About ten years ago, Syed Azman's helicopter carried a Malaysian business man, Tan Sri Yahya Ahmad, which crashed in the Pahang jungles, killing him instantly. The then deputy prime minister, Dato' Anwar Ibrahim, should have been on that flight 20 years ago, but he arrived late and missed it. Dato' Syed Azman then bought another. He has now lost two helicopters – a small price for the riches he has accumulated as a result. This is not unusual. When Tun Mahathir was prime minister, one Chinese business man took his then VIP guests on a boat ride. He made his staff follow the boat in another so that its passengers would be comfortable in the seas. He would not do that today for he gets nothing in return. In fact, this business man is forgotten today, as he was not in those days.

Tengku Abdul Rahman, the first prime minister and a younger son of the Sultan of Kedah, had the political and regal authority to have his way but, except in the expulsion of Singapore, scrupulously kept the rulers informed and got their consent before a constitutional move. His successor, Tun Abdul Razak, had little patience with the rulers, and how he forcibly alienated the federal territory of Kuala Lumpur from Selangor provided his successors the precedent to rewrite Malaysia's geography. He could get away with it because his power came in part as a powerful chief in his home state of Pahang.

THE Pahang MENTRI BESAR, Dato' Seri Adnan Yaakob, now rewrites the Malaysian constitution: the sultan must consult and accept the advise of the state government on all matters but the award of honours and titles. The 1983 constitutional amendments made the rulers constitutional monarchs handmaidens to political power. The man who engineered that, the then prime minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, wanted to transfer the native inherent powers of the sultans – the awarding of honours and titles was one – to political power. But it was flawed ab initio, though no one would admit it then. What got everyone's goat at the time was of a sultan attackiing a drunk hockey coach who appeared before him as the Inspector-General of Police a decade-and-a-half later attacked a manacled and blindfolded deputy prime minister. The amendments were passed, the Yang Dipertuan Agung signed it over the objections of the sultans, which he cannot when it involves their rights and privileges as rulers. But it became the law of the land.

But those who matter, the ordinary Malaysian in whose name UMNO exists and the government rules did not believe one word of it. Not when the mentri besar of Pahang, Dato' Seri Adnan Yaakub, and the soon-to-exist information minister, Dato' Seri Abdul Kadir Sheikh Fadhir, both insisted that bribery was the norm. The government denied it. After all, those returned in the elections, even those who spent millions buying up delegates, swore to high heavens they did not know what bribery is. But UMNO did not investigate the allegations; indeed, Dato' Seri Adnan was appointed to the UMNO supreme council, but Dato' Seri Kadir would not remain in the cabinet for long for other reasons. The UMNO president gave out mixed signals: he rewards one and punishes the other. And would do nothing about those elected who distributing money in the millions. One critic said if Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi were to rein in all those involved in bribing their way to electoral victory, he would have to sack himself first!

TRY AS IT MIGHT, official Malaysia cannot rid its mind off Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. Extraordinary pressure was put on the two judges who judged his conviction for sodomy could not stand in law: the Sultan of Pahang called his relative, on of the two judges, to change his mind; a senior police officer whose role was pivotal to convict Dato' Seri Anwar turned up at the two judges' houses in the middle of the night before but they showed him the door. The chief justice, half an hour before the court sat, made a final attempt to throw his weight so the man would be in jail until 2009. The judges stood their ground. All officialdom could do was to grin and bear it, and let the spin take over. This is proof the judiciary is independent. The courts have spoken, and we will honour it (but that this was said is proof it still struggles for its traditional independence). Make no mistake, the judiciary is pure as the driven snow. The government respects the judiciary.

Dato' Shahrir therefore has suggested a way out of the BN and UMNO dilemma. He was once one of Malaysia's youngest cabinet ministers. He has been in politics for three decades, is still in his early 50s, one of the few men in National Front and UMNO politics whose reputation grew the longer he stayed on the sidelines. There is only one other man I can think of, the Hermit of Langgak Golf. Pahang-born but a scion of a distinguished Johore family, he has every times put his money where his mouth is.

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.

