He told reporters yesterday (14 October 2003) the EC should not have misled him - mark you, not Parliament but him in person - on its appointment of Puteri Umno members as temporary election staff. Then he makes another mistake. It demeans Parliament's role but it is really the government's problem not his. When the minister in the Prime Minister's department, Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor, refused to apologise as PAS demanded for an error of his ways. When PAS protested, he refused to intervene but threatened the questioner with sanctions. He has no power to act against the minister, he said. He is wrong. The minister in the House is as equal to the most lowly of MPs. He could have suspended the cabinet minister, ordered him out of the House, and take any action he could against MPs. But he chose not to.

Neither BN nor the Opposition believe the EC is impartial and fair, one protests because it is impartial and the other because it is not. It behaves as a BN agency. Political parties, in its view, are either government or opposition. BN is in the goernment. PAS is in the Opposition. It runs into difficulties here but it does not bend. But PAS runs the state governments in Kelantan and Trengganu, but to the EC, in the two states, PAS is in the Opposition and the BN the government. It is caught in its own definition. And it cannot retract. The EC chairman is appointed for his reliability to BN, not if he would conduct elections fairly and impartially. This is only one example of its constitutional waywardness. Early this year, when Puteri Umno called on Tan Sri Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman, the EC appointed unemployed PU members as temporary staff for the coming general election. He accepted the offer with alacrity and appointed seven of the 45 names submitted. But word of this leaked out, and PAS raised it in Parliament. Tan Sri Abdul Rashid justified it, with guns blazing, in a remarkable interview last month with the Internet newspaper, malaysiakini (www.malaysiakini.com), could - or would - not see the unconstitutionally of it, and would appoint Opposition members but only if they applied. Malaysia has a problem with unemployed graduates, and and the EC has to help in the national interest.

IT IS NOW OFFICIAL. THE MALAYSIAN GOVERNMENT must end its special election courses for UMNO division and branch officials must end in October. These courses are held before a general election to acquaint UMNO (and only UMNO, not National Front (BN) factotums of issues that could rise during the all-too-brief campaign. The Conference of Rulers, now meeting, is critical of the Election Commission employing Puteri Umno members as temporary election staff and of the Attorney-General at what it sees as his dereliction of duty. The EC promptly sacked seven Puteri Umno members; how many were appointed and would now be sacked as well is not clear. It is a feeble attempt to clear the decks before General Election is called. The BN government must call for it by February 2004. After that, it must contend with a worsening economy. But it cannot wait that long. In fact, it has decided it would dissolve Parliament and the state assemblies one week after the Hari Raya holidays in the third week of November, with polling a fortnight hence. Whether it would would depend on how well prepared BN is.

News of this sent shivers down the Najib camp. Dato' Seri Najib complained to Dr Mahathir when both were in New York shortly after for the UMNO general assembly. But neither could do anything about it. The Awana meeting showed how divided UMNO is, with neither faction prepared to challenge the other in the open, and revealed only each's uncertainties. On the face of it, Dato' Seri Najib is still ahead if Pak Lah is challenged. Aligned to him are mentris besars Dato' Seri Tajol Rosli Ghazali of Perak, Dato' Seri Ali Rustam of Malacca, Dato' Seri Adnan Yaakob of Pahang; Puteri Umno; the second finance minister, Dato' Jamaluddin Jarjis; the Trengganu UMNO deputy chief, Dato' Idris Jusoh. UMNO Youth is split in its support, with its head and Dato' Seri Najib's first cousin - their mothers are sisters - Dato' Hishamuddin Hussein, not with him. But he is unsure if this support would remain if, as is the norm, extrajudicial, political threats and worse are brought to bear on them. Dato' Seri Najib realises how vulnerable he is. An unconfirmed rumour mentions politically damaging proof in a CD that could ruin him if he persists in his challenge.

THE OPPOSITION POLITICAL PARTIES WANT to monitor postal voting in military and police camps. The Election Commision chief, Tan Sri Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman says they must but then they must not. The Prime Minister's Department minister (at least one of several), Tengku Adnan Mansor, says the EC can decide on that, and then not. The EC confirms its independence in Bolehland by asking the defence ministry to allow it. The defence ministry rejects it and Tengku Adnan upholds the EC's independence to uphold it. In any case, the EC is an "independent authority" and its officers are at hand to make sure that all is well. Does not the Opposition know that the EC's independence is enshrined in the Constitution so clearly its chairman cannot see it? Tan Sri Abdul Rashid embellishes that to insist that the Constitution does not require him to be impartial, and he shows his independence by employing Puteri Umno as temporary election clerks. After all, his independence is suffuced in pandering to UMNO. This double-talk in the National Front (BN) and UMNO is so the EC would ensure that the polls, not just postal polls, are unfair.

