THE KHAIRY CHRONICLES, now in its 23rd part in Malaysia Today, has become uncomfortable to the young man. Who writes it is not known, Raja Petra Raja Kamaruddin, editor and the driving force behind it, will not say. But it contains many bullets that UMNO enemies of Mr Khairy Jamaluddin, the son-in-law of the Prime Minister, use with damaging accuracy. Mr Khairy has come from nowhere, married Pak Lah's daughter, and runs the Malaysian government: Pak Lah depends on him, over tried and tested civil servants, who are forced to follow what Mr Khairy decides. As more damaging information comes to light, not only the Khairy Chronicles, they are picked up by his UMNO enemies, who distribute photostats of the original and Malay translation in their balliwicks. The Pengkalen Pasir byelection in Kelantan was not, in Mr Khairy's view, a byelection with PAS, although it was also that, but between his friends and enemies in UMNO. He is a young man in a hurry. He operates behind the scenes, puts his supporters in front. But he is now forced into the open. He does not like it.

Raja KAMARUDDIN Raja Abdul Wahid. A former commando, so he is also known as Raja Komando, a member of the Selangor royal family, close to the Selangor house. A former UMNO member who left like so many ohers when it betrayed its deputy president, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. Joined Parti Keadilan Nasional when it was formed. He had in the years in KeADILan refused every offer to return to UMNO, including offers of money. The Selangor mentri besar, Dato' Seri Mohamed Khir Toyo, interceded with him not to take him on in the 2004 general election.

All this highlights is UMNO's schizophrenic and chosen path to self-destruct. And looks to attack those it believes it can. It chose Raja Petra Raja Kamarudin's website, www.malaysia-today.net. Several articles and discussions question the fundamental bases of Malaysia, the role of Islam, and other politically contentious issues that by law are declared seditious. One questioned the right of Muslims preachers to attack other religions in their Friday prayers. But instead of attacking him and his website openly, it uses newspapers and religious leaders to do the mudslinging. Dato' Seri Najib kicked the ball first to insist to insist none should openly debate if Muslims could slander the followers of other religions, and promised to investigate the site, "Malaysia Today". The Federal Territory mufti, Dato' Mohamed Yusof Hussain, invites Raja Petra over to show how he deviates from Islam and he could help him return to the fold. But instead of inviting him, he used the mid-morning Malay tabloid, Harian Metro, in the New Straits Times stable to reply. But his intent was incendiary, not resolution. But Raja Petra has now come with a serious of questions on his website that he wants Dr Yusof to answer in Harian Metro before he would meet him.

An Oxbridge degree is not as unusual or rare as we make it out to be. The first Malay to graduate from Oxford was Raja Chulan ibni almarhum Sultan Abdullah of Perak in the 1890s. The late governor of Bank Negara Malaysia and the late Lord President, Tun Ismail Ali and Tun Suffian respectively, went to Cambridge on a Queen's Scholarship in the late 1930s. A young Malay engineer from Clare College, Cambridge, six years ago bested Mr Lee Kuan Yew's startling performance there in the 1940s. It so annoyed the soon-to-be Singapore prime minister, Mr Lee's son that when he visited his alma mater shortly after, that when he met the Malaysia-Singapore students union, but excluded all Malaysians from that meeting.

I run ahead of the story of Capt. Chandran. The 2nd Div commander, Maj.-Gen. Osman 'Otto", as he was known, insited he wanted to be directly involved in the follow up. Two regiments, 12 and 13 Royal Malay Regiment, were deployed for the counter-attack. The 13 RMR was led by the very professional Lieut.-Col. 'Robert' Mahmood; the 12 RMR by Lieut.-Col. Abdul Rahman Abdul Rashid, whose blood pressure shot up so dangerously that he had to be replaced by a 3 Recce Officer, Maj. Kenny Siebel, the first time ever that a non-Malay or non-British officer had commanded an RMR. The present chief of the armed forces chief, General Tan Sri Zaidi Zainuddin, also commanded this regiment and when he cowed in fear when it established contact with the CPM. But this is also the regiment commanded by the legendary Lieut.-Col. Raja Aman Shah, whose men would march with pride to certain death had he so desired.

In Lembah Pantai, the division chief, Raja Dato' Nong Chik, appointed to his committee several who lost in the divisional elections. It upset even Pak Lah, but he let it be. During the recent Kuala Lumpur UMNO liaison committee meeting, Raja Nong Chik used his fists to silence another division leader, who ribbed him, with others, mercilessly. On 02 December - six days after Hari Raya - a routine discussion on budgetary allocations between the minister in the Prime Minister's Department, Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor, and the second finance minister, Dato' Jamaluddin Jarjis, at the latter's office in the Treasury turned violent and they traded blows in front of witnesses. The two men are from Pahang, both fervent supporters of the defence minister and UMNO vice president, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, though JJ, as he is called, now is firmly in the Pak Lah camp. The latent political uncertainties about who should be Pak Lah's deputy prime minister makes UMNO politics the more volatile.

