Today, even BN-run states opt for state rights when Kuala Lumpur encroaches. Kuala Lumpur's unnegotiated demand for Putra Jaya in Selangor raises the political and nationalistic ire in the state. The Prime Minister wants it without the state assembly having a say. The centre jeopardises the territorial integrity by insist that what it says goes, even if wrong. What it says, in any case, is always right. In the short term, it could win. But not in the long run. Kuala Lumpur pours oil over federalist waters.

The Prime Minister is caught in his own trap. Two days earlier, the finance minister, Tun Daim Zainuddin, in his budget speech, boasted of a well-entrenched Malaysian which could not be shaken off its perch, a state possible only under the glorious reign of the Emperor of Putra Jaya, and despite the treachery of the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange and He Who Must Be Destroyed At All Cost. If the economy is so strong, how could a score of ill-organised Anwaristas, even with their own spin doctor, dissuade foreign investors on a sure path to profits and wealth? Chile, at the height of the Pinochet dictatorship, was the fastest growing economy in South America, despite orchestrated foreign and local pressure to inhibit foreign investment. She succeeded because her spin doctors were facile enough to keep one step ahead of the opposition. Malaysia fails because her economy is make-believe, papered-over, without the resilience we are told it has.

The states have cause to worry. The federal governments wants Putra Jaya hived off from Selangor for peppercorn rates. The state is disallowed its constitutional rights. The former mentri besar, Dato' Seri Abu Hassan Omar, is forced out for un-Islamic marital infidelity because he refused to hand over Putra Jaya. His successor, Dato' Mohamed Khir Toyo, is chosen because he is malleable. UMNO's unspoken fear is Selangor, not Pahang, would fall to a PAS-led coalition in 2004. The Selangor Royal Council, which must approve the alienation of Putra Jaya before the state assembly, was told bluntly by the sultan, who is also Yang Dipertuan Agung, it should not question the cession and could question only the quantum paid; when it did that, the Prime Minister bluntly told them the financial terms are non-negotiable: Selangor has no choice but to agree on Kuala Lumpur's terms. With its huge majority in the state assembly, this bill would pass. But it could sink the National Front as well. The opposition would probably ask for a division, and those who voted for it could well face, at the next general election, intrusive public questioning of why handed Putra Jaya to Kuala Lumpur on a platter.

The Prime Minister finds public appearances at home and abroad too stressed for his own good. His senior civil servants think it time he went. He skipped a dinner in his honour by retired senior civil servants for fear of empty seats. Malaysian students in the United Kingdom and the United States question him in a manner he would not tolerate on home ground. But he cannt set foot in Malaysian universities and many Malaysian institutions without an army guarding him for fear of an even more virulent response. Even UMNO members look upon him these days as a Greek bearing gifts. He cannot expect a full hall nowadays for his speeches, unless his officers order it filled by hook or crook. It is not unusual for the hall to be empty 30 minutes before his intended appearance. In his Persiopolis of Putra Jaya, civil servants must, with no exception, fill the hall. The Emperor should not know he is naked.

The Prime Minister suggested the only free date he had. But the uninterest among its members -- several I know bought tickets with no intention to attend; others flatly refused -- forced the Prime Minister's office to turn victory into defeat. Plans were hatched for a packed hall. And backfired. When the guest, especially when he is the Prime Minister, must ensure a packed audience to a dinner in his honour, something must give. And did. The stark reality that loyal senior retired Malaysian civil servants -- all right PTD Alumni, if you like -- may not as loyal to him as the Prime Minister desired foretold the reality. At the Royal Selangor Club last Wednesday, the day before the dinner, several of the "Alumni" thought I had gone bonkers for asking if they would attend! But the Prime Minister, by not attending, destroyed his expectations of support from within the administration and the establishment. He was roundly criticised at a meting he had with senior civil servants at Putra Jaya after the November 1999 general elections. He has left for the United Kingdom to face more vocal opposition at his Cambridge University Malaysia Society-organised speech on "Malaysia in the New Millennium" from European human rights and environmental NGOs. He ran into heavy weather during his visit to Chicage last month, when pro-Anwar demonstrations destroyed his equanamimity.

More serious problems face him at home. The civil service, normally docile and subservient, has told him bluntly where he got off. After the November 1999 general elections, he called in 250 senior civil servants to Putra Jaya to tell them what he wanted from them and to find out their views on the government. He got more than he bargained for. They told him bluntly what they thought of him, that he handled the Anwar affair badly, that they did not like his ways not the rampant corruption his long term in office spawned, with the civil service, from top to bottom, distancing themselves from his excoriation of the former deputy prime minister, now in Sungei Buloh prison. They did not like the deliberate isolation of those who did not support him wholeheartedly or, worse, suspected of being friendly, let alone support, He Who Must Be Destroyed At All Cost. The Prime Minister clearly did not expect what he got. The top ranks of the service, except those who back him wholeheartedly -- a figure one civil servant put at "one percent loyalists and about 10 per cent hangers-on", move away from him, and by extension his administration. This does not, of course, account for the large group of civil servants who would rather duck out of the discussion: but they would shift their support for survival when the Prime Ministerial ship sinks. Today, it is not unusual to find PAS and Keadilan members in this group. In the lower ranks, the PAS intrusion is so widespread that officers holding sensitive posts are ordered to deliver sensitive messages and files themselves.

