THE MALAYSIAN PRIME MINISTER, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, takes the only view he can, that the polls are over, it does not matter if it is flawed or not, all that mess the Election Commission caused has nothing to do with him. The important thing is his overwhelming mandate, and his first task is to appoint the cabinet and mentris besar. Possession, after all, is nine-tenths the law. He is in control. Now who would dare overturn that? The Election Commission? With Tan Sri Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahmand as chairman and Dato' Wan Ahmad Wan Omar as its secretary? But however you look at it, this electoral mess has reduced Pak Lah in stature. The mainstream euphoria of his victory comes with caveats that could sink him if this EC mess gets out of hand. What Pak Lah and the EC glosses over is that with this election, as I noted in a commentary two days ago, the rubicon is crossed. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fabe records: The Rubicon was a small river that separated ancient Italy from Cisalpine Gaul, the province alloted to Julius Caesar. When he crossed this stream in 49 BC, he passed beyond the limits of his province, and he became an invader, thus precipitating war with Pompey and the Senate.

That set the cat amongst the pigeons. He was forced to retract his words, and sacked the lot. It did not end there. The Conference of Rulers last weej discussed the conduct of the EC and the Attorney-General's Chambers - whose heads are officers of the Crown and their loyalty is to the King and not the government of the day - and it took exception to the EC as an employment agency. It was announced that seven Puteri UMNO members appointed were sacked. The complaint mentioned seven. But to prove its loyalty to BN and UMNO, it would have appointed many more. Possibly all 45. Of their fate, we know nothing. The EC lies when it can, and like the boy crying wolf, is disbelieved even when it tells the truth. To add to the confusion, the EC secretary, Dato' Wan Ahmad Wan Omar, adds his own spin which makes the Conference of Rulers look foolish and stupid. The EC, he thundered, is never inconsisent about the PU temporary staff and dismissed the seven in June. So it did not lie when asked if it had PU members on its staff. The EC unanimously decided in June to dismiss the seven so it would not be "exploited for political reasons".

IT WAS A BRILLIANT SETUP. This time the National Front (BN) would show how rascally PAS MPs are. It did not succeed now as well. Each time it has PAS in its sights and attacks, it is not PAS but BN which is wounded. This time PAS would not get away, the BN strategists insisted. The accidental BN MP for Pendang, Dato' Osman Abdul, is all but certain he could not be re-elected in the coming general elections against a PAS candidate. PAS is so well-entrenched that he believes PAS could capture the state. So he does nothing to lose if he made a fool of himself. So he asked a question in Parliament on 24 September 2003 which BN thought would tie PAS in knots: Would the Prime Minister reveal how many MPs claimed expenses more than RM10,000. The parliamentary secretary in the Prime Minister's Department, Dato' Noh Omar, decided he would not answer it but focus his attention on one PAS MP, Mr Arpandi Mohamed, who had claimed between RM11,000 and RM12,000 a month for 18 months. It was reported as if he had done something wrong. The BN scented blood. And called in the Anti-Corruption Agency to investigate. The ACA, never missing a chance to reveal its toothless impotence, began its investigations. That it did is linked to with top-level discussions this weekend if general election should be held in December.

BN though it had a winner when Mr Husam asked how many MPs, in Government and Opposition, had claimed official expenses of more than RM10,000 a month. The parliamentary secretary in the Prime Minister's Department, Dato' Noh Omar, said one PAS MP, Mr Mohamed Apandi Mohamed, had claimed RM132,335 in 2003 and RM78,356 for the first six months of 2003 - about RM1,000 and RM2,000 a month more than the RM10,000 base figure in the two years. Dato' Noh did not suggest this was wrong. The claims were forwarded, as required, to Parliament, which approved and paid them. If it was excessive or wrongly filed, it would have been rejected and a public campaign begun forthwith. This did not happen. It suggests that Parliament is profligate to the point that BN MPs would happily allow MPs such generous expenses. If they are there, how can you blame an MP for not claiming them. The average claim, Dato' Noh said, was RM5,000 a month. He now wants to report Mr Mohamed Apandi to that toothless wonder, the Anti-Corruption Agency, for what he regards a false claim. As usual, he bolts the barn door after the horses have fled.

