The advertisement carried the BN logo, which it could not if was not an official advertisement. It was to show that Pak Lah would act against corruption to the point of biting the hand of his predecessor and mentor. It became an issue when the Opposition leader, Mr Lim Kit Siang, raised it in parliament in the debate on the royal address, which had claimed that corruption was not prevalent. The minister in charge of Parliament, a new post that makes him the court jester in the Pak Lah cabinet, Dato' Seri Nazri Aziz, said 'anonymous sources' placed it, and refused to investigate. The Election Commission must act since 'anonymous sources' hijacked a party logo, but it would not budge unless the advertisement had praised the Opposition instead. As the BN's lapdog, it knows when and how to bark.

It comes to haunt him, as it had many others. His peace of mind is disturbed, a personal crisis of confidence he alone must come to terms with. It would not have been as bad if, as UMNO leaders had hoped, he died in the fracas that followed his arrest in 1998. But he is the political nightmare UMNO leaders must live with, much as they insist he is history. Every day he lives, those who conspired against him dissolve in self-doubt and Godly fear. There is more of that now, and public policy clashes with personal conviction and religiosity. When the political fight for the UMNO high ground comes with it a renewed programme to sideline Dato' Seri Anwar for good, many more would drop out. Especially when it is implicity accepted that only those who believe in the final and total political destruction of Dato' Seri Anwar has the right to high office in UMNO. In this, Pak Lah and Dato' Seri Najib are of the same mind.

AT ABOUT 11 am ON Friday, 28 May 2004, the police arrested Mr B.S.A. Tahir, a Sri Lankan business man with permanent residence in Malaysia, under the Internal Security Act, issued him a two-year detention order and swiftly transported to the Kamunting detention centre in Perak. The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, said from Beijing, where he is on an official visit, that he is a chain in the international nuclear blackmarket a Pakistani nuclear scientist, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, had put together. He said the ISA is invoked because it compromises Malaysia's security. The Police in a report to the International Atomic Energy Agency in February said Mr Tahir had admitted he was a middleman for this blackmarket, and has given valuable information about it. But Pak Lah says he could not be detained then because the police did not have the evidence. They now have it. He is detained. The matter is closed. No one should question this.

They should have known the UMNO supreme council is so bitterly divided that it would not have allowed it if it was raised. They should tell us why they lied. Or if they insist they told the truth, the supreme council members should state clearly they do not want the party's two top posts to be uncontested. Pak Lah, on his return from his China trip, must clear the air. He chaired the meeting. So he knows what happened. The two men, one of whom would be governor of Malacca later this week, must be chastised for their lies. Pak Lah must distance himself from them. Their lies have incensed several supreme council members that at least two are keen now to stand for president and deputy president. Why did not the party elders tell the pair that their lies defied the party constitution and the Registrar of Societies. The party presidency is vacant. The deputy president, Pak Lah, is acting president. One of the three vice-presidents, Dato' Seri Najib, acts as deputy president. If the purported supreme council decision is followed, Pak Lah would be returned unopposed as deputy president. The presidency will remain vacant, unless it had rejected the resignation of Dr Mahathir, and plan for him to be returned to office. That surely is not the intention.

So to Dato' Seri Najib the reporters went. He had an interesting spin. The supreme council reflected on the "strong" mandate, the "big" victory, the "trust" the people gave the party leadership in the March general election and decided the two be elected without contest. Pak Lah, he stressed, did not ask for it. Besides, no UMNO division called for elections for president and deputy president. Why could not the supreme council wait, the reporters asked, until after the UMNO branches and divisions had their meetings and elections? He said since the divisions did not ask for elections for the two posts, the supreme council decided they should not be contested. Dato' Seri Najib makes several wrong assumptions. UMNO did not contest the general elections. It stood as a component party of the National Front (BN). The "strong" mandate, the "big" victory, the people's "trust" he talks so highly of was not to UMNO but BN. If UMNO could then decide it won the elections, could not BN parties do likewise and insist on unelectected leaders as proof of democracies within the parties? Could a member then be penalised if he exercised his democratic right to contest for either top post?

