There is no doubt the BN would romp home. The opposition is so diffused and fighting their own battles with each other to form a united front. The BN, as divided amongst themselves, would unite to win. But it would be at a cost. The Malay states - Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan and Trengganu - is in ferment, and if current indications have any basis, Kedah could well fall to PAS. PAS is also said to be ahead in Pahang and Selangor. Kelantan and Trengganu would remain with PAS. So, if Pak Lah comes to the UMNO general assembly in June with seats, and states, lost, he could face a tough battle for legitimacy. Helping the trend is, make no mistake of it, the Anwar affair, not only with UMNO split and the Malay ground on the sidelines.

Malaysia's ten monarchies, a quarter of the world's kingdoms, has burst into ten thousand republics, each at odds with the other, adding to the dissonance the country is in today. Every man is a republic unto himself. A headmistress orders her girl students to wear the Malay baju kurung dress, and the boys trousers, to "instil Islamic values". If Islamic values can be instilled by dress, when then is the Malay community so dysfunctional un-Islamic practices as hedonism, rapes, incest afflicts it more the other communities? Perlis invits Malaysian Muslims to come to the state to marry second or third or fourth wives, and warns those who criticised it, especially the women, that they should shut up for "it is allowable, indeed obligatory, in specified circumstances". The federal government cannot interfere in Muslim and Islamic practices in the state. The National Front (BN) can. But it would not. The state chieftains too powerful and would, if the stakes are high enough, defy the centre.

It is this arrogance which brings the National Front (BN) and UMNO to its knees. It cannot stop the major inroads PAS makes into its vote bank, tries hard to wean PAS into BN to neutralise it, and cannot understand why the people in Kelantan, Trengganu, Kedah, Perlis and other states in the country are angry at being told they vote wrong if they vote Opposition. This arrogance costs it plenty. All it can do is to penalise the opposition run states by denying it funds it constitutionally is entitled to. But it decided the Opposition cannot be trusted to spend the money wisely. It ignores conveniently the billions of ringgit it wastes on projects big and small: The Bakun Dam; The North South Highway; The Light rapid train system; Putra Jaya; Renong; the Privatisation debacle, when every one is in debt for billions; the cronies racking up losses of billions, which it bails out; the destruction of the banking system. The list is endless, but when the BN has losses, it is in the national interest. When the Opposition has losses, it is bad management.

But this would not prevent, as matters stand now, from UMNO and BN sweeping the polls. The electoral realignment ensures it. These exercises are not meant for anything but to ensure UMNO, especially, would romp home without difficulty. If the BN wins with it, it is a bonus. This time around, it was to stop PAS in its tracks in the Malay heartland -- Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan, Trengganu. So, the non-Malay voters in sold Malay constituencies would, UMNO hopes, dent PAS's chances. This, with PAS's inbuilt ability to shoot itself in the foot, helps the government.

The UMNO out-of-towners lived in hotels in Kedah and Perlis, out of touch even with Kedah UMNO folk. UMNO had to win both Pendang and Anak Bukit constituencies to regain its cultural ground. The bye-elections were called when Dato' Fadhil Noor, who held both, died after a heart operation last month. But it shot itself in the foot at every opportunity. The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, in overall charge, insisted he should not be blamed if UMNO did not regain the two seats. He did not want his future as prime minister jeopardised by an efficient PAS campaign in the Prime Minister's home state. Dr Mahathir took the unusual step to go on television and radio for voters to support the UMNO candidates. What UMNO leaders said in public about the results, they contradicted in private.

There is no one group that has the intellectual stature that can formulate an opposition coalition without which it can never even aspire for more than a token representation in parliament and the state assemblies. PAS's victories in Kelantan in 1990 and Trengganu in 1999 has nothingn to do with the other political parties. Apart from PRM, no party in the Opposition has a national view. PAS concentrates its mind on the four former Thai Malay states -- Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan, Trenggau -- where its success is due partly to the defensive nature of protecting Islam from a distant capital; before 1903, it was Bangkok; now it is Kuala Lumpur. The presumption it can capture states other than the four remains just that.

