UMNO HIDES, NOR WANT to hear, what upsets it. Truth is its monopoly, its truth the Gospel, who questions an ally of, if not, Satan. As head of the National Front (BN), it dominates Malaysia. It brooks no interference, from BN and the opposition, and, until 1988, could behave as it pleased. Political parties which disagreed – the Socialist Front of the 1950s and 1960s, Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia in the 1970s, Semangat '46 in the 1990s – could not survive this onslaught, with one politically destroyed in an orchestrated damning of it as communist and the other two compromised, co-opted into the BN. Two political parties – PAS and Parti Rakyat Malaysia (PRM) – however has remain thorns in the UMNO flesh for more than five decades. PAS thought to its cost it could flirt with UMNO, but found it could not. PAS is now UMNO's most dangerous enemy. PRM merged with Parti Keadilan Nasional (KeADILan), the party formed after its eminence grise, the former Malaysian deputy prime minister and former UMNO deputy president, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, was jailed in a political vendetta.

That the CPM also had prominent Indian leaders, several of whom fled to Beijing after the Emergency was declared, is not lost on the National Front. The CPM was a registered political organisation from 1945 to 1948, when it was banned after the insurgency began. The Parti Keadilan Nasional's feeble presence in Malaysian politics frightens the BN no end. If another political party with a proven talent for organisation comes into the fray, rigor mortis in BN is assured.

POLITICAL DEBATE DOES NOT exist in Malaysia. It is discouraged. By the government and opposition. Only one view is allowed to exist, that of whoever is in charge. It does not matter if is the National Front (BN) government, UMNO, PAS, DAP, Parti Keadilan Rakyat, your cultural or social club. They are led, in this culture of ours, by petty dictators, all claiming to control the truth, scheming to shut out dissent, and surround themselves with a cordon sanitaire of cronies and supporters. It is seen as an affront for the leader to be challenged, and elaborate precautions are put in place to wiggle out challengers. It is a frightening indictment of democracy in Malaysia. The late lamented Tun Suffian's aphorism of there being freedom of speech but not after, is unfortunately all too true.

?So when Parti Keadilan Rakyat hosted a Deepavali open house at the Girl Guides' Hall in Brickfields, with its eminence grace, Anwar Ibrahim on hand, the hall was packed to capacity, perhaps 5,000 turned up, in a continuous flow of people, with the hall packed at all times with about 2,000.

What they would not admit that BN is in trouble if he should lead an opposition coalition. He could cut the Gordian knot that keeps the opposition apart; he is the only politician who could talk with PAS and the Democratic Action Party (DAP), each with its apposite political direction. He is the eminence grise of one political party, the Parti Keadilan Rakyat (still known as KeADILan, though it can officially only be referred to by its acronym, PKR), which like the others have lost its way. But the opposition is united in fearing his role as an opposition leader. Even if it admits it could frighten the ruling coalition as nothing has in the past five decades.

THE DEPUTY INTERNAL SECURITY minister, Dato, Noh Omar, goes about with state secrets in his pocket (The Star, 14 October 2004, Nation, p27). He has the full run of secrets in his ministry, but he is a bit lost because Malaysians do not understand his role in keeping this nation safe from the likes of Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Jemaah Islamiyah, Party SeIslam Malaysia (PAS), Democratic Action Party (DAP), Parti Keadilan Rakyat (KeADILan), Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, corrupt police men. He is the point man in this eternal battle; his minister doubles up as prime minister and finance minister, and is otherwise involved in other issues. There is therefore no one left to mind the internal security store. Yet UMNO and Malaysia are ungrateful, and do not recognise his talents.

[This is my column in the last issue of Seruan Keadilan, the organ of Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), out today, 24 September 2004]

[This is my column in Seruan Keadilan, the organ of Parti Keadilan Rakyat, and on sale from today, 10 September 2004]

[An earlier version of this appears in the latest issue of Seruan Keadilan, the official organ of the Parti Keadilan Nasional or PKN, and which is now on sale.]

