But Mahathir years turned this upside down. Whoever proposed a project could name his price, and build it. It did not matter if it was the Petronas Twin Towers, Putra Jaya, the privatised national highways, the Kuala Lumpur international airport. Tenders were rarely called. When completed, it cast a burden on generations yet unborn. But all this was justified on the need to show the world of Malaysia's emergence as an industrialised country by 2020. All this was needed in the name of national honour. When challenged what it cost, we were blithely told the cost did not matter, Malaysia's national honour was more important.

They orchestrated the UMNO presidential elections so no one else would be nominated but him. He managed it, with the challenger, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, getting only one nomination. All others who would have voted for him were told of what faced them on the morrow if they did: bankruptcy or worse. The reality has sunk in in Putra Jaya. The UMNO ground is so angry at being short-changed that a ground swell of delegates next month could well vote for anyone who is not in Pak Lah's camp.

THE UNITED STATES SHOULD cease and desist in Iraq and stop Israel from assassinating the Palestine leader, Mr Yassir Arafat. Otherwise the Middle East could well go up in flames. President George Bush should know better. The Muslim has lost his patience. Rhetoric like that finally made the front page of Malaysian newspapers, a year after the US invaded Iraq and now struggles out of this self-inflicted quagmire or anarchy and civil war. This dominated news coverage for three days last week. Malaysians are told, as often in a vacuum, not that they ought to know of these home truth but so they could praise the statesman in their midst. They know of this in excruciating detail because the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) held an emergency meeting in Putra Jaya last week. The chairman - lest you forget - is the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. The newspapers and the official media could not control themselves to report in hallowed terms of what he had to offer but paid scant attention to other views. The 57 OIC members took a unanimous decision to stand up to the US and Israel.

What should have been an easy walkover - as in past elections after redrawing the constituencies - now must be fought for with bloody casualties on both sides. In the new Putra Jaya consitutuency, the BN candidate, Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor, is mired in a personal and corporate scandal. It puts paid to the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's claim that only those without a blemish are candidates. The personal scandal is how one Adnan bin Mansor, born in 1950, became Tengku Adnan Mansor in 1972, how his father became Tengku Mansor bin Baba two years later, and a little after how his dead grandfather is transformed into a prince. How this man rose from an Indian background to a prince cannot be denied: for floating all over the country is a bundle of official documents, from the National Registration Department, that chart this progression. The corporate scandal is his acquiring assets in companies when he should not have at the time since he was in the government, and how he is sued as director or owner of 16 companies, at the time he was in government. And the scale of his wealth from the shares he holds. He is a minnow who is so used to be fawned upon as an elephant that he has come to believe he is. But he is shown to be the minnow he always was.

The 1998 Anwar affair revealed a stark truth. The opposition to BN would, from now on, come not from the Chinese-based and ideologically different political parties, but from the Malay political parties and organisations that disagrees with its worldview. This is reflected in those detained under the Internal Security Act: all, but for a handful, are Malays regarded in Putra Jaya as on the wrong side of the fence. The BN government is caught in a vice about them: several are on a hunger strike, sustained only with water, but it is so serious that they are forcibly removed to hospital to be force-fed. Little is reported in the mainstream media it controls, especially during the election campaign. But it is a live issue, like the Anwar affair, in the Malay heartland. The issue is their detention for alleged links with the Taliban and other far-right Muslim groups, especially after the son of the prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, is cleared of all wrong doing in making centrifuge parts for nuclear weapons in a company he controlled. What is sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander. But not in Malaysia. Here Napolean, as in George Orwell's Animal Farm, will always be better treated than Snowball.

There is more. General Tan Sri Hamid's daughter-in-law, Datin Saidatul Said, is the National Justice Party (KeADILan) chief for Sabah. Her brother is the former Sabah BN chief minister, Dato' Seri Salleh Said. Her father is the former chief minister and Yang Dipertua Negeri (governor), Tun Said Keruak. When she went to the EC office in Kota Kinabalu two days ago to obtain nomination forms for KeADILan candidates, it wanted a formal authorisation from KeADILan headquarters. She asked for the forms to be reserved. When that was done yesterday (09 March 2004), the forms had run out, and she was directed to get them from Putra Jaya. The forms are sold at RM20 each. The EC could not explain why they ran out and why it could not bring in more forms. She is taking legal advice for a court order to force the EC to deliver the forms. How and why did the nomination forms run out in a state of so many political parties and shifting loyalties as a general election nears? The EC wants a well-ordered election campaign in which it is not tested to the limit. It believes the parties must work to its schedule, not the other way around.