How are the ICs distributed? Key UMNO divisional and branch officers and chosen retired civil servants and intelligence officers were sold the rights to recruit up to 500 illegals to be given ICs at RM500 each. They sold those rights at RM1,000. Some of these men were earning RM25,000 a month out of this. This financial incentive and the promise of absolute security and official protection was enough to let the scam continue. The EC cannot deny it was unaware of this. Its officers added these instant citizens into the register in stealth and secrecy. Is it then a surprise that the EC secretary now, Dato' Wan Ahmad Wan Omar, is from ME10.

Queries are brushed aside. The EC builds a steel wall around it, into which an opposition politician, certainly not a voter, could penetrate. If he does somehow, he is brushed aside. It could do this on the arrogant assumption that evidence of its perfidy are not available. Not any more. The PAS MP, Mr Mahfuz Omar, produced letters in Parliament in which the EC instructed its state branches, except in Sabah and Sarawak, to employ Puteri UMNO members as part-time administrative assistants to prepare for the coming General Election. The EC denied it, so it could not be raised in the June session of Parliament. In the current session, Mr Mahfuz produced the Puteri UMNO chief's letter with handwritten instructions from Tan Sri Abdul Rashid and the EC secretary, annotations requesting that it be acted on expeditiously, and the letter from the Election Commission ordering its Peninsular officers to comply. He released the letters to the Press. Remarkably, she attached a list of unemployed Puteri UMNO members worth of the EC's consideration.

If this comes about, Pak Lah would be reduced, as prime minister, as Dato' Seri Abu Hassan Omar was as foreign minister, as postman to Dr Mahathir. But could Dr Mahathir pull it off? He could so long as Pak Lah and UMNO would allow it. If they do, Dr Mahathir would have power without responsibility. He does not want to stop a witchhunt after he leaves. Early this week, Pak Lah led a BN and UMNO team to discuss the Sabah UMNO and BN candidates for the state assembly election there. Dr Mahathir had wanted election there first before calling for it in the other states and parliament. But he was stopped in his tracks when PAS, which controls two states, Kelantan and Trengganu, said it would dissolve the state assemblies in the two states in tandem with Sabah.

THE ELECTION COMMISSION, CONSTITUTIONALLY neutral but in practice anything but, has information of impending clashes in six "hot" states - Kelantan, Trengganu, Kedah, Perlis, Pahang and Selangor - at election time. The EC secretary, Dato' Wan Ahmad Wan Omar, is opaque about how serious or reliable his information is, but he says the police believes so too. As if, in matters like these, that is proof enough. He does not mention the political parties but says their "over-zealous" supporters are "capable of doing anything to achieve their aims". He does not explain the nature of the threat, but the import of what he says is obvious: the six Malay states, four governed by the UMNO-led National Front (BN) and two by PAS, is where the battle for the Malay ground will be fought.

That is not all. the UMNO MP for Larut, Raja Dato' Ahmad Zainuddin Raja Omar, in a supplementary question, wanted to know how opposition smears, including the Harakah cartoon, had affected foreign investment to Malaysia. The answer: foreign investors are aware of the 'real' situation and know the government had made it profitable for their investment. Is this why then that foreign investment to Malaysia has almost dried up? Surely if it has, and the government is on the mark about attracting them, would it not have to look for a culprit other than its own inadequacies to blame. But there is nothing to worry. You know how disorganised the BN is when its parliamentary secretary in the Prime Minister has to appeal to the home ministry, in Parliament, to review the Harakah permit.

Tun Abdul Hamid Omar, who succeeded Tun Salleh, started the rot. His successor, Tun Eusoff Chin, continued it. He scandalised an already scandal-proof court when photographs of him on holiday with his favourite lawyer, Dato' V.K. Lingam, in New Zealand appeared on the Internet. He and his client, Tan Sri Vincent Tan (he of the Bukit Tinggi casino fame) were also photographed with the then Attorney-General (later Federal Court judge and now comatose), Tan Sri Mohtar Abdullah, and their wives, on holiday in Italy. What added fuel to fire was Dato' Lingam's arrogance and Tun Eusoff's subservience ensured anyone before him with the other side represented by Dato' Lingam found the judicial cards stacked against him. Tun Dzaiddin Abdullah, who succeeded him with a new broom and an unsullied reputation, could not, no matter how, turn the judiciary around. What destroyed a judicial tradition of two centuries cannot be reversed in decades, let alone in two or three years.