For one, Pak Lah's own succession is now mired in allegations of massive poll rigging. He may well not be party to it, but UMNO did take an unusual interest in it. He refused to prune even if so lightly some of the more blatant deadwood in his cabinet, would not replace mentris besar unpopular in the party or the palace or both, waffled his way to policies and programmes that could not stick. His anti-corruption plans, for instance. Add to this there is another problem: the PAS religious leader, Dato' Nik Aziz Nik Mat, has called for communal prayers by Muslims to punish those responsible for derailing the polls. It has begun - in Kelantan, Trengganu, at its headquarters in Gombak, Kuala Lumpur, in the northern Malay states, in Jengka, in Pahang, and elsewhere. Called 'sembayang hajat', it was used to frightening effect after Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim was dismissed: several of those involved died terrible deaths, others incapacitated, one prominent official in the thick of that is now so slow in thought that he begged Dato' Seri Anwar, during one of his forays in court, for forgiveness. Another, a judge, wants to apologise, but he is told to do so personally. These prayers now attract 5,000 and more worshippers, proof yet again of the deep divide within the Malay community.

But it is not only in Selangor where such BN fine-tuning of the polls took place. In the four northern Malay states of Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan and Trengganu, it was rampant. So, in Pahang. And in Sabah. The BN must decide if it wants to be known for being returned to power in a false and flawed mandate, or if it should accept that the flawed mandate is unacceptable, or it must hold steadfast to the idea of free and fair elections. Unfortunately, the BN and its leaders are in no mood to assess their good fortune. A miss is as a good as a mile. The opposition missed its cue, and in the BN view, bleats as sore losers. But it is a view that cannot stand close scrutiny. The Malay ground seethes in anger. When PAS called for a boycott of the re-polling of the Sungei Lembing state assembly constituency in Pahang, where the opposition candidate's affiliation was to the wrong party, it presaged a harbinger of what is to come if this rot is not stopped now: the possibility and continual and fractious confrontation that would be a hundred times worse than over the Anwar Ibrahim affair. But it is not a view that would cause much sleep in the BN and UMNO inner circle. That does not make it right. The least option open to it is to order fresh elections in Selangor for the state assembly and parliament. But it raises another question: if the parliamentary elections in Selangor are flawed, how could one accept the results elsewhere? If Selangor state assembly is so flawed, could it not be elsewhere too? It is answers to these intractable questions that would, in the end, decide on the fate of democracy in Malaysia.

But the EC's case is flawed. Tan Sri Abdul Rashid, in earlier press statements, after the polls, thought the flaws and mishaps serious enough to demand a royal commission to look into it. But there would be no royal commission: the BN president, Pak Lah, has decided against it. It proves, if nothing else, that he is answerable not to the King who appoints him, but to the man he takes orders from. When the EC chairman himself is in doubt about the poll results to demand a royal commission, no amount of whitewash can whiten the EC's dark deeds. Now he comes up with more. He blames the national printer, PNMB's proof readers for the mistake in the Sungei Lembing state constituency in Pahang for substituting the PAS symbol against the KeADILan candidate. Then he admits the EC officials, in Pahang, and the polling stations, ignored EC directives to check and countercheck all ballot papers. He has his reasons why they did not, but they do not count: they had a constitutional duty, and they breached it. They should no be asked to explain why.

On the face of it, there is no inspired appointment in this cabinet. He wants, like Tun Mahathir, a cabinet of loyalists, would brook no opposition, within the feudal framework he becomes accustomed to. He has opened himself to attack in the states where he appointed several mentris besar at odds with the palace - Dato' Seri Shahidan Kassim in Perlis, Dato' Seri Adnan Yaakob in Pahang, Dato' Seri Mohamed Ali Rastam in Malacca, amongst others - and this could cause needless problems later on. But all told, in the circumstances, he has done well. He needs time to get used to the new circumstances, which while it entrenches the BN, and UMNO, hold on politics, he must fashion a policy to explain why, for the first time since the first elections in 1955, the Malays are for the first time in a minority in the new parliament. In this single-minded desire to frustrate the Islamist and multiracial Malay opposition with the help of the Chinese, the UMNO president allowed Malay representation in parliament to be less than 50 per cent. It made the mistake in Sabah and Sarawak when it assumed that anyone with a name that looked Malay - the chief minister of Sabah, Dato' Seri Musa Aman, the chief minister of Sarawak, Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud, or the former Sabah chief minister, Dato' Seri Salleh Said Keruak, call themselves bumiputras, not Malay, indeed are not Malay but of Indian and Melanau blood. With PAS all but decimated in parliament, the majority of Malays in parliament would come from UMNO, and that is less than one hundred in a house of 219. Pak Lah is in more pressure than he realises. Which is why the coalition partners who forced him to chose could well pay dearly for their impudence.