So with every general election the Opposition is forced into an even tighter straitjacket. It does not have a proper avenue to protest or negotiate, even in Parliament. Bills are rushed through, on certificates of agency, Parliament, with little time for defeat on an important bill, even amending the constitution, but the bills are often given to MPs as they arrive for the session. That is when Parliament is brought into the government's confidence. But large expenditures, like the RM20 billion for the first phase of the new administrative capital of Putra Jaya, do not come before Parliament for approval. This is because the Malaysian oil company, Petronas, builds it, and its accounts, as an off-budget agency, do not have parliamentary oversight or discussion. When privatised roads are made public, with no tolls payable, the works minister blithely announces compensation in the hundreds of millions, without the need for Parliamentary approval. In other words, the BN is so comfortable governing that it finds Parliament and the Opposition a frightful inconvenience. This bred an arrogance that ignored the naysayers as severely.

He had nothing but contempt for the Opposition leaders, but he reserved his venom for the DAP's Lim Kit Siang, PAS's spiritual adviser Dato' Nik Aziz Nik Mat and PAS information chief, Dato' Harun Din. His attacks on the two were nothing new, but is wrong on Dato' Harun. He calls him a 'coward' who said he would run against him in 1999 but pulled out at the last minute. Why did he do so? He had guaranteed a loan from a Malaysian bank for a friend who reneged on it. Whenever he said he would stand in the polls, he was threatened with bankruptcy if he went ahead. That albatross is no more around his neck: the debt is paid, and he would, I understand, stand in Dr Mahathir's Kubang Pasu. He thinks he is a cheat and a fraud. Then, pray, why did he ask for his help to drive the devils and jinns that surround his official residence in Putra Jaya? Dr Harun, I understand, declined to for no reason than that it should have been done before the forest, where they resided, was cut down. It is a fact Dr Mahathir had not had a good night's sleep in his official residence. This is why he opts for a private residence in Sungei Besi.

WHY DOES TRENGGANU HAVE a PAS government? The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, blames the prisoner, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, for it. Why is UMNO in fear of its future as General Election nears? In public and on the record, it is not; but in private and off the record, it is the injustice it meted to the former deputy prime minister. Why did not Tun Mahathir Mohamed go out in a blaze of glory after 22 years as Prime Minister? It is for framing his then deputy for sodomy and corruption. His successor, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, begins his term on a sticky wicket because he would not address the one issue that firmly divides the Malay community: its firm belief that Dato' Seri Anwar is convicted and jailed by a kangaroo court. The Court of Appeal hearing in Putra Jaya this morning (19 January 2003) and the utter confusion there is one more sign that it does not matter if he is guilty or innocent; he must remain in jail, no matter what.

THE PRIME MINISTER, DATO' SERI Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, now says it: the Royal Malaysia Police is not trusted. He says: "We want to make the police force a unit which can be trusted." He admits the public is not gung-ho about the police. He proposes a Royal Commission to report how it could be turned around. It would look investigate and suggest how it could, and how to reduce human rights abuses, police brutality, poor service and other ills that make the public afraid to approach the police. He was opening a conference of 300 senior police officers in Putra Jaya on 29 December 2003. What he said it is not new. The Opposition parties and groups have said so for years. What is new is that his implied admission that the public is frightened of the police.

The Gelang Patah-Tuas bridge has opened a new link between the two countries. The Southern Gateway has another unmentioned aim: to allow water to flow through the straits for the first time since 1941, when Australian army sappers blew up the causeway - which until then had a drawbridge to allow free passage of ships through the straits - to deny the invading Japanese troops easy access to the 'impregnable fortress' Britain mistakenly thought Singapore then was. It was not, as later events proved, but that is another story. The Southern Gateway now is an afterthought. Johore feared that if the second link was widely used, Johore Bahru would become a dead town. There was even a suggestion that the Johore capital would be transferred to a Putra Jaya-like capital at the site of the capital of Johore Lama of the 16th century up the Sungei Johore. All that is, it now turns out, the rantings of politicians on the make. And so the Southern Gateway.