Haji Taib Azamudden, in a press statement, said when he was "Grand Imam" of the National Mosque, he came to know, or was consulted by the parties, of sexual peccadillos by UMNO leaders, Federal cabinet miniters and state chief ministers. He did not name names, but pointed directly at them. So large a list it was he said it was easier to name those cabinet ministers and mentris besar uninvolved! What he recited had been the stuff of political gossip for years. Most related to sexual trysts but one is accused of corruption, another of an UMNO cabinet minister's brother involved in drug trafficking. What he said refers to the UMNO secretary-general, Tan Sri Khalil Yaakob; the four UMNO vice presidents -- Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, Tan Sri Muhiyuddin Yassin, Tan Sri Mohamed Taib, Datin Seri Rafidah Aziz; the Perlis mentri besar, Dato' Seri Shahidan Kassim; the former Malacca mentri besar, Tan Sri Rahim Thamby Chik; the former federal cabinet minister and former Selangor mentri besar, Dato' Seri Abu Hassan Omar; the head of the National Fatwa Council, Dato' Ismail Ibrahim; and Dato' Zainuddin Mydin.

BA's petty misunderstanding with the DAP hides a fundamental breach: the DAP walked out of BA over PAS's stand on the Islamic state. The bad blood shows: neither the National Justice Party (Keadilan) nor Party Islam se-Malaysia (PAS) are formally in this byelection, and leave it to their state components if they want to help. In the Indera Kayangan byelections in Perlis, DAP refused to campaign for BA. Its political schizophrenia turns full circle in Ketari. BN thought it could up the ante and widen the opposition breach, but failed, and badly.

Yes, the mentri besar of Perlis, Dato' Seri Shahidan Kassim, is right: the Government should investigate this claim forthwith "as it involves a former senior minister who is still around". He has accepted the truth of the allegations, and demands that the government investigate the source of the funds. "Where did he get the millions of ringgit to give the organisations?" Who could this minister be? Is he perchance to whom Dato' Seri Shahidan was once so close to benefit much from that relationship, only to stab him when he got into difficulties?

But there is one thing which niggles me: The deputy president of UMNO officiated at the annual general meeting of Perlis UMNO branches at the Perlis Mentri Besar's official residence. How is this allowed? Is it now an official rule now that government residences can be used for political meetings? If it is, is it rent free? If it is, why? If it is now, who authorised it, what is the rent and to whom was it paid? There should be a clear distinction between government and political functions, and residences should not be used for party functions.

At the height of the Indera Kayangan byelections in Perlis, two prominent UMNO leaders slipped across the border into Haadyai not for the constitutional the area is well known for, but for a political tete-a-tete. The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, must be worried at this, by no means isolated, since he is firm in his mind that at 76, he is good for another decade in office. Any one who questioned it in public must be prepared to be hounded out of office, though not to the extent of his former deputy prime minister. It is in this connexion the reported threat to kill Dr Mahathir and his heir presumptive, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and the Sauk affair must be viewed. Both reflect UMNO's uncertainty of the future. The mainstream newspapers give the impression of UMNO solidity, but the more they emphasise it, the weaker it actually is. Since there is no critical survey of political developments, the flaws seep through so clearly and, often, dramatically.

This self-fulfilling fiction of an evil National Front (BN) sustained with might easily toppled by a disparate group with right on its side bars the opposition from headway in Malaysian politics. The Indera Kayangan by-election in Perlis, which BN won handsomely, proved it yet again. And would in elections to come. The Alternative Front (BA) is, like opposition unity, another fiction. How could the opposition topple a well-funded-and-focussed BN when it could not even mount a unified campaign? The MCA, split worse than BA, could. When all is said and done, one is surprised the BA candidate, Mr Khoo Yang Chong, got as many votes as he did. All the opposition could was to score points without turning it into votes.

The campaign is vicious. Accusations are made with abandon. Both the National Front (BN) and the Alternative Front (BA) are guilty of it, and BN, especially its Perlis mentri besar, Dato' Seri Shahidan Kassim, scurries for cover. His threat to sue an opposition leader for RM1,000,000 for defaming him lead to a further libel of him having "slept with artistes, actresses and under-aged girls". He must now carry out his threat. But he clearly runs for cover. His UMNO Perlis is against him and wants to blacken him. The MCA campaign is an extension of its internal problems, Indera Kayangan yet another turf battle. UMNO must contend with its problems at the centre and state.