The BN today realised the mess it is in and quickly moved to distance itself from the EC's dereliction of duty. The BN deputy president, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, blames the EC for the mess-up in the ballot paper in the Sungei Lembing state seat in Pahang where the PAS candidate is depicted as from KeADILan. The Gerakan president, Dato' Seri Lim Kheng Yaik, is furious at the missing names of voters, and now fears for his seat as a result. The government-owned radio and television networks all but blamed the EC for the confusion and anger at the incomplete electoral list, especially in areas where the Opposition PAS and KeADILan is particularly strong. This cannot be confirmed but the polls in Selangor was extended when it became clear when polls closed at 1700, that BN had not lost its two-thirds majority in Selangor but had probably lost the state too. What does seem clear is that even with the extended voting hours it has lost its two-thirds majority. It is a bigger blow to BN than losing Kedah and Perlis. As it stands the BN would well hold on to the two northern states.

The BN decided to dislodge PAS in Kelantan and Trengannu and prevent it from taking power in Perlis and Kedah. As it went deeper into it, it found Kelantan and Trengganu all but impregnable, and its defences in the other two northern states shot to pieces. The does not mean PAS could romp home here, but it would have a greater presence in the two state assemblies that it thought possible. Pak Lah and the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, concentrated their fire on PAS in the four states, and ignored the other vulnerable states. One UMNO insider said that Pahang and Selangor also faces a PAS barrage; could Pak Lah hold his ground if Perlis and Kedah is retained but lose the BN's two-thirds majority in Pahang and Selangor? The traditional view is accepted: that the states from Selangor to Johore is firmly in its hands, but that it is not made the BN panic. But it cannot get its election machinery to work overtime to correct this, as once it could. The only ones interested in the election is the mainstream media and the Election Commission, each making and reporting statements as unrelated to reality as could be. One must look hard to see signs of an election, for the city and its environs show no signs of it. Where the candidates are locked in battle, especially in the Malay ground, there is more interest than is normal. But a visitor from overseas would be surprised to be told Malaysia was amidst an election campaign.

There is another problem: there is little love lost on the ground between, and within, the political parties that make up the BN. It comes to the fore when general election is called. Dropped candidates will not accept they are, and in anger, burn, destroy or hijack the BN campaign headquarters; stand as independents; stay out of the campaign; or at worst, join the other side. This election is no different. In Kelantan, a former UMNO MP stands as an independent after he was sidelined. He could not win, but he could swing votes away from BN to allow PAS to win the seat. In Pahang, one MP denied his seat kept his counsel, and transferred his well-oiled election machinery to PAS. For all the optimistic statements out of Pekan, where the deputy prime minsiter, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, fights for his political life, his aides mention a disturbing PAS quiet that it worries them. PAS worked to dislodge him since 1999, when he squeaked in with a wafer-thin majority of 241, decided not to match the BN in its money-spending campaign, and opted to campaign as guerillas. Meanwhile, PAS has released one VCD about Dato' Seri Najib, according to his aides, he and they have not cited it. His PAS opponent is a retired brigadier-general in his 70s.

He is cossetted between by the unstated but implied pressure on the one side from his predecessor, who is, in typical Malaysian political fashion, a non-person but unlike it wields considerable influence behind the scenes; and, on the other, the twin pressures of a resurgent PAS and the cultural miscalculation that stemmed from how his predecessor, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, was humiliated, against Malay feudal practice. Both are understated now, the BN in fact insists both are non-issues, though it is more afraid of PAS than of Dato' Seri Anwar. His first major problem is to remove Tun Mahathir's influence in UMNO, Parliament and the state assemblies. Many of those removed in this month's general election are to remove his influence. This has worked well, but in the states, he did not find it plain sailing at all. In Trengganu, UMNO division leaders and members not given a constituency contest walked out from its election office, in one case burning it down, leaving the party machinery in a lurch. In Perak, one UMNO division would not allow a BN component party leader to contest in what was always an UMNO seat. In two states, Johore and Pahang, the list was released at the last possible moment, but not after high drama.

It is often ignored that the BN's difficulties would compound if he loses the Malay ground. He depends on Sabah, Sarawak and Johore to vote solidly for BN, and his two-thirds majority from elsewhere in the peninsular. In this, he did not consider the Malay ground, and left it too late to work the Malay ground, where UMNO, in many areas, is a stranger. In this election, UMNO is in double jeopardy: it has not worked the ground, allowing the Opposition PAS to make hay; it could work around it with money, but many a BN election centre has not yet the funds from Kuala Lumpur to start work. If it is not ready now, two days before nomination day, and then before election day, it cannot be. One I know which is not is in Bentong, where the Pahang mentri besar, Dato' Adnan Yaakub, hails from. But this is in every state, and cannot be resolved at short notice.