I now hear similar courting of KeADILan leaders by UMNO bigwigs. Dato' Mokhzani Mahathir, an UMNO Youth leader and the son of one Mahathir Mohamed, who once had a medical practice in Alor Star, has suggested to one KeADILan leader his political future is assured in UMNO. As no doubt is of the UMNO youth leader he suggested as mentri besar of Selangor, Dato' Seri Mohamed Khir Toyo. Every mentri besar is talking to likely KeADILan defectors. Dr Khir is in the game too. He recently invited the KeADILan activist, who goes by the name of Raja Kommando, a member of the Selangor royalty and a retired commando in the Malaysian armed forces. He was seen about a fortnight ago entering Dr Khir's private lift in the Shah Alam government complex. Other moves are made in other states. There is a pattern in these contacts which suggests official sanction. I do not yet know if any has taken the bait.

That is not all. the UMNO MP for Larut, Raja Dato' Ahmad Zainuddin Raja Omar, in a supplementary question, wanted to know how opposition smears, including the Harakah cartoon, had affected foreign investment to Malaysia. The answer: foreign investors are aware of the 'real' situation and know the government had made it profitable for their investment. Is this why then that foreign investment to Malaysia has almost dried up? Surely if it has, and the government is on the mark about attracting them, would it not have to look for a culprit other than its own inadequacies to blame. But there is nothing to worry. You know how disorganised the BN is when its parliamentary secretary in the Prime Minister has to appeal to the home ministry, in Parliament, to review the Harakah permit.

WHEN Raja TUN MOHAR RADA Badiozaman died an octogenarian last week, he was revered, rightly, as a giant amongst men in independent Malaysia. He served every prime minister from the first, and a sane civil service voice when politicians overrode and terrorised civil servants to do their bidding. He had retired gently out of the limelight a few years ago. He continued to do yeoman service behind-the-scenes. All but those who knew him and his immense contributions had cast him into the dungheap of Malaysian history. Official Malaysia forgot him until his death. The newspaper accounts of his death and his contributions did him no justice. He was a greater man than he is made out to be. Since he was, at death, a nobody, it was a perfunctory farewell. I did not know him, although I had met him, socially and as a reporter, several times; I knew better his younger brother, Lieut.-Gen. Raja Dato' Rashid Raja Badiozaman, who retired a few years ago as director of military intelligence.

DATO' SERI ANWAR IBRAHIM IS irrelevant in Malaysian politics. So believes the Malaysian government, the National Front (BN), UMNO, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. They have not wavered in this belief his conviction and incarcertation for what smacks of political vendetta than criminal intent. He is finished, they repeat ad nauseum, like sembayang hajat, the collective Muslim prayer for a desigened purpose. Yet when his eldest daughter, Nurul Izzah, was married to a Shell engineer, Raja Ahmad Shahrir Iskandar bin Raja Salim, over the weekend at his home in Kuala Lumpur, UMNO stalwarts, several who once believed Dato' Seri Anwar should remain in prison, were on hand to celebrate it. One cabinet minister was there, several sultans, the King of Thailand, the President of the Philippines sent presents and representatives. Dr Mahathir's redoubtable and irrepressible octogenarian sister-in-law, Datin Zaleha Ali, in her wheel chair, was there too. What must anger Dr Mahathir is that several prominent Malaysians asked to attend, and did.

Malaysia swamped the conference with a security so tight that it annoyed many a delegate. Mobile phones, radios andn other electronic devices were banned, but with no provision to park them when they could not be taken into the conference complex. It was made worse by those of the visiting delegations. For the first time, the armed forces was comandeered to provide the security surrounding the Putra World Trade Centre where the NAM Summit was held. It showed. The police took charge of security in the city at large. The Malaysian organisers of the conference worked on their own, unable to resolve conflicts that arose over the five days of the conference. To all this, add an abysmal ignorance on who is who, and a belief that the only VIP that matters, besides the foreign guests, are the ministers and officials they recognised. One retired and ailing VIP, whom Dr Mahathir wanted to be with him when he had breakfast with the delegation leaders, was only allowed to enter the complex in his car after a long hassle, but his car could not fetch him after it. He had to find his way to a spot a kilometre away, as he told me, in front of a KFC fast food outlet in Jalan Raja Chulan.

It was a smart advertising ploy by the Indian government to attract the Indian high and mighty from distant lands, not those who have lived their lives barely above the gutter since they were unceremoniously dumped centuries and decades ago. India looks askance at those Indians who became citizens of their adopted lands, as many of the 20 million have, and put legal and other impediments in their way when they have to interact with the Indian bureaucracy. They can expect little help and much hassle when they assert their rights, as when a woman of foreign Indian parentage, married to Indian citizens, want to become Indian citizens. Or to settle their inheritance in India. The hassles they undergo with Indian missions overseas to prove they are Indian is Kafkaesque. How does a Malacca chitty, whose ancestors reputedly came to Malay with the military expeditions of the Indian Chola King, Raja Raja Chola, in the 8th century and who has no trace of Indian features prove he is an Indian to an Indian bureaucrat? But the World Chinese Congress, at its meeting in the Mauritius a few years had no qualms of electing as its chairman one with a distinctively Indian name.

