So why is Pak Lah so tetchy at its findings, and why did he promptly deny it. The report accuses Malaysia of favouring Islam. Was there any doubt since independence that Malaysia is a Muslim country? Islam is the official religion. What has changed is that from an official religion, Islam is now a political football, kicked about by UMNO and PAS, so that in the heat of the moment, the non-Muslim religions get caught in between. This happens in India, where Hindusim prevails but allows considerable leeway to the other religions, in Bangladesh and Pakistan, where Islam prevails. In Bangladesh and Pakistan, the non-Muslim religions are all but scrubbed out. But not in Malaysia or Indonesia, where Islam coexists with the other religions. But when Islam is a political issue, its zealots, in UMNO and PAS, make their point by attacking the other religions. It happens in Kelantan and Trengganu under PAS and in Pahang and Selangor under UMNO and the National Front (BN).

In Lembah Pantai, the division chief, Raja Dato' Nong Chik, appointed to his committee several who lost in the divisional elections. It upset even Pak Lah, but he let it be. During the recent Kuala Lumpur UMNO liaison committee meeting, Raja Nong Chik used his fists to silence another division leader, who ribbed him, with others, mercilessly. On 02 December - six days after Hari Raya - a routine discussion on budgetary allocations between the minister in the Prime Minister's Department, Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor, and the second finance minister, Dato' Jamaluddin Jarjis, at the latter's office in the Treasury turned violent and they traded blows in front of witnesses. The two men are from Pahang, both fervent supporters of the defence minister and UMNO vice president, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, though JJ, as he is called, now is firmly in the Pak Lah camp. The latent political uncertainties about who should be Pak Lah's deputy prime minister makes UMNO politics the more volatile.

THE PRIME MINISTER'S CRONY, TAN SRI Vincent Tan, gets what he wants. Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, cannot do enough for him. He wanted a casino in Bukit Tinggi. He got it. He misused it. He was forgiven. Even when it turned into a political problem for the BN-run Pahang state government. Pulau Tioman is turned into a duty free island to benefit Tan Sri Vincent who, in the name of development, busily rapes the island. He wanted to turn into a regional gambling centre. The government builds an airport estimated at RM500 million. The people living on the island, mostly fishermen, could do with a few amenities like a health clinic and a school or two. But that is not as important as an airport for a crony. The MP for Rompin, which includes Pulau Tioman, is also the second finance minister. He bends over backwards to provide more than the crony's needs.

This is why a secret meeting took place at the Awana Resort, midway to Genting Highlands, in the second week of September. All were curiously from the UMNO Team B, which was later to be Semangat '46. That it was held at all reveals Pak Lah's insecurities. He is fearful of a Najib bandwagon, and by this meeting revealed to be weaker than he is thought to be. One man at the meeting stood out like a sore thumb: Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah. Why he was there is unclear, unless Pak Lah wanted his help to deflect Dato' Seri Najib. Pak Lah was there, of course. So were the former deputy prime minister and Pak Lah's mentor, Tan Sri Musa Hitam; Dato' Seri Rais Yatim, who if rumours be true, is the home minister under Pak Lah; Tengku Azlan ibni almarhum Sultan Abu Bakar, the brother of the Sultan of Pahang (there presumably to show the Palace is wary of Dato' Seri Najib); Pak Lah's financial and political advisor, Dato' Khalimullah Hassan, and a representative of the UMNO secretary-general, Tan Sri Khalil Yaakob. After the day's discussion, Pak Lah and Tengku Razaleigh returned; the others stayed on to conspire and for golf.

The people of the island, as poor as the proverbial church mice, cannot afford to travel by plane to the mainland, nor have relatives and friends who could afford to fly in to visit them. They need other more basic amenities than an airport that would not only destroy the ecology of the island but turn it into yet another confrontation between modernity and tradition, and between religion and irreligion. The political cost for Pahang is high: for the first time since 1955, when elections were first held, PAS could, if it plays its cards right, turn BN out of office. Two cabinet ministers - JJ and Tengku Adnan Mansor - are responsible for this, the latter and a Pahang government agency having a sizeable chunk of shares in the Bukit Tinggi resort when it applied for the gambling licence. Tenku Adnan incidentally says he sold his shares "a long time ago" but the latest records kept by the KLSE, which must be told when substantial shares are sold or transferred, show he is economical with the truth. Unless he and the Pahang government agency produces proof they have disposed off the shares, they must be assumed to hold them.