So it does not surprise that panic set in in the runup to the election. The BN is a top-down political party, with its president, who is also the UMNO president, dictating its focus. Pak Lah though could not hold his own. So he had to call for general election as soon as possible, while the country is still enamoured of him as a leader, and before the inherent problems within his administration revealed itself. The negotiations for the seats did not go down well. He finally had to call a halt to it, and demand all obey. The People's Progressive Party (PPP) leader, Dato' M. Kayveas, had nursed the new constituency of Cameron Highlands in Pahang, but it went to the MIC instead; earlier, it was earmarked for the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, whose Pekan constituency revealed too many shortcomings that he seriously considered shifting to another constituency. In the end, he stays where he is. Dato' Kayveas is given the Malay constituency of Bukit Gantang in the Malay heartland of Perak for no reason than that he threatened to pull the revitalised PPP out of BN if not.

Pak Lah had to dissolve Parliament and the state assembliers as soon as possible. The superficial loyalty and the still euphoric view of him as Prime Minister is still there, but that must, in time, erode. But if these internal squabbles get a wider airing, it could affect the BN's showing. Pak Lah cannot afford to have these strains surface. While general election is expected, the timing still caught many by surprise. Even UMNO officials were caught flatfooted. Now that elections are due, it be due soon after 21 March. This was the widely expected date, but this is when the first leg of the F-1 motor racing championship is in Malaysia. It is all but impossible to hold a general election on the same day. He needs to win with a large majority, not let another state fall into PAS hands, perhaps have Kelantan or Trengganu seized from PAS control for him to be safely returned unopposed at the UMNO general assembly as its president. As it looks now, he is assured of his two-thirds majority. But how he would fare in the states is unclear. If the Opposition, especially PAS, gains further ground in the states, especially in Kedah, Perlis, Pahang and Selangor, it would not be a good sign.

THE MENTRI BESAR OF Pahang, Dato' Seri Adnan Yaakob, said the National Front (BN) list is ready but for three parliamentary constituencies - Bentong, Indera Mahkota, Pekan (The Star, 28 February 2004, p12). Pekan? The seat of the Dato' Shahbander of Pahang, which two successive holders of the post, Malaysia's second prime minister, Tun Abdul Razak, and his son, the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib, they had held for UMNO since 1955? The constituency was far larger in 1955 than it is today, but its crown jewel is within the present boundaries. Dato' Seri Adnan did not say why. How did a solid albeit feudal UMNO stronghold be now a marginal constituency? In 1999, the deputy prime minister, as he was not then, squeaked in by 241 votes, and this after the 2,400 postal votes were counted. The feudal spell and Razak mystique could no longer sustain his son's political future. When the constituencies were redrawn since, an army and an airforce camp from the adjoining Mentakab and Kuantan constituencies, with 4,000 voters were brought within the new Pekan electoral boundary. On the face of it, Dato' Seri Najib should easily romp home. The reality is far, far different.

The BN is a coalition of 14 political parties under UMNO's leadership. Its election committee is drawn from UMNO and the member parties: this time it consisists of three UMNO officials wearing BN hats: Tan Sri Khalil Yaakob, the BN secretary-general, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, the BN deputy president, curiously, both from Pahang, and the BN's president's UMNO representative. There is a reason why this committee is UMNO dominated. Pak Lah has yet to meet the MCA president, Dato' Seri Ong Ka Ting, for one-on-one talks over lunch or dinner. It is not for want of trying. He has had similar meetings with an MCA vice-president. Pak Lah does not forget a slight. During the MCA crisis in 2002, an arrogant Dato' Seri Ong ensured that aplenty. There is a concerted effort in Johore to reduce the electoral chances of the one man in the Team B faction, the health minister, Dato' Chua Jui Meng, whose presence puts Dato' Ong's leadership in question. Similarly, the MIC president, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, insists on holding on to his cabinet and party position at any cost, even after knowing that Pak Lah thinks it time he stepped down in favour of his deputy president, Dato' S. Subramaniam. Pak Lah is close to Dato' Subramaniam; it is his threat to offer the Indian cabinet seat to Dato' Kayveas that led the former MAS airline pilot to believe that he indeed does lead the Indian community.

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