A few days later, his wife, Datin Seri Wan Aziz Wan Ismail, was assured that he is well looked after. He was not. It took a Royal Commission to ferret this out, Tan Sri Rahim was convicted and jailed. The National Front (BN) government did not expect this to come out. But it did not flinch. It went ahead and convicted him on unsound and unfounded charges of corruption and sodomy, denying him the defendant's legal right to rebut the charges, and sentenced him to six years on one and nine years on the other. The appeal courts have deliberately delayed his appeals, threatened his lawyers, committing two for contempt of court.

But in independent Malaysia, the humanising elements of an otherwise unconscionable law is progressively withdrawn so that one detained under the ISA has no rights whatsoever. He is at the mercy of his captors. It gets worse by the year. It is only the ministers who insist that this gratuitous violence does not exist. How could the Inspector-General of Police no less take the law into his own hands, and beat the manacled and blindfolded just detained former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim to an inch of his life. The police then insisted he was well. It took a Royal Commission to reveal the torture inflicted on him.

So, it did not surprise when he called on the Royal Commission on the Police Force to start putting its "ideas" into action immediately. Good suggestions should be accepted, and implemented, if they can be without amending laws. The Leader of the Opposition, Mr Lim Kit Siang, accepts it with alacrity. How did this come about? The Royal Commission chairman, Tun Dzaiddin Abdullah, suggested it when he met the IGP, Dato' Seri Mohamed Bakri Omar, and other senior police officers, and relayed what they had received. This seems to be out of line. The Royal Commission is not at liberty to talk about its hearings before it presents its report to the Yang Dipertuan Agung. Pak Lah, by suggesting it, is out of line. Whatever comes out should be in the report when it is submitted and published. The conditions of the Commission would have been clearly spelt out; there is no provision for its findings to be enforced in stages. Besides, must the Royal Commission share its preliminary findings with the police in the course of its investigations? What the Commission unearths is nothing new. The police know of it. Why cannot it do so on its own bat, and no demean the Royal Commission needlessly.

It reflects one ignored problem: the Malay civil servant and UMNO politician has a vested interested in ensuring their joint survival. This is more serious than it appears in the surface. For the New Economic Policy, which brought the rural Malay into the frontline of Malaysian life, is now turned on its head. Jointly, these two groups have shortchanged the Malays in the heartland, and suffers the non-Malay only when they need him for their survival. What the EC did in this poll is not unexpected. Nor is it the first time it had. But in the past, the essential professionalism of the civil service and a shared belief in the country's destiny while making sure the government remained in office was done so seamlessly that no one could be blamed for allegations of poll rigging. Not this time. It was done so hamfistedly that even the Malay is angry at being denied his right to vote. The EC chairman, Tan Sri Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman, tried to explain what went wrong, gave up the ghost, and called for a Royal Commission no less. Fresh from his unbelievable victory, Pak Lah was in no mood to consider it. He had won fairly and squarely, and if the EC had made a mess, how is he to be blamed for it. So he holds his ground.

THE OFFICIAL AND MAINSTREAM media now takes no notice. Not because it is not an issue, but that it is. The swirling controversy about the 2004 General Election will not abate. But ignoring it would not either. The prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, is in power but paradoxically not in control. The Election Commission, which organised the election, realised too late it did not control how the elections were conducted. Its chairman, Tan Sri Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman, realised it with a shock but lost his head. The more he talked the more doubts grew that the elections were flawed beyond dispute. He contradicted himself with each press conference, until unable to keep track of his post-election justifications he called first for an official probe, than a Royal Commission. Pak Lah shot it down. He would not want his tremendous victory sullied by a credible report affirming the electoral fixing that led to it. So he stonewalls it. But there comes a time, in this fallout, when the power that be realises, as now, that it cannot justify how it came to power. So it shuts up, and hopes all would. it could not be more wrong.

Even assuming the EC could make a case for the extension of polling hours, it could only for Selangor, but not for the parliamentary constituencies in the state. For that comes under different rules. As it is, in Selangor, those voting for their parliamentary candidates, had an advantage the other states did not have. The Opposition parties have come out with a list of constitutional and legal errors in how the general election was conducted. The EC fell flat on its face. Its chairman, Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman, has called for a Royal Commission. But it was immediately rejected by the BN president and prime minister, Pak Lah. More important, it is an admission by the EC that it failed in its task, and one so serious, that the 2004 general election could well have been illegal. The EC ignored its constitutional duty and made ad hoc arrangements, the most serious of which was the electoral list. In elections, the last properly gazetted electoral list is used. It may have been gazetted months earlier. That was how it had been all along. This time, the electoral list was to be the one issued to candidates on nomination day. But it was not. By all accounts, one gazetted on 15 March, two days after nomination day, and even one gazetted two days after 21 March were uised.

