But those who bought tickets last year were diverted on arrival to park their cars at the Putra Jaya mosque grounds. Buses were on hand to take them to the stand, but not when the races were over, and many had to pay RM70 and more by taxi for the short trip. Companies and organisations would be pressed to do national service -- indeed many have bought the tickets with no intention to use them, chalking it out to the costs of doing business -- but the hassles make it not their while to be at the track this weekend.

Or what it costs the government, according to the deputy director-general of education, Mr Abdul Raof Hussin, 50 per cent more to send a student overseas for his doctorate. This is the state of Tamil schools 46 years after the MIC became a member of the government. It is more expensive to educate a Ph.D. than to build a Tamil school! And the fence surrounding the Prime Minister's new residence in Putra Jaya costs half as much as building 13 Tamil schools.

Twentyfive years ago, I visited Kampung LBJ, a Felda settlers scheme in Negri Sembilan, a scheme named after the US President who had visited it a decade earlier, but the officials I accompanied treated them like small children that the shift to PAS could have been predicted. When Felda schemes are required for development, as for Putra Jaya and its related development, and settlers stood to gain more than a million ringgit each, they are shortchanged. Few have received what they were promised. The government raises their hopes, and cavalierly ignore them when they was promised is not what they get. Even UMNO officials there are incensed at moves like these.

Who could that be? There are two in the horizon: one in UMNO and one outside. Both do not hold, indeed were prevented from, office. But it is on them the Malay depends upon to bring him back to his cultural comfort. The Prime Minister finds this inimical to his governance. The evidence he totes out ignores that UMNO's cultural role of protector cannot sustain so long as he is in office. He cannot address Malay gatherings out of Putra Jaya. His writ does not run in UMNO general assemblies and supreme council. In the Lunas byelection, he cancelled a promised gathering, his first before the people who elected him into power. If he had, it is now clear, the opposition majority would have been more than 500 votes.

The Prime Minister's spanking modern new offices in Putra Jaya befits a leader of the Third World: isolated, opulent, garish, tacky. He is proud of it. His children and his cronies did their bit with their expensive shoddy, patchy work. It is far from the madding crowd. As you know, he is wary of crowds outside of Putra Jaya; so the crowds are brought to Putra Jaya so that they can gawk and thank the God Almighty for a leader who behaves like one. But the crowds, like Chinese educationists and Suqui, do not believe anything he says these days. Worse, even buildings in Putra Jaya embrace "reformasi": without warning and against the Prime Minister's orders, bits and pieces of the ceiling in his office come crashing down so that it now resembles his own befuddled mind; reformasi-minded airconductioning ducts and burst waterpipes forced the chief secretary, Tan Sri Abdul Halim Ali, from his well-appointed offices, which, like the Prime Minister's, resembles a war zone. Like the police in real life, he cannot staunch it.

The Prime Minister says he forbade UMNO youth and Malay groups from violent protests. "They were told I will personally deal with the issue," he said. And he did not. He orders and demands from his cloistered office in Putra Jaya, preaching hate and fury, that racial harmony is now at risk. The Suqui did not want the loss of Malay rights when it made the demands, of course, but that is how it must be read, says the Prime Minister. He is frightened that if Suqui had his way, the Malay would be left far behind. It would narrow the divide between the Malays and non-Malays, and that, in his view, is a bad thing.

Malaysia will host the OIC summit in Putra Jaya in 2003. The Prime Minister had gone to its last, in Doha, demanding no less. But Putra Jaya has no auditorium without superlatives to describe it. So, one would be built at speed, with money no object, for RM1 billion, give or take a few hundred million as it is fine tuned to garish opulence. No one can tell you how much it would eventually cost for not even the builders cannot be sure since the plans get changed by the hour, week, month, year. It would have been built with or without the OIC summit; but now that it would, the collosal expenses can be justified. This was decided upon long before it became the host for 2006. In his entourage to Doha was the architect who would make this maniacal dream to reality. In his bungalow in Sungei Buloh is spread the plans for this complex, to accommodate 135 or so heads of state, with facilities to match. Those who have seen the plans are aghast at this new, as usual, unmentioned project. I came to hear of it by accident, and the source clamped up when I asked for more details.

So, the Florida cliffhanger is not what it is made out. Both the Republicans and the Democratics are aware of the shortcomings of the electoral system, and take advantage of them as they can and when they can. There is a gentleman's agreement that this evens out in the end. The involved process of a constitutional amendment makes a change in the electoral system all but impossible; if Washington had hacked out an administrative centre for Washington out of George, as Kuala Lumpur has of Putra Jaya from Selangor, civil war could well have broken out. So, it is one of priorities and worldviews. Few realise that we know of the US system's faults from its mainstream media, while of the Malaysian shortcomings through little known NGOs and other non-governmental sources. The mainstream media would not even report them. That is the difference.

The mentris besar therefore acquire a more potent power in the state than the Prime Minister from Kuala Lumpur. More so in the wake of the dispute over petroleum royalties in Trengganu and the Putra Jaya transfer in Selangor. The next general election would be won or lost by how well they manage their states. Several in office are forced upon the states because the Prime Minister wants them. The office gives them power but in a contested environment as now, this forces him to take sides. This did not matter in the past because the Prime Minister was invincible then but now now. The recent appointment of Dato' Mohamed Khir Toyo in Selangor is a case in point. He is an unknown, with no political or other skills, but is appointed so that the Prime Minister would have Putra Jaya excised from the state without opposition. As one wholly dependant upon his support, Dato' Khir allowed the Prime Minister his way. But UMNO in Selangor does not like it, making the state unsafe for the National Front in 2004.

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