I believe Dato' Seri Anwar was right when he wanted to change UMNO into a fighting political force. As I belief Mr Khairy should have been allowed to test the waters in politics. It should not matter who their backers or protecters are. They should stand on their strength, not on their backers. But that is not how the atrophying UMNO look upon newcomers. When the UMNO Supreme Council decided to eschew challenge for the UMNO presidency and deputy presidency, it undercut Mr Khairy's claim to the UMNO Youth deputy position. For however you look at it, no one is UMNO president. Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is acting president. He is the substantive deputy president. Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak is acting deputy president. The UMNO supreme council meant that Pak Lah and Dato' Seri Najib should be elected without challenge to be UMNO president and deputy president. If the UMNO supreme council diktat is taken seriously, the UMNO presidency is vacant, the deputy presidency is not. This ruling split the party in more ways than it thought possible. And worsened with the March electoral sweep. Pak Lah realised with a shock that he must not only retain the tired, listless, irrelevant cabinet but add a few deadwood of his own. If he had not, an anti-Pak Lah faction would form. In fact, it already has. Mr Khairy's setback - and in one sense, Dato' Seri Anwar's - is the impetiousness and frustration that comes from brilliance, and the belief that this alone should catapault them to fame and high office. Dato' Seri Anwar found out he could not, even with his storm troopers. Mr Khairy did not. Both forgot that politics is the art of the possible. And pay the price.

Who is this young man who so effortlessly shot himself in the foot? He had had a charmed life. But he is not what we are told he is. The New Sunday Times, long a chronicler of the UMNO president but now a mere amenuansis for Pak Lah, lists his accomplishments in its edition of 16 May 2004: economist (he is not; he has a degree in economics, which does not make him an economist); journalist (he is not); brilliant resolver of Malay-Chinese issues (he is not); is on the UMNO Youth executive committee (nominated, not elected; but then UMNO Youth knows only too well on which side its bread is buttered). He would have stood for parliament in Rembau, Negri Sembilan, in this year's general elections but Pak Lah thought he should not yet (wrong again: the state UMNO objected most strongly to it, and Pak Lah decided, on reflection, discretion is the better part of valour). It puts a stirring defence of this young man who is adrift because anything he touches now would redound on his father-in-law. It has a point, but it cannot be sustained if only because it is too weak, too self-serving, too late. And, in one sense, dishonest. What this account ignored is how this young man wielded himself into the most powerful young man in the Pak Lah administration. He moved in five short years from special assistant to the deputy prime minister, to political secretary to the prime minister, to the civil service as deputy principal private secretary II on a scale reputed to be Staff III, one of only a score or so on that grade.

THE PRIME MINISTER, DATO' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, still struggles for a voice. He makes promises and orders on the fly, but with little to show for it. His anti-corruption campaign is dead. It cannot be otherwise, unless he is prepared to have too many high ranking and politically important UMNO leaders face the music. He has yet to find his ground, the victory that was to be his is mired in controversy and doubt that his National Front (BN) victory in the March general election could not benefit from it. His government drifts as surely as his predecessor's on its last days, and a belief that all is well because Pak Lah says so. His overwhelming victory is his albatross: the chances he wants to make he cannot, for fear that those he drops could be powerful opponents. So he makes statements that mean little or nothing, but dressed up as the most signficant ever. The mainstream newspapers exaggerate its importance by giving it front page treatment.

HUBRIS, UNMITIGATED ARROGANCE, THIS belief in its skewed confidence that it is lord of all its surveys, has brought the National Front (BN) and its president and prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, to their knees. The BN splits from within, far more effectively than the Opposition could, as the huge parliamentary majority weakens it. No one talks about it, but the BN is now irrevocably split. Pak Lah is caught between two stools, unable neither to take advantage of his unprecedented mandate nor keep his troops in line. The BN has had powerful pressure groups from within, but they are, by and large, kept in their corner. Add to this, two groups none would talk of: the small band of Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah loyalists, and the more widespread but seemingly powerless backers of the jailed Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. But these two groups kept their own counsel, did not attempt to be more than a pressure group, and as equally forcibly distanced from the source of power and patronage. This time, however, the wide split from within comes from an uncertain and weak party president and the state warlords, who exert their authority in ways they would not dare under previous prime ministers.