THE NATIONAL FRONT (BN) IS CAUGHT in a bind. The Opposition raises issues it cannot rebut. It is often caught out when challenged. More often than not, it decides discretion is the better part of valour. Its MPs refuse to be drawn into a political fist fight. None of this is reported in the BN-controlled media, which is all the mainstream, but these issues are transferred to the public domain by the Opposition parties. When it does engage with the Opposition, it is often caught short. When the Parti Islam Malaysia (PAS) MP. Mr Husam Musa, wrote a potentially damaging book about the two casinos in Pahang, and how Malaysia is now a "darul kasino", it caused so much political damage in Pahang and elsewhere, that the Prime Minister. Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, invited him for tea. But before that, an UMNO leader asked Mr Husam to apologise for what he did. He was denied his prime ministerial tea. The political fallout from that unwise decision to grant a casino to a Prime Ministerial crony, Tan Sri Vincent Tan, at the Bukit Tinggi resort boomeranged on the BN and Dr Mahathir when Tan Sri Vincent began his gambling operations, and advertised it worldwide. The licence had to be cancelled, causing this so-called international business man and a few UMNO cronies nearly RM800 million. It turns out that the Pahang state government and a minister in the Prime Minister's Department also benefitted. As if this is not bad enough, the official Malaysian Airline System sponsors horseracing in Australia.

So to retain its two-thirds majority in Parliament, it must win handsomely in Sarawak, Sabah and Johore. In the other states, it faces a strong challenge from PAS and other Opposition parties. In the states, it is more critical. A secretive study about the BN's chances, commissioned by the Prime Minister's Office, says the BN could not regain Kelantan and Trengganu and could well lose Perlis and Kedah, with Pahang and Selangor problematic.

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.

The BN and UMNO has done little to reverse the trend. All it has done it to give the nayseekers ammunition aplenty. One is the Bukit Tinggi casino licence, which nettled the solid UMNO-controlled Pahang state where it is based. Pak Lah is quite right to believe PAS is at BN's heels in Kedah. But would he make that same statement in Pahang, where his 'boys' work overtime, as PAS, to defeat the defence minister and UMNO vice president, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, so he could not be Pak Lah's deputy prime minister, if at all, for long. All Pak Lah has revealed, in his Alor Star bravado, is that he, as the new prime minister, is more nervous than ever about holding on to Kedah at the general elections.

How did this come about? Last week, the Pahang mentri besar, Dato' Seri Adnan Yaakob, to divert attention from the casino mess he is in, said "people did not like their 'wakil rakyat' showing off their wealth". If they did, he warned, they would not be candidates in the general election. What about those who, like the second finance minister, Dato' Seri Jamaluddin Jarjis, put at risk the BN's electoral chances in the state by allowing virtual casino licences to the super crony, Tan Sri Vincent Tan? They do not flaunt their wealth, so how do they come within this new restriction for candidates? To continue, the Prime Minister said the UMNO constitution need not be amended, "this is only an administrative matter". The UMNO secretary-general, Tan Sri Khalil Yaakob, any proposal like this must first be discussed by the party leaders. But if it is made, "it is a good thing".

Since his reputation, he insists, like Caesar's wife, beyond reproach, he should demand a similar grovelling from the PAS organ, Harakah. If it does not, defamation suits are in order. It would at least get the issue argued out in the courts. That newspaper has targetted him for turning Pahang into a casino state, and his resorts in the state at Bukit Tinggi and at Pulau Tioman into virtual gambling casinos. Often forgotten he also got 38,000 acres of prime land from the BN government in Pahang on which his Bukit Tinggi resort and casino are sited. He got them by subborning two Malay cronies, both now ministers in the Mahathir government, to alter the official licence as he desired. And yet a Malay in Pahang cannot get a ten-acre plot he is entitled to without money changing hands.

THE Pahang DARUL KASINO CONTROVERSY has sunk deep into the UMNO psyche. But hardly anyone even alluded to it in the controlled debate at the UMNO general assembly. Speaker after speaker raised other issues and how it would have fared worse in the 1999 general elections if the new electoral list, with its more than 600,000 new voters, had been used. The Bukit Tinggi casino, run by the super crony, Tan Sri Vincent Tan, UMNO now accepts, is one election issue in the coming general elections, most likely in the first few months of 2004, which could cause it to lose perhaps 20 seats, and one state government. One prominent UMNO leader was harsher: UMNO and the National Front (BN) must divert attention from that, or face, in his words, 'disaster'. The second finance minister, Dato' Seri Jamaluddin Jarjis, was heard to tell to any who would listen he would react soon to the questions lobbed at him by PAS in Parliament. That might be too late.

It was used for a deliberate political purpose that had nothing to do with PAS, Harakah or Zunar, and several, more sane and practical, worried about its implications. When the offending cartoon is then published in the mainstream press and the government media outlets, it was clear the cartoon that was not offensive but a weapon to attack UMNO leaders from the other faction. It backfired. The embedded depleted uranium turned out to be a dud. If anything, those who did not know of it or read Harakah cannot understand what the fuss is. This became clear soon enough during the UMNO General Assembly proceedings. National Front (BN), mostly UMNO, MPs objected to the cartoon in the current session of Parliament. It was a manufactured crisis to put PAS on the defensive after its attack on the government decision to allow a casino in Bukit Tinggi, Pahang, which forced UMNO MPs and leaders in Pahang to grovel for a response.

