Putra Jaya, with its RM20 billions spent, with tens of billions of ringgit yet to, is built in similar fashion: like a government office. Everything is in its ordained place, because that is how it is done in an office, not there for the convenience of those who work, live and visit. Try to look for a toilet or a canteen for a bite before a meeting. Often you cannot afford it. The whole development is a fantasy and, despite the cost, badly built. It is not built for use, but to show the world that Malaysia has an administrative capital. If you do not have a car, just don't think of even going there. The buildings are overdone and badly built. The pink marbled mosque is tatty and must be repaired for tens of millions of ringgit. And it is less than six years old. The Prime Minister's residence is more like a palace fit for the Borgias, but built to Malaysian standards. The Prime Minister's office resembles a Middle Eastern office block, garish and expensive, and aloof. Once inside, one is likely to lose one's way, for it is poorly signposted, and with an unhelpful staff.

And there are funds for needless extravaganza: The RM1 billion spent on the just concluded Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit. The government waived excises and taxes of RM450 million for the cars so crony establishments could make a killing selling the expensive cars, mostly the high-end Mercedes Benzes and BMWs. And again in October when Malaysia hosts the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC). No stops are pulled and no expense spared in Putra Jaya to build facilities from scratch and residences so oil-rich oil sheikhs could wallow in needless luxury for a few days.

The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) Summit is due in Putra Jaya in October. Could it fall back on the NAM Summit arrangements to not make the mistakes it made? No. Another group, with their own ideas of how to spend the money, start from scratch. Malaysia reinvents the wheel every day. Besides, she loses her balance when she deals with foreigners, the more if they are Arabs and Caucasian Westerners. Australia did not understand this when it sent its top Indian-origin diplomat as high commissioner to smoothen bilateral feathers. He left two years later, with more Malaysian problems in Canberra's plate. Malaysia has to fight against Malay xenophobia and xenophobic defences when it interacts with the world. The OIC Summit is the next to have ample opportunities to prove it yet again.

If tin pot despots from Africa should ride only in the BMW 745is, with exclusive NAM number plates, what would the sheikhs, kings and emirs of the Middle East ride in when they come to attend the OIC conference in Putra Jaya later this year? Another BMW product, the Rolls Royces? Why? What is wrong with the armour-plated Proton Executives? Or indeed BMW 745is? But with special NAM number plates, it is bought only for NAM. A small squiggle: are these properly registered number plates, or as is normal, decided by a lowly bureaucrat to be used for a conference, and then forgotten? Or has the government decided to buy as many BMW 745is, have special OIC number plates, for the OIC summit?

With the Non Aligned Movement summit in Kuala Lumpur next month, it showed not a Malaysia which provides the democratic space for its citizens that is denied in many a non-aligned country, but a country which deliberately curtails that freedom so that it can join the crowd. Malaysia, for all its support of President Bush's war on terror, has shifted the blame on to the opposition PAS, and its acolytes, for fuelling the war on terror, and acts hard against them. But Malaysians are in that select group of Muslim countries who are under sufferance when they visit the United States. Until this view is ameliorated, the summit of Islamic nations in Putra Jaya at year's end will pander to the West's misconceptions of democratic space in Islamic countries.

When Muslims celebrate Aidil Fitri after the Ramadhan fasting month, in Malaysia it is to gauge the popularity of its leaders. But there are structured rules that one ignores at one's peril. No one, especially a cabinet minister, should have more visitors than the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed in Putra Jaya. If he has, one would not notice it from reading the mainstream press. Every Muslim has his "Open House", to which all and sundry is invited. But no count is kept of how many came acalling.

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.

The EC has amended the rules with such abandon so the BN would always be on a winning streak. In the latest constituency delineation, UMNO wanted Putra Jaya to be a parliamentary constituency, and the EC obliged, even if Putra Jaya only had 85 voters. The largest constituency has more than 100,000 voters. No one, not even the Opposition has challenged it. This is where the process of elections is so mired in controversy. It would not be long before the EC would find itself at a dead end.

Tan Sri Tajudin Ramli bought a six-year-old Daimler for RM1. The aim is to beggar whoever takes over a company. If it would not, then excellent management strategies are in place. While Khazanah owns the race-track, its management is in the capable hands of the super inefficient MAB. This is not new. Khazanah also owns the Star and Putra light rapid transit systems (and, in due course, as it must, the Monorail) but it is run by the same management team that provided the conditions for it to take over. On the principle that you get the thief to guard the treasury. That worked with the Maharajah of Jaipur's treasury. The treasure remained intact. The Maharajah of Putra Jaya, on the other hand, thanks the thieves for making the treasury disappear and keep them in charge for the treasure to come.