UMNO worked hand in hand with the EC: the EC recently offered to accept unemployed Puteri Umno members as temporary election assistance; now UMNO offers to help the EC clean up the electoral roll. The EC is part of an elaborate UMNO plan to issue Malaysian identity cards to those ineligible, mostly Indonesians, Filipinos, and Thais. They are not forged or faked, but genuine ones which automatically grants them citizenship and put on the electoral roll. The EC ignores the Opposition parties, whom it deals with on sufferance. The aim: to deny the Opposition a fair chance to be returned to power.

The UMNO reaction reflected it. The law minister, Dato' Seri Rais Yatim, who on the other side of the fence welcomed it, is vehemently opposed now. The UMNO vice president, Tan Sri Muhiyuddin Yassin, cannot see the need for public rallies. The UMNO youth leader, in the false garb of the National Front (BN) youth leader, opposes it. (When did the BN youth wing meet to decide on it?) The one certainty to the proposal is that it frighted and shocked UMNO beyond belief. It took Dr Mahathir to come in and put matters right: The police will decide if public rallies would be allowed. Whatever the Election Commission might say. He takes the legalistic line that he would be blamed if he interfered in the EC's workings; it is independent, did you not know? But you will not he stayed clear of the scandal of the EC as a Puteri Umno employment agency.

THE ELECTION COMMISSION CHAIRMAN, TAN Sri Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman, is clear what his role is. He has proved beyond reasonable doubt, as a lawyer would put it, that he is at the beck and call of UMNO, that he will ensure the elections would be conducted unfairly, that he takes orders only from UMNO, that any nonsense of all parties given equal chances at the polls should be disabused without further ado. He is there so the Malays would not be alloted more seats, not for altruistic reasons of fair play and justice but so PAS would be stopped in its tracks and UMNO would continue to govern until Doomsday. You would note that in recent weeks, he has taken pains to reveal himself naked to all and sundry, that this belief in free and impartial elections is nonsense, that he is there so serve UMNO's interests. He now wants the EC to be an employment agency for Puteri Umno members.

Queries are brushed aside. The EC builds a steel wall around it, into which an opposition politician, certainly not a voter, could penetrate. If he does somehow, he is brushed aside. It could do this on the arrogant assumption that evidence of its perfidy are not available. Not any more. The PAS MP, Mr Mahfuz Omar, produced letters in Parliament in which the EC instructed its state branches, except in Sabah and Sarawak, to employ Puteri Umno members as part-time administrative assistants to prepare for the coming General Election. The EC denied it, so it could not be raised in the June session of Parliament. In the current session, Mr Mahfuz produced the Puteri Umno chief's letter with handwritten instructions from Tan Sri Abdul Rashid and the EC secretary, annotations requesting that it be acted on expeditiously, and the letter from the Election Commission ordering its Peninsular officers to comply. He released the letters to the Press. Remarkably, she attached a list of unemployed Puteri Umno members worth of the EC's consideration.

Sexual peccadillos are part of the political scene in every country. It has come out into the open when the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, decided to destroy his chosen successor, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, with a trumped up charge of sodomy in 1998. That act put UMNO in a tailspin. Not only that. The Puteri Umno is accused of being a lesbian by the same author who declared Dato' Seri Anwar a sodomist. But nothing happens to her. She ignores the charges, at the Prime Minister's advice, and nothing happens. It seems clear that nothing happens to anyone in the Prime Minister's "camp". So the arrest for khalwat of this senior MP's wife could not have been by accident. Before they were married, they had had a run-in with the religious affairs department. It would appear, in the circumstances of the case, a deliberate move to detain her and embarrass her husband. Or it could be a way to force him out of Parliament.

UMNO's Byzantine web of deceit and intrigue now threatens to sink it. It does not matter if the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, is a sodomist or the hand-picked Miss Azalina Othman a lesbian. The UMNO president, and prime minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, wanted one destroyed and the other saved. So, Dato' Seri Anwar goes to jail, and Miss Azalina is unopposed as Puteri Umno leader. But so complex and complicated are the side-plots within UMNO and its 'dalang', or puppet master, the good doctor himself, to throw both and the National Front he leads into confusion. In the four years between Dato' Seri Anwar's predicament in 1997 and Miss Azalina's, UMNO focusses its future on the sexual orientation of its leaders. Homosexuality is one side of the equation. There is the rampant sexuality and corruption of prominent UMNO leaders against whom Dr Mahathir would not act.

