What once worked does not any more. In the Indera Kayangan byelection in Perlis, Puteri Umno members took over villages and houses, holding all to ransom by taking away their identity cards until after polling. But this did not work as well in Pendang and Anak Bukit. Now would it in future elections. When BN campaign teams headed for a village, most of which are isolated from one another, PAS supporters rushed to prevent them from coming in. Sometimes, fisticuffs and disturbances occurred. Where Puteri Umno did get a toehold, or when they went campaigning, PAS sent swarthy young men to do Nature's bidding. And succeeded more than they dared hope.

PAS, on the other hand, saw it as yet another way to fine-tune its plans to wrest Kedah from UMNO, to retain both seats, Anak Bukit more than Pendang. Its awesome campaign teams concentrated on house-to-house meet-the-voter meetings than on ceremahs and and other short-cuts to make up for time in the fortnight campaign. It stopped BN from adopting whole villages, with Puteri Umno campaigners virtually imprisoning voters in their own homes, seizing their identity and voter cards, keeping them on a tight-leash, even to how and when they could vote.

The recent spate of scurillous articles against the Puteri Umno in a magazine edited by one who makes it his speciality, it now appears, was encouraged by her enemies in UMNO. The also resist moves to make the Puteri Umno leader an automatic vice-president.

UMNO is split over who should be next prime minister, if the Prime Minister would contine, if it could go to the polls with Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim still in jail, if Puteri Umno should be allowed to be led by its leader, Ms Azalina Othman Said. Wanita UMNO is upset at Puteri Umno's success. Women who would not join Wanita UMNO rush in droves to Puteri Umno, and it is seen as a threat. Does the unity Dato' Seri Abdullah insists UMNO now has include this villifaction of the Puteri Umno leader in scurrilous newspaper articles? Those behind it, like the alleged plot to assasinate the Prime Minister, include those in the cabinet and government.

The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, says there would be no elections before 2004, when one must be held. The UMNO Youth leader and his cabinet minister, Dato' Hishamuddin Hussein, orders his youth wing to be prepared for one. The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, says there Puteri Umno, the young women's wing of UMNO, is in fine shape, repeats it several times to make sure his message is heard, as more prominent names quit. It is a truth foretold that when the government makes statements of intent apropos nothing, it is a sure sign of problems ahead. The country is on autopilot, the Prime Minister having urgent meetings in Ougadougou and points further afield, the deputy prime minister is not in a position to run the country in his absence, a malaise setting in that cannot do the government any good.

Mistakes are made aplenty, the most serious at nomination day last week. Why did not state and national leaders step in to stop Hishamuddin and his UMNO youth from singing dirty ditties to catchy music, in which the word "Liwat" (sodomist, and an allusive but unproven reference to the jailed former deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim), was prominently used? A bit later, Puteri Umno joined in.

The Police want more time to investigate the fire at the Universiti Malaya's Dewan Tunku Canselor last month. The Fire department says, in a technical report, it is frayed wires, not anti-government intent or arson, which gutted the building. But UMNO confidently stated, within hours, it was arson. UMNO Youth chief, Dato' Hishamuddin Hussein, and Puteri Umno chief, Miss Azlina Mohamed Said, both lawyers, demanded nothing short of the vice chancellor's head.

The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, runs hither and thither to avoid being marginalised UMNO. The rush of young women into Keadilan and PAS forced him to set up Puteri Umno for the under-35s. He wants talks on Malay Unity with PAS to neutralise Keadilan. And now he wants to reform UMNO by barring the filthy rich from party positions.

This reflects the twin concerns the Prime Minister has to wean declining support. The last election showed, especially in Kelantan and Kedah, that women turned the tide against the National Front. Which is why he formed Puteri Umno, and now creates a women's affairs ministry.

UMNO is flummoxed. It wanted a young women's wing it calls Puteri Umno. Its women's wing, Wanita UMNO, seeing it a threat, reacted in high dudgeon. UMNO's moribund leaders ignored the ground so thoroughly that it was unprepared for the convulsions when it sacked its deputy president, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, two years ago, and its Malay ground, a significant portion of it, moved away.

UMNO wanted a new women's wing of younger professionals out of place in UMNO Wanita, whose leaders like UMNO's are a self-perpetuating oligarchy. Its central committee includes those elected in 1982 and earlier. New blood is brutally drained out, to leave in disgust. The younger professionals are left out, and Puteri Umno, set up for them, was to be a feeder for Wanita. But Wanita leaders are frightened of an organised group of young women who could leave them high and dry if they so decide. The new blood in UMNO Wanita is the return of the old guard, led by its leader, Datin Rafidah Aziz!

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