The UMNO president, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, is not amused. The final Election Commission list of new parliamentary and state constituencies is not final. What the EC could not, UMNO has. The new list is rigged for it contains phantom voters who are bussed in from elsewhere by the Islamic party, PAS, to cause UMNO to lose. The EC, which earlier said only those registered in the constituency could object to irregularities to deny political parties the right to object to the list as a whole, quickly fell into line and promised to investigate. Even before UMNO has submitted a formal request. Like every institution of state, the EC is flawed, and its commissioners take orders from the National Front (BN) government. How else could it, in constitutional conscience, allow a parliamentary constituency for Putra Jaya with only 85 voters? Its independence is such that it distinguishes between government and opposition parties, to insist, for instance, that the National Front is a governing party even when it is not, like in Kelantan and Trengganu.

In empires of old, the emperor has a court jester to provide comic relief. In the new Malaysian (virtual) empire, the emperor in his spanking, built to imperial order, capital, Putra Jaya, has his. Like all imperial clowns, he is unpredictable, often makes people cry when they should laugh, laugh when they should cry, drive all up the wall, occasionally with ideas above his station, often losing his head metaphorically, politically, literally with his belief he is the Emperor's alter ego. In the court of Emperor Mahathir Mohamed of the Malaysian National Front (BN) empire, the court jester is the deputy transport minister, Dato' M. Kayveas. He was brought in to put the MIC leader, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu in his place, and cause as much havoc as he can when political parties in the governing coalition need to be put in their places.

When a policy is decided and implemented on the run, it opens up communal tensions, anger, a deliberate move away from the multiracial society Malaysia is. The Malays decide on Malaysia's future with no thought to the non-Malays who reside in it. The non-Malays retreat into a self-contained communal society from which it moves out only when they have to. The government once had a policy of mixing up the races in housing projects. But that fell by the wayside when Shah Alam and Putra Jaya were built. Both are Malay cities to which the non-Malay ventures on sufferance, much like the black in the Orange Free State in apartheid South Africa. The Roman Catholics in Shah Alam cannot build a church on land alloted to them in the Shah Alam Master Plan for that purpose. Nor Hindus a temple. The state government has since decided that promises are meant to be broken to make Shah Alam a quintessential Malay, and by constitutional inference, Muslim city. As Dr Mahathir wants a federal capital that is quintessentially Malay in character and form.

The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, insists his cabinet is at the cutting edge, not chopping block, of Malaysia's development and progress. He does not say it is in the same league, no doubt, as Perwaja Steel, the Employees Provident Fund, Renong, United Engineers Malaysia, Petronas, Telekom, MAS, Putra Jaya, all synonyms for Malaysia's "development and progress". But hear him out: "This cabinet of ours, which we know and other's don't, is more relaxed than those of other countries. Sometimes we hear raucous laughter in the Cabinet as if they are not serious and are just attending a social function." He implies that others like Mr Goh Chok Tong, Mr Tony Blair, Mr Atul Bihari Vajpayee drool at the prospect of having the excellent Malaysian ministers in their cabinet as Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, Datin Rafidah Aziz, Dato' Seri Syed Hamid Albar, Datin Shahrizat Jalil. With them around, Malaysia's future is in good hands. No doubt theirs too. No doubt it is. Which is why they insist on staying on in the cabinet even after they have long begun their retirement in office. So they could be auctioned off to the highest bidder from foreign countries who need them.

The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, wants Putra Jaya as a parliamentary constituency. It has only 85 registered voters. The EC bends over backwards to make it one. Even St Kitts, the Carribean island, with less than 10,000 voters, would baulk at such a shocking gerrymandering. Not in Malaysia.

When in his personalised rule, he became the demagogue a' la Sukarno, administration went out the window. What is said was right, even if wrong. Parliament is reduced to a rubber stamp which the government consults if it is in the mood to. Government is run without Parliamentary oversight, as it spends of tens of billions of ringgit in development and privatisation projects. Putra Jaya, billed as Malaysia's new capital, is built without Parliamentary oversight, the funds coming from an off-budget agency, Petronas. None mentions it is not a capital but a gamble that the underlying land would rise in price so high that profit could be made, its development as skewed as, say, the Bakun hydroelectric project. There is no accountability, and no one cares if there is.

His feudal stock declined with his arrival. The promised 10,000 welcoming crowd, later increased to 40,000, became a mere 5,000. UMNO leaders and warlords could, or would, not deliver. He is now toted as a caliph to strengthen his Islamic credentials, and Radio Talivisyen Malaysia recently telecast a documentary praising him as one. This induced self-delusion would continue to cause him to leave early. Other inconstencies appear. His staying on until October 2003, so he could chair the Organisation of the Islamic Conference summit in Putra Jaya, prevents his designated successor of a free hand.

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