But Pak Lah must pay the price of his predecessor, Tun Mahathir Mohamed's profligacy. The BN government insisted it would do as it likes, brooked no opposition, especially from Parliament, the voters there only to vote it in and shut up. It has all the answers. It does not make mistakes. The Prime Minister will decide. The cabinet will approve what he wants. The one required qualification to be in it is incontrovertible proof he or she cannot and will not think, will parrot the prime minister's view creatively, has no independent power base, would rather sell his country than even think of disobeying his prime minister. To make sure of it, Tun Mahathir Mohamed would hold four day courses - first at Kem Bina Semangat, Pasir Panjang, Teluk Kemang in Negri Sembilan, then in Langkawi - for the cabinet, secretaries-general, UMNO leaders in and out of government. He breaks them down psychologically, subliminally subverts their minds, make them hold an egg in their hands at all times, and they must never let it break. The egg represents national unity and integration, he tells them, so fragile that it can only be saved with constant care and attention. Why he took no action against the two cabinet ministers - Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu and Datin Rafidah Aziz - who would not attend is unclear. But when ministers are dropped, or jailed, for nay saying, the message is clear. Incidentally, the only other instructor of this couse was Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. Tun Mahathir's anger towards him has much to do with this gamekeeper turning poacher.

For cracks begin to show amongst coalition partners. The MCA president, Dato' Ong Ka Ting, is under attack from state leaders over the division of spoils, affirming that the underlying split in the party remains as intractible as ever. It is a mistake to assume the split is over personalities; it is over how the MCA should evolve in the new and changed political circumstances: whether it should be handmaiden to UMNO to the detriment of the community or it should reform into the voice of the Chinese community with leaders willing to put it above self to lead them. The MIC cannot believe its luck in the general elections, and its superannuated president, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, believes it can act as the MCA president does, and retain the respect of the community he represents. In Sarawak and Sabah, all is not well with the BN parties in power, for the same reasons as in the peninsular. This is the dilemma in all the non-UMNO coalition partners.

His hold on UMNO would depend how he manages after the June elections. He must order branch and divisional elections soon to prepare for that. He could not therefore shake up his cabinet sharply that key UMNO bigwigs could stay away or oppose him. He is seen in UMNO as a weak leader. The party warlords flex their muscles. Which is why he re-appointed as mentris besar those he would rather not have. What complicated his plans was his electoral victory. He cannot now take chances. Which is why, for instance, he has eight ministers without portfolios in the prime minister's department; cut the portfolios of ministers he did not like - the MIC president, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu and the MCA president, Dato' Seri Ong Ka Ting, for istance - and dropped those he could with impunity - Tengku Adnan Mansor, for one. He did not bring into the cabinet those UMNO thought should be - Dato' Shahrir Samad, for instance - but then he cannot afford, at least now, strong men in his cabinet. He has brought back into the cabinet refugees from the old Semangat '46 party of Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, and all beholden to him.

This is why the BN is both strong and weak. When the BN president is in control, he will crack all dissent, and choses the candidates. That puts the party leaders also on the line. But when he is weak, as now, the war lord party leaders defy the BN president to sideline their political enemies. The official spin is that the BN president, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, decides on the candidates. Not this time. The individual party leaders announced his candidate list as Pak Lah struggles to complete his. It should have been ready early this week, and announced today (11 March 2004), two days before nomination day. But last night, the list is not final. The MIC president, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, thumped his nose at Pak Lah to announce his list. He dropped his deputy, Dato' S. Subramaniam, making it clear that for all the support he had given him, the man is disloyal and ungrateful. Typical of BN party leaders, he would not admit it to reporters: no one is dropped, he insisted, but a change is made to the list. Dato' Subra is not told of his fate, and learns of it on television.

THE MIC PRESIDENT, DATO' Seri S. Samy Vellu, does not know if his deputy, Dato' S. Subramaniam, is a candidate in this month's general election. "It is the prerogative of the party president and prime minister," he thundered. "I am not going to make any statement on this." When MIC leaders beg and cry before him for a "chance to serve the people", and Dato' Seri Samy only wants sycophantic leaders, is Dato' Samy denied his seat because he did not beg, cry and kowtow low enough? Johore MIC leaders talk of a new MIC MP. Tamil papers are sure he is out. His supporters are distraught and convinced he is out. There is no love lost between the two men. Dato' Seri Samy would rather he disappear into thin air. He saw the prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, yesterday, but "it was on other matters". He was dropped once, in 1990, after he challenged Dato' Seri Samy for the MIC presidency, brought into the government as a senator as deputy agriculture minister. He was MP for Segamat after 1995. He is close to Pak Lah, whose relationship with the MIC president is at best tetchy.