It is caught in this dilemma because the Malay ground is terribly split, and UMNO's political raison d'etre as the cultural leader of the Malays suspect. The political ground is now contested between UMNO and PAS, with PKN, or Parti Keadilan, assuming the mantle of the cultural leader UMNO lost when it defied Malay cultural mores to humiliate its deputy president. The PKN has not lived up to its potential, but UMNO is more frightened of it than it is of PAS.

But he is not the only power centre opposed to the UMNO leaders. There is another group, which backs the jailed former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. Most of his supporters are in Parti Keadilan, which his wife heads, but many UMNO supports of his remained in the party to fight his battle from within. They are subdued, but remain a significant force, not as powerful as the Tengku's but sizeable nevertheless. This group had swung to the Tengku in his quest for the UMNO presidency. They formed a formidable group. This had to be destroyed at all cost. For if the Tengku went to an election for the presidency with this support, Pak Lah could well have suffered a humiliating defeat.

This leaves Parti Keadilan Rakyat or KeADILan. The Registrar of Societies insists it be known as PKR, not KeADILan, but how is it going to enforce that? It was formed after the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, was jailed on trumped up charges of sodomy and corruption when he showed his metier and frightened the BN prime minister of the day, Tun Mahathir Mohamed. He is its eminence grise. But for too long he was its raison d'etre. But if it wants to exist as a political party it must go beyond commitment to its eminence grise. This is where the difficulty begins. Too many among its leaders want this to continue. But it cannot if it must have a role in Malaysia's larger affairs.

In PAS, he is outspoken in party meetings, insisting it must decide if it wants to be a religious organisation or a political party. He believes it must work within the constitutional system in force, with any change to it to be enforced when it is in power on its own bat. It is not a view it likes to hear, but he says that to attain power, an alternative opposition coalition is a minimum. That cannot if the main opposition political party cannot agree on a common minimum programme that other opposition parties can accept and one in which the idea of an Islamic state must be kept on hold. This is a contentious view in PAS, but it is not alone. The other two political parties, DAP and Parti Keadilan Rakyat (KeADILan), are as divided within over an opposition coalition to make that issue moot for the moment.

In the six years since, his supporters have been ruthlessly rooted out. Loyal satraps and carpetbaggers filled the vaccuum, each with a vested interest to ensure he does not return to centre stage. Politics owes no loyalties, only self-interest. And self-interest demands that Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim should never return. The fear of a witch-hunt, should he ever return to centre stage, unites the BN coalition, UMNO, the civil servants, and others to ensure he does not leave prison until his 15 years is up, when he would no more be a political threat. For the record, the BN and UMNO insists he is not a force. Why? The 90-odd websites that once supported the reformasi movement he kicked off is reduced to a dozen or so. He is a forgotten man. He is history. To help this along, the government uses extra-legal methods to force his backers to denounce him. All this is true. But it remains that his support group is intact. The government did not dent that. It insists that Parti Keadilan Nasional, the political party that he spawned, is a deadweight. Its leaders caught between their own political future with campaigning for Dato' Seri Anwar's release. Several frankly do not see the point, and would rather cut and run.

So an unmentioned hidden UMNO, more than BN, agenda had to bring the DAP back into parliament in 2004. PAS would attack it culturally, for which it had no answers. DAP did not know what that the cultural limits are, and blames or attack the government within a framework of presumed Westminster parliamentary practice, but which made no sense to the Malay ground. A DAP opposition also gave the government a chance to ignore it, and not be chastised for it. But it went about it with an uncoordinated plan that frightened UMNO leaders as much as the Malay community. The Malay opposition expected it, and were not upset. But the Malay ground was uncompromising. Especially when the EC changed the election rules on the run, unable even to furnish the electoral list that would stand scrutiny: the electoral list given the Opposition was not what was eventually used, but even that list is what individual official decides. It had another agenda which, as usual, it did not think through: to challenge PAS within a framework of a Malaysian theocracy, in which the only issue is whether the UMNO or PAS view should be the mainstream. So, it had to destroy the multiracial Parti Keadilan Nasional (PKN or KeADILan), which would in this fight attract the UMNO and PAS Muslim who did not believe in a theocracy.

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