You build a 'rumah haram' (illegal house) and the Federal Reserve Unit is there as municipal bulldozers will pull down your house without by your leave. But let a Tan Sri or some one high and mighty build one, and no one in authority would dare pull it down. The Selangor mentri besar, Dato' Mohamed Khir Toyo, says about forty houses in MPAJ are 'rumah haram', none had building plans approved nor certificates of fitness issued, some, if not most, built illegally on MPAJ land. One of the 40 'rumah haram' belonged to the former armed forces chief, Tan Sri Ismail Omar: MPAJ did not approve its building plans nor issue a certificate of fitness.

Three years ago, the retired Malaysian armed forces chief, Tan Sri Ismail Omar, built a house in the vicinity. On 20 November 2002, a mudslide in heavy rains in the wee hours of the morning reduced it to rubble. The general, chairman of Affin Bank, was dug out of the rubble, but six of his family, including his wife, and two Indonesian maids, died. He was rushed to nearby Ampang Puteri hospital, muttering incoherently about important documents he needed to get his hands on. The MPAJ rushed in to flex its muscles: Residents in nearby houses were ordered evacuated, and if they did not, be fined RM250 for every day they did not. Meanwhile, technical experts explained how this building on slopes of hills already upset from its geological foundations was a tragedy waiting to happen.

The world's solitary global superpower believes only in behaving like one, and is peeved when it is second guessed, be it from France, Iraq or North Korea. What Washington set out to do in this war on terror, it failed miserably. It could caputre neither Osama bin Laden nor Mullah Omar. It does not matter if either is alive or dead, but what they left behind, the Al Qaeda network and the Taliban, are very much alive to give the Washington superhawks insomnia. Russia, on the other hand, decides on a scorched earth policy to rein in the Chechen rebels in a dispute that is 150 years old over a national homeland. But because the Chechens and Chechnya are Muslim, it is conveniently linked to this global war on terror as, for example, Kashmir is. But both, like Northern Ireland, are not religious wars but for a homeland in which religion -- Islam in Kashmir and Chechnya, Roman Catholicism in Northern Irealand -- but when Muslims irredentists are involved, what caused the problem is ignored.

The news out of Afghanistan now reminds one of news out of Moscow of its adventure in this blessed land: the supreme confidence and belief it turned the corner enroute to civilisation for these 'barbarians'. But this confidence and belief is inverse to ground reality. The Afghan regards the United States as it once did the Soviet Union and, lest we forget, the United Kingdom: a foreign power who should be made to pay for daring to colonise it. There is, in Afghan eyes, no difference between the Moscow-protected Babrak Karmal or Dr Najibullah and the Washington-protected Hamid Karzai. When Washington recently took over the security of its protege, Mr Karzai, the battle is lost. All Afghans now only need do is to force the United States into a never-ending quagmire, as they Britain during the Great Game in the 19th and 20th centuries. The recent attempt on Mr Karzai's life in Kandahar is but the first salvo. There would be more. And a new enemy. With Mullah Omar and his Taliban disappearing into their tribal heartlands, the new enemy is its old friend, Gulbudeen Hekmatyar, building a new crusade against the new invader.

[Only one man is alive who took part in the Merdeka negotiations at Lancaster House in London in 1955. He is in his eighties, ailing, and forgotten. He is Tun Omar Ong Yoke Lin. He was to have written his autobiography. I was to have been his amenuensis. But as we talked, he thought I was too hot a political potato, and dropped it. A pity it was. He had a story to tell and would probably never be told. One would suffice. When the Tengku decided to invite MCA to join UMNO to present a common list for the KL Municipal elections in 1952, he nominated Mr (later Tun and now, alas, the late) Ismail Ali, the brother-in-law of Dr Mahathir, and the MCA, Mr (later Tun) Ong to work out the details. They met for lunch one day at the Colliseum Bar and Restaurant, at the table to the immediate right as one entered, reached agreement but did not have any paper to write it on. So they drafted the agreement on the pristine white table cloth. One of them took it home (both thought it was he), had it transcribed, and wanted to hand the tablecloth to the Tengku. But the servant, seeing the "dirty" table cloth, promptly washed it clean! And as each would say in later years, "we lost a piece of history!"]