The form in Malaysia is more important than the substance. The OIC has 57 members; but only 14 attended, and fewer than half a dozen foreign ministers. This meeting should have been next month, but it was put forward because Mr Bush agrees with Mr Sharon, in the meanwhile, that it is all right to assassinate Mr Arafat. Malaysia raised scarely a voice when Iraq was invaded last year. How could it when it agreed with President Bush's war on terror, and Iraq was a target of that war, whilst it detained without trial the Muslim rabble who dare support Islamic mutinies overseas. Whether they do is another matter. The government says they are and did, are too dangerous and injurious to national security to have them tried in open court. For this service to the war on terror, Washington pats its back as one would a faithful dog. Malaysia jumped on board this war gleefully if only that Washington now sees how useful detention without trial is. Washington praises Kuala Lumpur for its commitment to Islam hadhari (progressive Islam). That this Islam exists only in the minds of Orientalists is a minor detail that can, and should, be ignored. Malaysia and Pak Lah needed Islamic legitimacy in the Muslim world and in Malaysia itself. Malaysia would send troops to Iraq under a UN mandate, Pak Lah said. No, thank you, said the Iraq foreign minister, we do not want any Muslim troops; we can take care of our security. Not true, but is Iraq about to reveal what it needs to this unrepresentative cabal of Islamic nations?

This is not only in UMNO. MCA sources say its president, Dato' Seri Ong Ka Ting, wants to push his luck, after the MCA's good showing at the polls, by throwing hints that there should be a second deputy prime minister, and that he is the ideal man for it. But it the MCA's red rag to the UMNO bull. He should not press his luck. He ought to find out why the then MCA president, Tun Tan Siew Sin, failed in 1974, and why the party was marginalised since. He should have tested the waters at the BN supreme council. But he could, indeed would dare not. He should know by know - at least he should - that he could get what he wants only by persuasion and patience, not as an underling (pardon the pun!), of the UMNO president. Perhaps he thought that since Pak Lah dropped his friend, Dato' Chua Jui Meng and an MCA vice president, from the cabinet because the MCA president did not want him, that was proof his views would be heard on other issues. Nothing infuriates a divided UMNO than when an outsider demands more than his share: they would postpone their differences, unite and throw out the outsider. What we see in this is a metaphoric equivalent of the most powerful nation of earth held to ransom by ill-equipped Iraqis of all political and religious persuasions, with or without foreign help. The MCA does not understand the Malay ground, and the Malay only too well. Besides, MCA did well in the geneal election, so did UMNO.

THE OFFICIAL AND MAINSTREAM media now takes no notice. Not because it is not an issue, but that it is. The swirling controversy about the 2004 General Election will not abate. But ignoring it would not either. The prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, is in power but paradoxically not in control. The Election Commission, which organised the election, realised too late it did not control how the elections were conducted. Its chairman, Tan Sri Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman, realised it with a shock but lost his head. The more he talked the more doubts grew that the elections were flawed beyond dispute. He contradicted himself with each press conference, until unable to keep track of his post-election justifications he called first for an official probe, than a royal commission. Pak Lah shot it down. He would not want his tremendous victory sullied by a credible report affirming the electoral fixing that led to it. So he stonewalls it. But there comes a time, in this fallout, when the power that be realises, as now, that it cannot justify how it came to power. So it shuts up, and hopes all would. it could not be more wrong.

The results surprised everyone, including BN and UMNO leaders. The deputy prime minister, Najib Razak, was uncertain of his chances in Pekan, and he had asked his aides a day before polling to persuade the PAS candidate, a retired brigadier-general, to step down. Pak Lah had accepted the inevitable that Kelantan and Trengganu would remain under PAS control, and his best hope was to retain Perlis and Kedah, and prevent an electoral haemmorhage in the other states. At the same time, it is impossible to believe neither had at least a whisp of these plans. They should have stepped in when the EC played fast and loose with the electoral register. They should have stepped in when it played fast and loose with the election rules, and unilaterally extended the voting hours in Selangor. The official reason for it is unconvincing. The hours of voting was gazetted as between 0800 and 1700. That could only be changed only with the consent of the candidates. The EC does not have the right to do that unilaterally.

THE PRIME MINISTER, DATO' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, got what he wanted in last month's general elections - his National Front (BN) decimated the opposition. But it turns out a pyrrhic victory. The BN won, that is all that matters. But that is not how it is viewed. The Election Commission changed the rules at will, breaking its own rules with impunity, electoral rules and voting hours changed at will, and ad hoc, which if its own rules are followed, vitiates the polls. Its chairman changes his version of what happened at every press conference that he himself suggested a royal commission to sort it out. Pak Lah would not agree. But the prime minister is an interested party, and he, with a vested interest in its outcome, should not decide; at the very least, all political parties should have been consulted. In Selangor, the least the EC could do is to order fresh elections. But it is powerless to order that.

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.