The MIC president, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, is dismissive of party leaders who beg and cry to him for seats. He has promised a total revamp of MIC candidates. His definition of new faces is unique: since many of those in Parliament and state assemblymen have had put on false hair and other beauty treatments, they are in fact new faces. As for his own seat of Sungei Siput, he has decided that an MIC candidate there must have served the constituency as an elected member of parliament for at least three decades. Which is why he stands there yet again.

That is not all. In Cameron Highlands, the Indian community leaders warned that if Dato' Kayveas is not the candidate, the Indians, 27 per cent of the voters, would boycott or spoil the ballot papers. All of a sudden, this safe seat, with the opposition expected to get no more than 21 per cent of the votes, became marginal if the Indians carried out the threat. This is not as far-fetched as it seems. In 1969, the MCA replaced a popular state assemblyman for Kuala Kubu Bahru in Selangor; more than 5,000 of his supporters spoilt their ballots, far more than the winner's tally. What is surprising is the Malaysian Indian Congress's absence here. It once had a state assemblymen here. But an aggressive Dato' Kayveas established his credentials there. It is not known if he would now get the constituency, but the resurgent PPP is one to watch. It is this that led the MIC president, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, to consider him as his possible successor. The other major Indian grouping, Dato' M.G. Pandithan's Indian Progressive Front, is lost in the wilderness. The IPF is not in the BN, with no chance it would so long as the MIC leader would not allow it. It is fair to assume he would not the PPP either, if it was not already in the BN.

The BN is a coalition of 14 political parties under UMNO's leadership. Its election committee is drawn from UMNO and the member parties: this time it consisists of three UMNO officials wearing BN hats: Tan Sri Khalil Yaakob, the BN secretary-general, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, the BN deputy president, curiously, both from Pahang, and the BN's president's UMNO representative. There is a reason why this committee is UMNO dominated. Pak Lah has yet to meet the MCA president, Dato' Seri Ong Ka Ting, for one-on-one talks over lunch or dinner. It is not for want of trying. He has had similar meetings with an MCA vice-president. Pak Lah does not forget a slight. During the MCA crisis in 2002, an arrogant Dato' Seri Ong ensured that aplenty. There is a concerted effort in Johore to reduce the electoral chances of the one man in the Team B faction, the health minister, Dato' Chua Jui Meng, whose presence puts Dato' Ong's leadership in question. Similarly, the MIC president, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, insists on holding on to his cabinet and party position at any cost, even after knowing that Pak Lah thinks it time he stepped down in favour of his deputy president, Dato' S. Subramaniam. Pak Lah is close to Dato' Subramaniam; it is his threat to offer the Indian cabinet seat to Dato' Kayveas that led the former MAS airline pilot to believe that he indeed does lead the Indian community.

THAT ALL IS NOT WELL in Maika Holdings is in no doubt. It has run into unrepayable debt of more than RM300 million on gross mismanagement, the MIC President, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu's bellicose hyperboles, bluster, hype, the certainty that the National Front [BN] government would do nothing to bring it into public disrepute. It was to bring the Indians into the frontline of Malaysian business, finance and industry but all it did was bankruptcy and worse. Money in untrained hands in any community - the UMNO's multibillion investments; the MCA's deposit taking co-operatives - will not be allowed to be put to good use. Self-interest creeps in, not just at the top but at every level of administration in the companies and in the political party behind it. These companies had political protection, and without an unexpected political problem, it would have remained hidden. Its bitterest critic, Dato' M.G. Pandithan, cared for Maika Holdings only as a plank to beat Dato' Seri Samy with. This initial outburst of anger, in public meetings and in the press, raised the hopes of the locked-in shareholders.