How do they do this? By sheer bribery. I know of three instances in recent years when a suitable amount of money slipped into the pockets of the religious affairs officials save them from further embarrassment. In the 1970s, a middling civil servant who later rose to be Malaysia's chief spy, was caught smooching with a young Malay lady within the grounds of the National Museum. Money was demanded of him which he did not have. And offered a cheque drawn on the Jalan Raja branch of the then Chartered Bank. When they turned at the bank to cash the cheque, they were arrested.

WHEN THE FEDERAL COURT allowed the habeas corpus petition of the Reformasi Five that their detentions under the Internal Security Act was illegal, it revealed what is an open secret: that men and women are detained under the ISA not for the crimes they are alleged to have committed but so they could build a case against them. The affidavits the Reformasi Five filed were not rebutted, and the Federal Court took the only decision it could: that they were wrongly detained. One, Raja Petra Raja Kamaruddin, had been released, the other four -- Mohamed Ezam Mohamed Noor; Tien Chua; Hishamudin Rais; Saari Sungib -- detained for two years under the ISA. The Federal Court could not therefore order their release. They were advised to refile their petitions for their release.

The MIC treasurer-general, Dato' M. Mahalingam, is caught for four unsettled traffice offences, is slapped four more, was not issued the summonses, but lauds the Royal Malaysian Police for tracking down the defaulters. What the police does is illegal. The summonses are entries in a police computer, not proof of summons taken out or served. It never was served. The de facto law minister, Dato' Rais Yatim, said it was illegal but quickly changed his mind when the police had a quiet word with him. The police (officially PDRM, but wags thinks it should be PRDM -- Polis Raja DiMalaysia!). What the police do is illegal, but if your name is in the computer, you must pay. No ifs and buts.

Now even Tuns are not exempt. In Malacca, the Akademi Kastam di-Raja Malaysia (The Royal Customs Academy of Malaysia or Akmal) has renamed its first hall from Dewan Tun Siew Sin, named after Malaysia's long-serving finance minister, to Dewan Serbaguna (Community Hall). Why? Akmal wrote to Tun Tan's widow, Toh Puan Tan that its halls should not be named after dead persons. In other words, Akmal has decided, as policy, it would in future only name its institutions after living persons, and rename them after they are dead. It is as usual a stupid excuse, one that demeans whatever Akmal is there to provide. Dig deeper, and you would find that the names of buildings or roads renamed invariably are non-Malay.

The 'new' Hamid, on the other hand, wanted to pack Tabung Haji with his own men, usually retired military men of lower rank and those he taught as a Malay teacher in, especially, Victoria Institution. He alienates the old timers in Tabung Haji to insist on changes for the sake of change or to belittle his predecessor. He now presides over a plan to remove Tabung Haji's money-making subsidiaries in a scheme which would make some individual happy but not the organisation. In this re-organisation, staff would be retrenched. A voluntary seperation scheme (VSS) is offered to the staff. Many accept, either by intent or force. And, to mix my religious metaphors, the Exodus has begun -- to PAS. They are fed up with being trampled while the wounded elephant runs amok because he feels he is not accepted as the Raja Gajah.

So, not surprisingly, my friend, Mr Shamsul Akmar, in his column in the New Straits Times today (16 Feb 2002), demands to know who the ex-minister is. This man, he contends, is a Trojan horse for American interests, and should be exposed. He arrives at this conclusion by way of how Britain established a beachhead in Malaysia by deciding upon Raja Abdullah as the Sultan of Perak from amongst feuding Malay chieftains, and kept Malay in British colonial domination. In other words, no one knows if the ex-minister is guilty, let us pillory him anyway!

Malaysia does not have friends amongst Muslim bodies in North America. So, what is the ISCNA? It is an organisation of Muslim organisations led by the Syaikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani. On its international advisory board sits, amongst others, Hanim Hussein, and Raja Ashman Shah. The former is the daughter of the late prime minister, Tun Hussein Onn, sister of the UMNO youth leader, Dato' Hishamuddin Hussein and cousin of the defence minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak. The latter is the son of the Sultan of Perak.

His eldest son, Tengku Idris Shah, was proclaimed the new ruler of Selangor as Sultan Sharafuddin Shah. The new King would be selected in four weeks, and the most likely is the Raja of Perlis, not the Sultan of Trengganu, who is the deputy King. The old cliches are brought out to show how popular the new Sultan is with the "rakyat" (people), and how there was no one as popular as him. One wonders why if the rulers are as popular when they are installed or die, there is this running campaign by those who proclaim how popular the rulers are to cut them down to size. But this carries on, because of the Malay insistence on form over substance. When the King died, the government announced that Muslim men must be in their national dress and have on their songkoks "a 3.8 cm white band" around them; non-Muslims must wear dark lounge suits, black ties, "and a 8.89 cm white armband worn on the left side". People don't go around measuring with such precision, but the bureaucrats insist it must, even if it is not.

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