberate, unintended official policy of marginalising the non-malay and the non-Muslim from his midst. Unless this is addressed, Dr Lim can crow till kingdom come that Gerakan is a multiracial party; the only response he would get, from the Malay, the non-Malay, the Chinese, the non-Chinese, the Indian, the non-Indian is a tired but deliberate yawn.

The government's fear now of what this means is real. But the roots of it go back to the deliberate Malayisation of the civil service and the uniformed services after the 1969 racial riots. A quota system for non-Malays ensured only their token presence in all institutions of state. Twenty per cent of the civil service, for instance, ought to have been non-Malay; but less than ten per cent now are. It was a political decision taken after the 1969 racial riots to ensure Malay Dominance in Malaysia. What helped it along was the utter collapse of the Chinese and Indian leadership, again not after careful thought but in anger that the Chinese community did not support them in the 1969 general elections.

But the tragedy in this rush to the 7th century is made for a political agenda to obtain votes and marginalise the non-Muslim. The Hudud is proof that UMNO and PAS can do what it likes, whatever their non-Malay partners say. It is this frightening overview that does not augur for the non-Muslims. With UMNO in trouble with its Malay ground and PAS needing Malay support for its theocratic worldview, the two parties inch towards a Muslim-Malay alliance which can only strength this march to this promise of an ideal 7th century paradise in the 21st century. Neither the Muslim nor the non-Muslim in Malaysia would discuss issues as frankly as they should. The constitution ensures "sensitive" subjects should never be discussed; one that cannot is Malay Dominance in the country. If non-Muslim leaders raise in public doubts and worries about this impending Islamisation, he would be decried as challenging the position of the Malays in Malaysia, tried and jailed. Discussion of important issues is therefore non-existent. When it is, it is dismissed as simplistic political propaganda or that the speaker does not know what he talks about.

But this empowered Malay in the civil service is caught in a larger vice after the Anwar imbroglio. His cultural persona is anathema to all what the government stands for. While once he was encouraged in the official rush to ensure Malay Dominance in all areas of government, he uses the same power to challenge the government he has now no cultural links with, and cuts the government down so its arrogance is not on strength but on fright and weakness. There is some reason to believe that these unpardonable events occurred because the civil servant is prepared to keep the government on its toes and in dissarray with decisions that redound on its credibility.

The past two decades moved away from the ideal, governance concentrated on one man, the prime minister, and now tottering because the Malay cultural ground which was the raison d'etre of UMNO's political theory of Malay Dominance which was packaged as the New Economic Policy. That cannot now be sustained: no effort is made to preserve its intellectual foundations and without that the Chinese business man no longer would help UMNO sustain it.

Malaysian politics, despite the superficial stability, is in flux. UMNO's vaunted Malay Dominance is in danger because it was nurtured with the care it should have been. PAS's Islamisation, its antithesis, moves to fill the coming vaccum. Whether it would is not what matters now. It is UMNO's fear of that, and of losing power. Which is why it reaches out to the non-Malay partners it led by the nose all these years.

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