In this debate, the views of the woman are all but ignored. Malay chauvinism demands the articulate, professional, working women is deliberately ignored. Yet it is they who raise the Malay threshold of success. Without them and their contribution, the Malay would be even more disadvantaged. In short, the main stay of Malay success is because of them, not of the high flying Malay men. UMNO saw this, formed a new wing it called Puteri Umno -- ignoring the opposition from its women's wing -- to bring them in. It is the most farsighted move UMNO had made in recent years, and its success has forced other political parties to consider similar moves, and forced Parti Sa-Islam Malaysia (PAS), to bring its women leaders into the national limelight in their own right, not as relicts of their husbands.

These abberrations happen because those in power believe it must be outside the law. Some fall out, as, for instance, the jailed former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, when who is in power decides who should not. For whatever reason. The UMNO vice president, Tan Sri Muhammad Taib, was caught redhanded with a shopping bag full of money, RM2.4 million worth, in Brisbane. He remains a much respected, if a bit shopsoiled, figure in UMNO, a king maker more than king. Dato' Seri Anwar is dismissed on unproven charges of sodomy and corruption, the cases so heavily laden with politics that a fair trial is impossible. When the new Puteri Umno leader, Ms Azalina Othman Said, is accused of lesbianism, Dr Mahathir demands proof, as he did not when Dato' Seri Anwar was so accused. He was drummed out of UMNO and sacked as deputy prime minister and deputy president even before the investigations were complete. What keeps this confrontation sane and, in a sense, invigorating, is that sometimes, as with J.B. Jeyaratnam in Singapore and Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia, refuses to accept this official condemnation, and struggles on to enhance the cultures in the societies they live in, to the regime's discomfiture.

And so, as UMNO Leaders demanded, Ms Azalina Othman is the first elected unelected leader of Puteri Umno. They pressured the 165 divisions to nominate her, not whomsoever amongst the five candidates they preferred. UMNO leaders deny it. But how could an unpopular leader as Ms Azalina -- and since her first appointment, the dissensions about her rise throughout the movement -- be returned unopposed? The usual subtleties were brought to bear: the UMNO leaders do not hesitate to use whatever means at their disposal to ensure they get what they want. And no divisional leader in her sane mind wants to upset the tranquility of her family with exposures like this. This is how it is done in UMNO divisional elections. It is out of character to suggest Puteri Umno would be spared the UMNO Leaders' desire for a marionette as a leader.

And UMNO leaders react in panic. They want Ms Azalina elected UMNO Puteri leader unopposed -- at any cost. There is so much distruct in UMNO of its leaders, that even a milestone could win against their choice if a free vote is allowed. When Ms Azalina garnered a third of the nominations, and her four opponents none, a hidden hand clearly is at work. Subtle fear was in the minds of UMNO Puteri division leaders of what happens next should they allow any other than Ms Azalina be nominated. Puteri Umno leaders are in doubt of it. It is so widely believed that Dato' Seri Abdullah Badawi has had to deny there is a directive. And UMNO leaders increasingly are defensive when they talk of the UMNO Puteri elections.

The issue here is not legal, but political. UMNO is in tatters, all because Dr Mahathir, having made the unpardonable feudal sin of humiliating a Malay chieftain, could not ensure his demise, metaphorically and politically. Until the Anwar Ibrahim affair is settled once and for all, UMNO would continue to disintegrate. The signs are already there. The 'wayang kulit' (shadow play) over who would be UMNO president when Dr Mahathir steps down next year, the accusations and counter-accusations amongst the contenders for the Puteri Umno leadership, UMNO's severe dependence on Chinese votes and on non-Malays in Sabah and Sarawak in the coming general elections as the Malay ground drifts away from it, the confusion over whether Malaysia is an Islamic state, the looming confrontation between UMNO and PAS continues to undermine political confidence in UMNO. In the UMNO Puteri elections, one candidate is the daughter of the man Dr Mahathir primed to challenge the then Prime Minister and UMNO president, Tun Hussein Onn, in 1978. This man's nephew is one Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, whose last known address is Sungei Buloh jail.

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