[This column appeared in the latest issue of Seruan Keadilan, the official organ of Parti Keadilan Nasional, and out today, 23 September 2003]

All it needs to upset the BN and UMNO is a challenger for the UMNO presidency next year to release Pak Sheikh from jail with a free pardon to defeat Pak Lah. Dr Mahathir thinks not mentioning Pak Sheikh would consign him to oblivion. He did for five years and failed. His speech yesterday would have had an impact if he had at least mentioned Pak Sheikh. But he could not. He has painted himself into a corner. Mentioning him now would damage him more. Especially when Pak Lah is not about to. Indeed, his boys in Penang work hard to cut him down to size, with a special effort to wrest the Permatang Pauh parliamentary constitutency he once held and which wife, Datin Seri Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, the president of Parti Keadilan Nasional, now does, in the General Election.

It is into this conundrum Tan Sri Abdul Rashid has thrown UMNO into. That he should do it is not surprising. The system creaks from within. He reflects it. The whip must be used for UMNO to hold the upper ground. But how long can it crack the whip? Another five years? What happens then? UMNO is at its most dangerous. And reacts in strange ways. Look at how the Registrar of Societies reacted to the merger of Parti Keadilan Nasional and Parti Rakyat Malaysia. The new entity wanted to be called KeADILan. It would not allow that, as it happily allowed UMNO Baru to be known as UMNO. It is upset at the prospect of KeADILan lwn UMNO (Justice v UMNO). That is dangerous. Would the RoS allow Rakyat (People)? Is KeADILan lwn UMNO more dangerous than Rakyat lwn UMNO? UMNO disintegrates and, with it BN. Can UMNO be certain its BN partners would not desert UMNO when it is all over?

Meanwhile, the BN government continues to place hurdles at any attempt to unite. The Registrar of Societies has decided the union of Parti Keadilan Nasional (KeADILan) and Party Rakyat Malaysia (PRM) cannot be known as KeADILan, as the two parties wanted. "It is not suitable," came the imperious judgement. It is, as the two parties contend, "just a delaying tactic". The EC, with its new found claim that it is in charge where elections are concerned, is strangely quiet. But why is the government so obstructive? The BN is more frightened of this new merger than PAS. It has all but lost the Malay ground to PAS and an Islamic agenda. It would, if it is not careful, lost the non-Malay and moderate Islam ground to PKN-PRM party. So it does all it can to prevent its registration. Tan Sri Rashid would call that the right way to put the Opposition in its place.

We are fascinated by his revelations. He should now tell us what he plans to do to ensure it. My column in Seruan Keadilan, the Parti Keadilan Nasional organ, out next week, details his other sterling performances in his commitment to fair play and justice. But let us not sell Tan Sri Abdul Rashid short. He is part of a corrupt, demeaning system which UMNO has set up under the great and glorious governance of its chief, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed. Malaysia and the world should not be denied of the glory of UMNO in continued power, as democratically above board as President Robert Mugabe's democratic governance in Zimbabwe.

[This is my column in the latest fortnightly issue of Seruan Keadilan, the organ of the Parti Keadilan Nasional, and out today, 08 September 2003]

[This is my column in Seruan KeADILan, the official organ of the Parti Keadilan Nasional, in its latest issue, out today, 26 August 2003]

[This is my column in Seruan KeADILan, the official organ of Parti Keadilan Nasional, which merged recently with Parti Rakyat Malaysia to form Parti Keadilan Rakyat. It is on sale from today.]

In Sabah, the crisis of a different kind. The state UMNO is divided nine ways, with the eight warlords unhappy with the other running the state. That is not all. UMNO went into Sabah at the instance of one Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, and against the general desire of UMNO leaders. He had formed UMNO with a purpose, as a pressure base. The leader he chose still controls UMNO in Sabah, though he has moved away from Dato' Seri Anwar after his fall. But the undercurrent of strength within UMNO for him is still considerable. Besides, many UMNO leaders then are now in the Opposition. The non-Muslim groups also form important pressure groups, with some believing their future is better with the Opposition. The growing presence of the Parti Keadilan Rakyat, an amalgam of the Parti Keadilan Nasional, formed in part to fight for Dato' Seri Anwar's release from prison, and the Parti Rakyat Malaysia, is a wild card in the elections.

WHEN IN ALOR STAR A FEW DAYS ago, the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, told reporters PAS could not yet defeat the National Front (BN) in Kedah. PAS wants to, he said, but the BN would not let it. The BN, and its predecessor, the Alliance, has governed Kedah since the first elections in 1955. But he jumped into a local BN and PAS fisticuff in which one says the other cannot defeat it, the other that it can, with PAS insisting that it has the "best" chance now to wrest Kedah, and the BN that that had "fizzled out". In the 1999 general election, PAS won a third of the 36 states, which it increased by one when it was returned to the Anak Bukit state seat in a byelection last year. Earlier, the BN had lost its two-thirds majority when the Lunas state was lost to Parti Keadilan Nasional (KeADILan) in a byelection. For the first time, the BN does not now have a two-thirds majority, a pyschological disaster from which it has yet to recover. The BN believes it is not comfortable with governance if it does not have a two-thirds majority.

What it did not reckon is that the younger Malaysian cares not about UMNO's or BN's sacrifices before they were born. They are interested in what they have learnt about democracy and citizenship which fall far short of reality, refuse to be told to behave or else, and join the hundreds of thousands of Malaysians ignored and pushed into a corner and told to do as they are told. The pontificating and irrelevant statements of cabinet ministers and politicians assume they talk to idiots, and they cannot understand why they are ignored. Many cannot go to their constituencies for they dare not face them. The opposition parties do not fill the breech, the Malay ground, the most important, do not swing wholeheartedly towards the Islamic party, PAS, but UMNO fears that and tries to even the score by becoming as Islamic as PAS. It would not work. Which is why in UMNO it is not PAS it is worried about but the Parti Keadilan Nasional. That KeADILan has joined forced with Parti Rakyat Malaysia makes it even more so.

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