The EC chairman, Dato' Wan Kadir Wan Omar, is disappointed, both government and opposition parties should "learn from past elections and abide by campaign ethics." As fatuous a statement as could from a man responsible for the conduct of elections. "We have had 10 general elections and more than 350 bye-elections and yet such things are still happening." That it does shows how impotent he and his EC has become. He makes statements to assuage his own conscience he is not. He cannot act, so he makes statements. He who has no experience in the conduct of elections before his appointment now wants political parties to abide by past practice.

When Tan Sri Mohamed Khir Johari failed in a palace coup to succeed Tengku Abdul Rahman as prime minister in the late 1960s, he went into virtual exile in the same post. As the later president of the Senate, Tun Omar Ong Yoke Lin when he fell foul of the MCA leaders. As Malaysia's later deputy prime minister, Tun Ismail Abdul Rahman when Tun Razak defeated him for the UMNO deputy presidency. As the later governor of Penang, Tun Sardon Jubir. As Tan Sri Ghazali Jawi, former cabinet minister and Perak mentri besar (which his son now is), to Egypt. As so many others. Malaysia's present ambassador in Washington is there for a failed putsch in Wisma Putra.

Haji Taib Azamudden, in a press statement, said when he was "Grand Imam" of the National Mosque, he came to know, or was consulted by the parties, of sexual peccadillos by UMNO leaders, Federal cabinet miniters and state chief ministers. He did not name names, but pointed directly at them. So large a list it was he said it was easier to name those cabinet ministers and mentris besar uninvolved! What he recited had been the stuff of political gossip for years. Most related to sexual trysts but one is accused of corruption, another of an UMNO cabinet minister's brother involved in drug trafficking. What he said refers to the UMNO secretary-general, Tan Sri Khalil Yaakob; the four UMNO vice presidents -- Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, Tan Sri Muhiyuddin Yassin, Tan Sri Mohamed Taib, Datin Seri Rafidah Aziz; the Perlis mentri besar, Dato' Seri Shahidan Kassim; the former Malacca mentri besar, Tan Sri Rahim Thamby Chik; the former federal cabinet minister and former Selangor mentri besar, Dato' Seri Abu Hassan Omar; the head of the National Fatwa Council, Dato' Ismail Ibrahim; and Dato' Zainuddin Mydin.

Mr Des Alwi, the adopted son of an early Indonesian prime minister, Mr Sutan Shahrir, and who worked the hardest to end confrontation, was there, all of 75 years, the bon vivant he is. As those in Wisma Putra, all now retired and all deeply beholden to King Ghaz: Dato' Albert Talala, Mr Jack De Silva, Tun Haniff Omar. There was Tan Sri Rama Iyer, former federal court judge Dato' Zakaria Yatim, former court of appeal judge Dato' N.H. Chan, the former chief minister of Sabah, Tan Sri Harris Salleh, Dato' Herman Luping, Dato' Joseph Kurup, and numerous others. As the high commissioners of the United Kingdom, Singapore, Brunei and the ambassador of Indonesia.

Let us take that at its face value and examine thes charge. Without knowing who the ex-minister is, it would be difficult to proceed. Is is Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah? Tan Sri Ghazali Shafie? Tun Daim Zainuddin? Tan Sri Mohamed Khir Johari? Tun Omar Yoke Lin? Tan Sri Lee San Choon? Or he whose name cannot be mentioned even by the deputy prime minister? I shall leave to guess who amongst them, and those unmentioned, is the treacherous rascal who besmirches Malaysia's good name. Why does he want to tarnish the good names of all retired cabinet ministers when his grouse is only with one? He should name him promptly if his accusations are to be believed.

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