How parties behave in office one cannot predict. One must take much at face value and in hope. One voted in faith and hope for the BN. Look at what that has brought us to. The individual is irrelevant in the BN governance of Malaysia. That is one of Tun Mahathir's legacies: he ignored the common man. He was more at home in Cannes and Tokyo than in Alor Star or even Kuala Lumpur and Putra Jaya. PAS shrewdly guessed that his successor would go to the ground and challenge it on its turf. And reacts accordingly. The public reaction is not unexpected. To defeat an enemy, one has first to demonise him. That is what BN does. One must remember that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), like PAS, is linked to a religion, with an aim similar to PAS in wanting a religious state.

This refusal to allow political and public observers at postal voting is caused by fright and uncertainty. This does not mean the BN would be defeated. It is unlikely to. The Opposition is so defused and disorganised that BN would retain office. But it would have to fight the harder, and resign itself to losing key leaders because the postal votes did not save them. This could well spell the end of UMNO as it is now constituted, and with an outsider challenging its acting president in June. Or, in the unlikeliest of probabilities, an Opposition coalition in power in Putra Jaya.

Meanwhile, the country is awash with alleged projects running into tens of billions of ringgit. Malaysia is broke beyond fixing. The latest budget is as much a work of fiction as the stream of novels that come from respectable publishing houses. But Parliament is not given the time or the space to debate it as it should. And when Opposition MPs raise intelligent questions about it, the Government orders a witchhunt, sure that the answers had been leaked to them. But Malaysia to the Establishment now is limited to Kuala Lumpur, Putra Jaya, Langkawi and wherever in Malaysia the Great Man is. All else do not count or matter. Kuala Lumpur has a fourth-rate first world facilities, with a third world infrastructure and an important difference: the slums that are hidden in first world countries make their irresolute way into the city centre. There is no culture of accountability. And what is out of sight is surely out of mind, is the response when one asks about rural development or the plight of the farmers or the rural heartland.

The BN made a big mistake in opening a can of worms. It is reluctant to release its ministerial profligacies. Dr Mahathir set a bad example. The late Tun Abdul Razak, as Prime Minister, would insist that his foreign trips did not last more than ten days; he preferred seven but he would often return in five. Before he returned, he would spend his money to buy gifts for those in his office. Often, he would return to the Treasury the money he did no spend. But then he had a high sense of public duty. Tun Hussein would pay back to the Treasury for his private entertainment at Seri Taman, his official residence. Tengku Abdul Rahman's penny-pinching at official expenses is well-known. Dr Mahathir set a record for profligate behaviour. If he does it, why not those below him. They did not disappoint him and embraced this leadership by example. Profligacy is endemic under the Mahathir governance. The Subang Airport had a RM100 million facelift shortly before the contract to build Kuala Lumpur International Airport for several billions were given. Now I understand Parliament House had a RM50 million refit just as plans are readied for a new Parliament House in Putra Jaya. Because most of these expenses are shrouded in darkest secrecy, they are often known only after the fact. Parliament is often not consulted. Today the BN is at the deep end. But profligacy is only one facet of it losing control. For the first time in living memory, the BN is caught in its own trap. It does not know how to come out of it. It wanted general elections in Sabah first, but it then found Sabah BN and Sabah UMNO are so hopelessly divided that it saw defeat staring at its face. Instead of taking a hard look at its position, BN hopes it could push its way through victory. It could. But for how long?

The Prime Minister has not lost his taste for extravagance. He spends the country's money as if there is no tomorrow. He suffuses himself with every modern gadet worth hundreds of millions of US dollars to show he can. He has all but bankrupted the nation with his penchant for massive structures and other loss-making projects. He has helped bankrupt Petronas with his desire for a national capital that would rival any on earth and last centuries. But it is constructed so it would not last decades. Especially with our fascination for building but not maintaining it. Pak Lah now calls for a "culture of maintenance". It is nothing new. Dr Mahathir had called for it several times. So did his predecessors, Tun Hussein Onn, Tun Abdul Razak, Tengku Abdul Rahman. How could there be when huge sums are set aside for maintenance do not trickle down to the company who is to do it. So much of it has been siphoned off that there is little left for it. Compound that with a nationwide belief that money-making is more interesting than working for a living, and that cannot be erased with frequent calls for a maintenance culture. Go to the toilets at the ultramodern Kuala Lumpur International Airport, or indeed into the government offices in Putra Jaya, and you would know what I mean.

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