THE PRIME MINISTER, DATO' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, got what he wanted in last month's general elections - his National Front (BN) decimated the opposition. But it turns out a pyrrhic victory. The BN won, that is all that matters. But that is not how it is viewed. The Election Commission changed the rules at will, breaking its own rules with impunity, electoral rules and voting hours changed at will, and ad hoc, which if its own rules are followed, vitiates the polls. Its chairman changes his version of what happened at every press conference that he himself suggested a Royal Commission to sort it out. Pak Lah would not agree. But the prime minister is an interested party, and he, with a vested interest in its outcome, should not decide; at the very least, all political parties should have been consulted. In Selangor, the least the EC could do is to order fresh elections. But it is powerless to order that.

But the EC's case is flawed. Tan Sri Abdul Rashid, in earlier press statements, after the polls, thought the flaws and mishaps serious enough to demand a Royal Commission to look into it. But there would be no Royal Commission: the BN president, Pak Lah, has decided against it. It proves, if nothing else, that he is answerable not to the King who appoints him, but to the man he takes orders from. When the EC chairman himself is in doubt about the poll results to demand a Royal Commission, no amount of whitewash can whiten the EC's dark deeds. Now he comes up with more. He blames the national printer, PNMB's proof readers for the mistake in the Sungei Lembing state constituency in Pahang for substituting the PAS symbol against the KeADILan candidate. Then he admits the EC officials, in Pahang, and the polling stations, ignored EC directives to check and countercheck all ballot papers. He has his reasons why they did not, but they do not count: they had a constitutional duty, and they breached it. They should no be asked to explain why.

The EC chairman is defensive. Dato' Wan Ahmad prepares a report on the EC, which would be ready soon. Tan Sri Abdul Rashid, has second thoughts about it. He wants an independent inquiry, even if necessary a Royal Commission. He fights for a reputation already in tatters. In 1994, when he was EC secretary, it was he who forced the opposition party in Sabah which won the election, the Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) of Dato' Joseph Pairin Kitingan, to gather outside the residence of the Yang Dipertua Negri (governor), for 48 hours and with portable toilets in tow. Tan Sri - as he was not then - Rashid would not convey to the Yang Dipertua Negri the PBS's victory to give time for the pro-Kuala Lumpur parties to persuade, with millions of ringgit in cash, PBS state assemblymen to defect. He is, in UMNO's eyes, a reliable man who would do whatever it wants of him. He could have softened the blow to himself by accepting the blame and promptly resigning. He did not. That is his misjudgment. He is about to become an official pariah. And more. Once he was a valued member of the congregation of his local mosque, the Abu Bakar as-Siddiq, in Bangsar. Now he would come for prayers, and leave immediately. Could he, after this electoral mess, go there at all?

The EC was happy to be the BN's hand maiden. It failed for no reason than that all institutions in the Mahathir epoch had: the systematic denigration of all it stood for. It is around now only to ensure the BN's continued victory with an eagerness for the electoral gymnastics of the kind that African leaders like Zimbabwe's Mr Robert Mugabe is more at home with. The EC chairman, Tan Sri Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman is blase at what he wrought: amongst others, the opposition denied the full electoral rolls until nomination day. They had to work with a deliberately flawed and incomplete rolls the EC had given them earlier. This made their campaign all the more difficult, but when this was brought to the EC's attention, it suggested, they ought to spread their message in ceremahs, not house-to-house campaigns for which they would have no time anyway! Tan Sri Abdul Rashid insisted he had done no wrong with the mess he presided, promising to resign if the finger is pointed directly at him. He is blamed by both the BN and the opposition. There are calls for a Royal Commission, fresh elections especially in Selangor, to revamp the EC. It is too late for that. The rubicon is crossed. Malaysian politics moves irrevocably to another plane, in common with third world societies than the first, where leaders would allow general elections only when they are guaranteed victory.

Amidst this, if Pak Lah gets his sweeping two-thirds majority, his tenure in office is flawed. He must act quickly to bring sanity back to the electoral system. Nothing short of a Royal Commission would do. It must look into the debacle, it must allow the Leader of the Opposition to nominate two or three members of the EC, change drastically how it conducts itself. If the EC's dereliction of duty is serious, he must call for fresh elections, and allow election monitors from interested groups, and have a group of well-known worthies to whom representations can be made by the voter and candidate of whatever irks him. The returning officers must be hauled up for not attending to their assigned task. This cannot be pushed under the carpet. We only know of the mishaps in areas where there is interest. It is fair to assume that the mistakes in the Klang Valley could well occur in other constituencies. The mind of the civil servant is not to rock the boat. The civil servants are the returning officers in the election. It did all it could not to rock the boat. It is surprising that the BN leaders had not claimed victory, and told Malaysians they do the country proud for giving them another chance to serve. The BN did not realise that the ground had shifted from it. Pak Lah's nice-guy image and his promise of better things to come is not enough. The voter now holds him to account. He must think of recouping his reputation. Even if he has to call for fresh general elections under a more honest EC. Otherwise he is in more trouble than he thinks he is in.

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