With two days left, the National Front (BN) and its MCA candidate for the Indera Kayangan byelection runs into unexpected flak. Too much was taken for granted: the candidate, Mrs Oui Ah Lan, the choice of the MCA president, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, is the Perlis mentri besar, Dato' Seri Shahidan Kassim's special assistant for Chinese affairs. UMNO Perlis and the MCA B team want to deny an MCA victory: one to spite Dato' Seri Shahidan, the other so an anti-Ling man would be appointed to the state executive council and spite the unpopular Dr Ling. If not, Mrs Oui would be appointed. In other words, the national divisions in MCA and UMNO is the backdrop to the elections.

If you read newspapers and listen to the news on radio and television, you get the distinct revelation that the National Front (BN) heads for a landslide victory in Perlis this week, the opposition so hopelessly divided and only too happy to defect to the winning side. On the ground, nothing could be more wrong. The BN is a house divided turning on itself and cannot unite even for the nine-day election campaign for the Indera Kayangan byelection. Its electoral edge when the campaign started last week narrows by the day. UMNO and MCA, whose fates are intertwined here, are damned by their own sides that those who look at these things in the governmentn in Kuala Lumpur rate Indera Kayangan a close call: a BN victory with a majority of several hundreds or an opposition with, yes, five votes. In other words, the BN concedes that from a sure win last week it could now lose.

The Indera Kayangan byelectios in Perlis kicked off with the usual defections. Barely had the campaign begun when its Keadilan elections director and 68 others defected to UMNO for the usual reasons: they had seen the light; Keadilan did not select a Malay candidate; UMNO is the party of the future; the party they walked into from UMNO is now without hope. Maj (rtd) Mohd Shariff Abdul Razak, who is also deputy liasion chief for the state, decided, on the spur of the moment, to defect, so disgusted he was that his demands were not met; but not disgusted enough to be the Keadilan director of elections. He did not, as he admits, convey his reservations to party leaders. Why did they quit? The Perlis mentri besar, Dato' Seri Shahidan Kassim, says all Keadilan members "that matter" in Perlis would leave "on their own accord, after being disillusioned with the opposition parties". There has not been an election in the past two decades without "disgruntled" opposition members would cross over to the National Front "after having seen the light"; one went on to be a cabinet minister and, on retirement, deputy chairman of a major bank.

Recently, the newspapers reported that UMNO counterintelligence officials caught eight undergraduates for trespassing. They implied they were opposition spies spying on UMNO's operations room for the Indera Kayangan byelection in Perlis. How they found out all this before it kicked off before nomination day is one mystery that probably would never be solved. An opposition website tells a different story: that they were picked up elsewhere, brought to the National Front operations rooms and accused of skullduggery. Police reports are made. The universities send in disciplinary staff to monitor the role of undergraduates, who are told they have no business at an election campaign. How would they know who they are, assuming that they do their work conscientiously, when they cannot distinguish their own undergraduates in their own campuses?

The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, is right to insist the Opposition should not have made an election issue of the tragic death last November of the four-year-old son of the Perlis mentri besar, Dato' Seri Shahidan Kassim. The boy fell to his death from an open bedroom window of the 31st floor of a condominium in Kuala Lumpur on 10 November 2001. An opposition speaker in the runup to the byelection on 19 January 2002 for the Indera Kayangan state assembly seat in Perlis offered his condolences for what he said was God's reminder to the mentri besar and compared it with the family's grief with that of the the jailed former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

The Indera Kayangan by-election in Perlis on 19 January should be important only if the National Front loses. Nothing I have seen or heard suggest it would. But it is more. All the leaders, in government and opposition, can hope for is a superficial peace to tide them through the campaign. The MCA is split and the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, had to know the two rival chieftains -- the president, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, and the deputy president, Dato' Seri Lim Ah Lek -- into a barely sustainable and superficial peace for the campaign. It would split open the minute after polling closes.

Worse, the MCA strongman in Perlis, Khor Liang Tee, died yesterday of cancer, to force a byelection for the state assembly in two months. Four more are probable, though none from MCA, in Pahang. The National Front is at risk in all, with the rift in the MCA so wide that it could not unite to campaign.

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