This was the most serious in UMNO. Pak Lah found, to his horror, that UMNO warlords, kept under a tight leash by his predecessor, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, now flex their muscles with impunity. The Perak mentri besar, Dato' Seri Tajol Rosli Ghazali, made it clear before the elections he would decide who the Perak candidates for state assembly and parliament would be when he said all who lost in 1999 are out. But so it was it in every BN party. Pak Lah has two tasks in front of him: get elected as UMNO president, and keep the warlords at bay. Whilst Tun Mahathir now admits his unpopularity with the Malaysian public was such that his resignation as prime minister provided the fillip for the BN's runaway success. That could be so, but he left an UMNO and, by extension, BN, collapsing from within. Since the virtual UMNO coup after the 1969 racial riots, the general elections was to put UMNO in power. There is a coalition of course. But it did not matter who was in it. At the moment it is the BN. Its members are no more than handmaidens to UMNO.

After the general election, the law minister is demoted. There is no talk of corruption. It is back to life as usual, when the government went its way, long on intent but little to show for it. Is it any wonder, that every cabinet minister, especially if he is a first timer, follows faithfully this practice of blowing one's own trumpet. It is not Dr Chua alone. Every one has a similar plan. The newspapers, especially in the mainstream, report it in such loving detail that it is automatically ignored. As a sample, here is how the NST reported Dr Chua: "Ninety minutes. That's all it may take Malaysians to be treated at government hospital outpatient clinics if health minister Dato' Dr Chua Soi Lek has his way. He is confident that three-hour waits, the norm at many such clinics, will be a thing of the past from June. Dr Chua plans to introduce staggered waiting hours to replace fixing of all appoints for the day at 9 am." You would notice it is taken as fact that it will be done. How does the new youth and sports minister, Datin Azalina Othman, deal with an outstanding scandal in her ministry - the still unresolved 1998 Commonwealth Games accounts, and missing tens of millions? The same way Pak Lah did when asked about the continued detention of his predecessor. Not my problem. Let those who want it resolved, find other means. Is that not how it should be?

Southern Thailand is, in one sense, a Southeast version of Kashmir, for which India and Pakistan vie for control but the Kashmiris want independence, no less. Kuala Lumpur was initially dismissive of Mr Thaksin's request for a bilateral meeting in the Malaysian capital with Pak Lah, but to which it now agrees. The foreign minister, Dato' Seri Syed Hamid Albar, is clearly caught flat-footed: the Thai leader wants to discuss Malaysia is a training base and safe haven for Thai Malay separatists, that Kuala Lumpur is involved in southern Thailand far more heavily than it admits, and more frighteningly for Malaysia, that Thailand would ask the United States for help in this violent war on terror in the south. There is another unmentioned fear in Bangkok: that Malaysian support is part of an ill-thought out policy of pressuring Thailand to cut the Isthmus of Kra canal for its own foreign and security policy reasons: to keep both Singapore and Bangkok at bay.

But Pak Lah and Dato' Seri Najib, acting the vacant posts, do not want to be challenged. What happened in the 1978 UMNO elections is worrying enough. The then president, Dato' (later Tun) Hussein Onn, was challenged by Dato' Sulaiman Palestine (ironically, in the light of subsequent events, the maternal uncle of the ousted and battered former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim). About 30 per cent of the delegates backed the challenger. This threw Tun Hussein out of gear, the remaining three years spent in how to retreat gracefully after this unacceptable feudal challenge. Dato' Sulaiman himself was to claim he did not get what he was promised, and would reveal in clinical detail to any who would listen. Rumours that it was Dr Mahathir who put him up to it was current at the UMNO general assembly.

THE GENERAL ELECTIONS IS over. The new cabinet is installed. The man of the hour is he who led the National Front (BN) to victory, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. He is praised sky high now as only Malaysians know how. He, and he alone, is responsible for the BN's decimation, literally, of the Opposition. The BN, if you recall, is in the new parliament, with 90 per cent of the 219 seats. The honeymoon is still on. What he says, rates banner headlines in the Malaysian mainstream media. But he states trite homilies so often and has yet to show what he is capable of that if he does not curb it would turn to hit him. He promised a break with the past, at least that is how Malaysians saw his appointment as prime minister. But all he has so shown so far is to not upset the status quo. If the Tun Mahathir cabinet he inherited was unwieldy, the Pak Lah cabinet is more so: all he did was to add a few men and women known to be loyal to him to the Mahathir list, create more ministries to accommodate them. His new cabinet has 33 cabinet ministers, 38 deputy ministers and 22 parliamentary secretaries, a total of 93. In other words, every other BN MP is a member of the government. They would get into each other's way that nothing could be done.

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