This dinner also proved the truism that if you give an UMNO leader aspiring to higher officer a platform, he would paint himself into a corner. Dato' Seri Najib talked warmly of Dr Mahathir, but nary a word about Pak Lah. That man did not exist that night. And he was there also as Pak Lah's representative. That proved, if nothing else, the fight for the UMNO presidency is about to turn messay. Dato' Najib is under strain in Pahang, where he can expect to be challenged. It is the considered view of the Pak Lah camp that he should be defeated. That with the unexpectedly tough Opposition campaign against him, and the fallout from the Bukit Tinggi casino, he is in for the toughest fight of his political career. If he scrapes through, he must, against Pak Lah's own instincts, be appointed his deputy prime minister. Or fade into the political black hole.

As for the two ministers, it is left now to the voters of Rompin to sack Dr Jamaluddin from the cabinet in the coming general elections. Tengku Adnan, a senator, had hoped to be MP from Pahang. He can forget that. This bungled casino licence is once which could damage UMNO's chances, in Pahang if not elsewhere, if PAS runs with it. The Malay ground in Pahang is incensed at it that even the defence minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, is not safe in his Pekan constituency. The PAS inroads into Pahang is more serious than UMNO believes. Besides, the man has enemies, that two influential UMNO groups, at least, work overtime to have him defeated.

THERE IS MORE TO THE BUKIT TINGGI CASINO than is known. And puts the National Front (BN) and UMNO in a spot. Every time its leaders talk of it - so far only the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, and the Pahang mentri besar, Dato' Seri Adnan Yaakub, have - more evidence of wrongdoing and outright lying is revealed. The Prime Minister revoked the gaming licence at the casino but the Bukit Tinggi resort, since it is owned by the super-crony, Tan Sri Vincent Tan, insists it can renegotiate it. Others who breach the conditions are fined heavily and the licences revoked. But not Tan Sri Vincent Tan. No whitewashing can convert this elaborate casino complex costing, in the end, RM1,000 million and more, to attract gamblers from all over the world into the social club Dr Mahathir insists it is. Even Tan Sri Vincent does not believe him. But the government expects us to.

THIS NAIVE BELIEF THAT IF THE MANTRA - Bukit Tinggi casino is not a casino - is repeated endlessly by three people like the Muslim "sembayang hajat" prayer, it would not be. The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed said it yesterday. And shortly after by the Pahang mentri besar, Dato' Seri Adnan Yaakub, and the super-crony Tan Sri Vincent Tan-owned Bukit Tinggi casino's general manager, Teh Ming Wah. Now that the Great Man has spoken, we are told, it is not a casino. The only problem is that, unlike a sembayang hajat, when tens of thousands will pray for a stated goal in unision for days on end, this casino mantra is repeated by only this trio. This could have worked once, but not now. The injured innocence with which this mantra is repeated says it all: "It is unfortunate that certain parties have misconstrued and sought to politicise the matter, leading to allegations to the media with little regard to factual accuracy" and "Dr Mahathir has made such a clear statement on the matter".

THE PRIME MINISTER, DATO' SERI MAHATHIR Mohamed, broke official silence at last over Pahang's second casino. He revoked the gaming licence is revoked because the concessionaire, his super-crony, Tan Sri Vincent Tan, breached the conditions. "The machines are supposed to be for the club, not for public use, he said. Normally when clubs breach the conditions of the gaming licence, they is charged in court as well. Would this super crony be treated as harshly? If not, why not? Only slot machinese (one-armed bandits) were allowed, so and to recover the cost of the pseudo-French resort built to resemble the French town of Colmer. Dr Mahathir wanted it,

THE MENTRI BESAR OF Pahang, DATO' Seri Adnan Yaakob, was so hurt by the grant of a second casino licence in his state that he complained about it to the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed. It would redound on Pahang UMNO, he warned, to ward off a determined challenge from PAS. I had, in my last column in the PAS newspaper, Harakah, written of it under the heading: Pahang Darul Kasino. The licence was issued to that super-crony, Tan Sri Vincent Tan, last seen riding a horse with one Dr Mahathir Mohamed. It caused a furore in UMNO as its leaders rushed for cover. Dr Mahathir, on his return from two months' leave, summoned the second finance minister, Dato' Seri Jamaluddin Jarjis, who brought along the cabinet minister who orchestrated it, Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor. Tan Sri Vincent's pseudo-French establishment was only allowed slot machines, but the licence issued provides for a virtual casino, with computerised baccarat and roulette and other games of chance. The Prime Minister was not amused.

That it is made after Dr Mahathir's firm insistence that Malaysia is an Islamic state makes this curious indeed. More so that PAS makes a strong bid to deny, at least, the BN's two-third majority in Pahang. And this new casino, ten minutes a crow's flying time away from the Genting Highlands Casino. Originally Bukit Tinggi was where Putra Jaya, Malaysia's administrative capital. Lots of people bought land cheap in the area hoping to make a killing only to lose money on it. But something went wrong, and it was abandoned. But is it only Tan Sri Jamaluddin that would be held to task for approving the casino licence? When the cabinet decides even on municipal issues, could it not have discussed this casino licence?

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