The Chinese support is clear. But it would not come cheap. Pak Lah is vulnerable. The Chinese sycophancy comes with it a quid pro quo. What it is I do not know. But there is. He has obviously granted it. But he must go further. His principal constitutency is the Malay. When would UMNO and the Malay bodies give him a grand dinner as the Chinese did? And the Indian? Could UMNO, in its present disrepair, organise one? Get the same response, without turning it into an entertainment show featuring Siti Nurhulizah and other singers and actors who would draw in the crowds? Cound the Indian? The total reliance on the Chinese narrows the area of political debate and compromise for it is not based on a strategic alliance but sheer vote buying. We see some of that in UMNO. The warlords have crept into UMNO, inevitible when the centre is weak. Now the Chinese warlords join them. As the Indian would. Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, finds his control of MIC slipping, and has a grand plan to unite the three Indian political parties under him. He does so in panic. But one of the three, the People's Progressive Party, like the Gerakan, is multiracial.

MAIKA HOLDINGS BERHAD BEGAN life as an investment company of the Malaysian Indian Congress, to harness Indian capital for the common good. Hundreds of thousands of working-class Indians borrowed money to the hilt to buy shares and soon, like investment companies run by UMNO, MCA, Gerakan and other political parties in the National Front (BN) went bankrupt or firmly on the road to it. The Maika Holdings Berhad mismanaged - and politically interfered by the MIC president, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu - from the start, saw the value of its RM1 shares reduced to about ten sen. It was re-organised, the original shareholders lost their money, many went into bankruptcy, and the new Maika Holdings Berhad went into areas it knew nothing about, and quickly ran into debt. When shareholders asked about how the company is doing, they were either shouted down or warned.

THE MIC PRESIDENT, DATO' SERI S. Samy Vellu, is the brains behind Maika Holdings. Of that there is no doubt. Nothing happens in the investment company for the Indians without his knowledge and approval. Over the years, he told Malaysians proudly, and reverentially reported in the Tamil Nesan, the Tamil daily his family controls, how he controls its direction and investments, every decision it takes only with his approval. Nothing would have happened if Maika Holdings than went on to prove its sceptics wrong. The company is on the verge of bankruptcy, it has not released its annual reports for more than two years - an offence under the Companies Act - and it stonewalls every attempt by a shareholder to find out how his investment fairs. Letters are not answered. Questions are ignored. There is no way a shareholder can find out about how Maika Holdings fares through the usual methods available with an aggrieved shareholder.

THE PRIME MINISTER, DATO' SERI Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, had had enough, and told the two squabbling Indian leaders to shut up. It would not do for the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) president, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, and the Indian Progressive Front, Dato' M.G. Pandithan, to divide the Indian community with general election around the proverbial corner. Since It is an internal matter, Pak Lah would not intervene. (Actually it is, since it is two BN parties quarrelling, but let that pass.) This bickering must stop. And now. Both promptly did and claimed the high moral ground. "The MIC doesn't go to war with anybody except the Opposition during the elections," Dato' Seri Samy Vellu said. But he could not resist putting the oar in. Dato' Pandithan started this, the IPF continues with its insults and defamations, but MIC will emerge the stronger, can withstand "all this nonsense". The MIC president is used to having the last word. But the barbs hurt. Only MIC members, not Dato' Pandithan, could tell him to step down. He is wrong here. He would step down, but not because his members want him to.

THERE IS NOW NO DOUBT that the MIC president, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, must go. He buys time. His bluster is checked. His time is past and surrounded by self-serving aides and politicians who would lose all if he were ousted, he is led to believe that he, and only he, could lead the Indian community, that he is the great white hope of the Indian community, and UMNO and BN - and the new Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, had better accept it. It did not take long for hubris to prove him wrong. He accused the Indian Progressive Front leader, Dato' M.G. Pandithan, of nominating a Tamil newspaper editor for a royal award. In the war of words that followed, he had to lick his wounds. It turns out that he fell foul of the Official Secrets Act. A police report is lodged. It hangs over him as a Sword of Damacles.

THE IPF PRESIDENT, DATO' M.G. Pandithan, lied to the King, screamed the MIC president, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu. He nominated a Tamil news editor, amongst others, for an award from the King aka Yang Dipertuan Agung. The MIC chief had stalked him for year, and now he had him hoist on his own petard. The editor is not the IPF deputy president but an MIC branch member. So he lied. The National Front (BN) and MIC closed ranks, and asked how this could be. This is a blot on Malaysia. The usual flurry of police reports - this to show how serious they are, not with any hope the police would look into it - followed. It was downhill for him from then on. The editor, Mr Athi Kumanan, said he is not an MIC member since he did not renew his subscription, he has not decided if he would accept an offer to be IPF deputy president. Two days later, he accepted it.