So the University of Malaya challenges the government's intentions by refusing the Chinese to have their Lantern Festival. Malaysia, after all, is pristine Malay country, the government and UMNO believe, and other religious and racial festivals should not be encouraged, except when they come in handy to prove to foreign tourists of Malaysia's cultural and multiracial diversity. So, while the culture and tourism ministry espouses this diversity, the education ministry would rather hoist the red flag of division. That people seek comfort in their own hind is a sign of fear in today's Malaysia. This exacerbate when the government rather than tell the truth would rather tell fables. Fiction, in the official view, is more reliable than truth. The Malaysians are mollycoddled with the good news, that the KLSE fundamentals are such that it is cushioned against falls, as it heads for its extended summer holidays in Australia and the South Pole. We are so awash with cash that Petronas has to come in to pay salaries, build the Malaysian government's "administrative centre" in Putra Jaya. That the government must build the East Coast Highway, without explaining why: the private sector has found it uneconomic, the traffic projections picked out of thin air, but not building it would reduce cronies, siblings and courtiers of the administration short of funds.

Yet when the Development & Commercial Bank, now the RHB Bank, built its headquarters, now that of Tan Sri Tajuddin Ramli's business empire, just behind the temple, one express condition was that building must blend with the temple in front, which should not be touched. Such concern amongst officials, usually Malay, was what saved numerous nineteenth century buildings from twentieth century disfiguration. The Anglican St Mary's cathedral beside the Royal Selangor Club and Dataran Merdeka wanted to remodel its front, but was not allowed to, in the early 1980s, because the Muzium Negara objected, insisting that the national heritage would be defaced. Today, the civil servant works hand in hand with politicians and developers to destroy such heritages handed down to us. It began in the early 1980s, when rather than retain the beautiful wooden house of such distinction as the Prime Minister's official residence, it was gutted and a new monstrosity built over it, where he does live any more, not after his Istana Rakyat is built in Putra Jaya. No one shed a tear then, except those interested in the heritage of our forefathers. From then, every thing had a price, and had to be destroyed in the name of progress. When the LRT was being built, one official suggestion, quickly disabused, was to disfigure the Sri Mariamman Temple in Jalan Bandar, another religious building more than a century old. But Hindu temples also get disfigured: Look at the Sri Kandaswamy Temple in Brickfields, built in the waning years of the nineteenth century, but recently completely rebuilt.

The Malaysian government until recently insisted the public should have no role in the formulation of policy unless it is to support it. The opposition political parties are irrelevant since they are not the government. The views of any but the National Front should be ignored because it has the people's support. So, the new capital of Putra Jaya is built without discussion, burdening the country with billions of ringgit in wasteful and irrelevant construction cost. The privatisied highway is thrown at the people to take it or leave it; that if they left it, no further highways would be built; that tolls would be raised with indecent haste and intervals because it was more important for crony business men to make money than the people's ability to pay for it. Important laws are disallowed an opportunity for serious discussion. The public need not know about all that. After all, it was they elected the government; would the government dare do anything against their interest? Of course not, says that eminent pillar of the administration, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu as he seeks more creative ways to raise tolls; of course not, says Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik as he seeks more creative ways to raise the Prime Minister on a pedestal. The government provides government funds running into millions of ringgit every year for government members of parliament; why should such facilities be given to the enemies of the people that are the in the opposition?

Charles Dickens, in his novel on the French Revolution, The Tale of Two Cities, asks if removing one thousand aristocrats would be a calamity to the nation. The revolutionaries clearly thought not, as it indeed it proved. Are one thousand aristocrats more valuable to a nation than one thousand chambermaids? Or one thousand school teachers? Or one thousand newspaper boys? This extends the age-old conundrum on whether society exists to benefit the community or a section of the community. Can a thousand Amin Shahs ever be worth a thousand Indonesian maids? Can a thousand Vincent Tans and Ting Pek Khiings equal one thousand Lin Yutangs? Can a thousand Samy Vellus ever equal one, yes, one, Rabindranath Tagore? Is the Petronas Twin Towers, Kuala Lumpur International Airport, the Bakun No-Dam and Putra Jaya worth more than a regular unrestricted supply of clean water or clear traffic or a good health service?

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