WHEN THE GOING IS GOOD, shoot yourself in the foot. This is how most Malaysian political parties conduct their affairs. They would do anything to show how immature or stupid they are, given the slightest chance. The Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) is more prone to this than any other. When it should conduct itself as a responsible party, it now shows it cannot. The Indian Progressive Front (IPF), which does not know any better, and proves it. The MIC president, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, kicked up a storm with a claim that the IPF president, Dato' M.G. Pandithan, falsely claimed the editorial adviser of a Tamil newspaper opposed to the MIC president, Mr K.P. Athimulam - better known as Athi Kumanan - was an IPF deputy president. It appears he is not: he told the press he is thinking about it. Be that as it may, Dato' Seri Samy alleges this is how he got his award.

THE MIC PRESIDENT, DATO' SERI S. Samy Vellu, must ingratiate himself into the good books of the new Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. There is no other why. Not when he believes that having been MIC president for 24 years, he is good for another 30. He is democratically elected - as in many a dictatorship, few would dare to challenge him, the rules are weighted against the challenger, and he is returned unopposed. In this, the MIC is no different from the other parties in the National Front (BN). Elections for the presidency of BN parties are as rare as Dr Mahathir in Putrajaya so far this month. Pak Lah does not want deadwood and Mahathir cronies in his cabinet. Dato' Seri Samy Vellu qualifies on both counts. Pak Lah wants a new face, and would rather Dato' Seri S. Subramaniam, the MIC deputy president for 20 years, be the cabinet minister from the Indian cabinet minister.

This is now put to a test. The servicemen flexes his muscles. They do not want their officers to vote for them. When they are allowed to vote as they chose, it frightens the BN goverfnment. In 1999, the defence minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, was all but defeated in his Pekan parliamentary constituency. About 2,400 postal votes were then added, mostly from the armed forces, and he scraped in by less than 250 votes. In Jeli, another cabinet minister, Dato' Mustapha Mohamed, lost when the armed forces camps there voted en bloc for the PAS candidate. They are not the only ones. The works minister, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, depends on the Malay postal votes to prove the Indian community could not be better because he has been in the Cabinet as long as the new Prime Minister has been in Parliament. Pak Lah cannot crack down hard on corruption for UMNO and BN would collapse without it. The BN government would not admit it, but the underdog now flexes its muscles. Changes do not come unless one fights for it. Change is what they want. And the fighting cannot be far behind.

THE MALAYSIAN INDIAN CONGRESS PRESIDENT, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, at the start of his self-delusional three decades in office which he insists he deserves, is quick to snap at anyone who dares to suggest he overstays his welcome after 24 years in office. That the new National Front (BN) president, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, would rather have some one other than him in his cabinet is ignored. If he is MIC president, he is the MIC cabinet minister. As MIC president, he would not act if Indians are deliberately shunted aside to such a degree that they are the underclass of 21st century Malaysia. Nor if Indians are denied places they deserve at Malaysian universities. Nor if they are deliberately humiliated. Nor even if Indians, by the MIC's insistence that they be taught in Tamil, makes them unfit for the modern world. He says he would deal with them. If any dare suggest that he does not, or wrongly, and he goes into a fearful tantrum.

The BN oldtimers who must step down show no intent. The MIC leader, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, is in office and cabinet since 1979, but he believes he is good for another 30 years. The Gerakan president, Dato' Seri Ling Kheng Yaik, in office from that year, insists the party needs him and would cling on to power until he decides to leave. The former MCA president, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, clung to office even after his sell-by date because Dr Mahathir wanted him to stay on. But he was driven out nevertheless by a communal campaign that all but split the MCA. The family dynasty in Sarawak, the paterfamilias being now the chief minister, Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud, has all but destroyed the BN in Sarawak, but he shows not sign of stepping down. Kuala Lumpur is fed up, but can do little. His cabinet colleagues threaten to boycott him, but they do not have the guts to do that. The perks of office are too varied to give up so easily.

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