So it is music to his ears when Dr Ling insists on continuing, and Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, wants to complete three decades in office as MIC president before he retires. The prime minister vaccilates. He wanted Dr Ling to go. The Soh Chee Wen trial was the pressure point. When Dato' Soh's lawyers subpoenaed Dr Ling, his wife, son and daughter-in-law, it was to have been the coup de grace. Instead, the case itself drags on now, and the expected disgrace is a long while yet. Like Dato' Seri Samy Vellu, Dr Ling says he cannot step down because there are unresolved matters. "I cannot say I want to go tomorrow when I haven't completed a lot of things. So that's meaning. I am not saying when (to step down)." But when asked if he would not resign as transport minister since Dr Mahathir had not decided on it, he declined comment. In other words, the possibility exists he would stay if the Prime Minister decided not to accept it.

Bernama news agency announced, in all seriousness and without a hint of irony, the Indian prime minister, Mr Atul Bihari Vajpayee, has awarded the Malaysian works minister, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, "one of India's highest awards", the "Bharatiya Samman". Nine other "eminent persons from around the world" received the award at the inaugural annual "Pravasi Bharatiya Divas" (Indian Diaspora Conference) in New Delhi last week. What is the Bharatiya Samman? Bernama explains: "The Bharatiya Samman, or the Indian Award of Honour" is given to people who have contributed immensely to the development of their countries". Other recipients include the Mauritius prime minister, Sir Aneerood Jugnath, former Commonwealth secretary-general, Sir Shridath Ramphal, South African freedom fighter, Prof. Fatima Mir, former Prime Minister of British Columbia, Mr Ujjal Dosanjh. What is the Indian Diaspora Conference? Bernama does not say, only that Dato' Seri Samy Vellu leads a 44-member delegation of senior MIC leaders, entrepreneurs and professionals to it.

It does not matter, then, if Senator Zainal stays on or resigns. All it would happen, if he stays on, is for the MTUC to sink deeper into the quagmire; if he does not, and the MTUC does not then take a principled stand, either to limit the presidency or ban any such pacts, then one can safely write out the MTUC as a collective body of workers' representatives. Senator Zainal, however, is in good company. The MCA president, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, said he would resign, and then decided not to. The UMNO president, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, says he would resign, but does everything he can to make sure he can do a Zainal Rampak, come November this year. The MIC president, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, wants another five years in office to make it 30 years as its leader. So, the Gerakan president, Dato' Seri Lim Kheng Yaik. And all have one important trait they revel in: they are out of touch with those who elected them into power.

This BN-induced general lassitude on Malaysia now threatens to destroy it. Every institution of any relevance in Malaysia is devalued to a degree unimagineable only two decades ago. To bring it back to what it was is as tedious as to let it slide into irrelevance and oblivion. The MTUC likewise has given up the ghost, and rush headlong into irrelevance and disaster. Elections are held so leaders can be freely elected. In Malaysia, it is so the leaders can be returned unopposed. Leaders go to any length to ensure they would not have to be tested. Hardly a party leader in BN or, for that matter, the opposition, is challenged, or elected in a free election. Several have been in office for 20 years and more. The DAP's Lim Kit Siang has been in office since 1969. A decade behind is the Malaysian Indian Congress's Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu. The other political leaders come after them. But all had been elected unopposed. It is not a good advertisement for democracy in Malaysian electable institutions.

The works minister, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, is, as always, entertainingly idiotic if not downright lazy when it comes to the public interest. He does not know what he talks of, especially when it involves his ministry. He sleepwalks his way through life, accumulating wealth and influence by "toiling" for the people by ordering and cursing them for not backing him. So his critics are lazy and jealous of the great man's achievements, which one cannot, to tell the truth, recognise even when drummed incessantly into one's ears. He has decided he needs another five years as MIC president so he would be at its helm for 30 years no less. He runs his ministry as he runs the MIC: autocratically, irrelevantly, with no clue what is required of him, destroying any rival in the party who could do a better job than he. This comes when one is in office for too long. Politics in Malaysia is intensely personal, and personal to holder. It is not the people's interest that matters; it is his interest and future that matters most.

Newspapers praise and thank him for his gracious attendance at the opening of a goldsmith shop or a factory. This is all expected. So someone who wants to jump the queue and be noticed for his sycophancy has to think of a plan that would praise him without having to. Sychophancy is a work of art in Malaysia. The most brilliant leader for the Malays, Indians, and Chinese respectively are Dr Mahathir, Dato' Seri Dr S. Samy Vellu, and Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik.

After him came the screaming banshees known as BN leaders. The MIC leader, Dato' S. Samy Vellu, said Opposition parties should realise the country would enjoy more development if they join the BN. More important to him, he would also be returned unopposed from his Sungei Siput constituency. "PAS leaders especially should understand this and be more concernced about struggling for the people's interests." The MCA leader, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, says the Opposition should reconsider their stand. "We are inviting them to join us that we can be united to face challenges, especially economic challenges and colonisation. We have to stand together to face this." The Gerakan leader, Dato' Seri Lim Kheng Yaik, recalled how after the 1969 racial riots, "the then Prime Minister", Tun Abdul Razak invtied all opposition parties to join the ruling coalition "to concentrate on physical and social development and reduce politicking among the different parties." The prime minister then was Tengku Abdul Rahman, not Tun Razak. But it was Tun Razak, in 1973, four years after the riots, who expanded the Alliance coalition into the BN.

The PPP had excellent credentials at its founding: the Seenivasagam brothers, SP and DR, founded the Perak Progressive Party in Ipoh 49 years ago. It later became the People's Progressive Party, the name helping it on to its latter-day irrelevance. SP and DR were a power in the state and parliament then, their deaths hastened its irrelevance, in which its latter-day president wallows in. Dato' Kayveas cannot forget he is the first PPP deputy minister, there by default because Dr Mahathir decided to punish Dato' Samy Vellu and deny the MIC its due of an extra deputy minister. He was a buffoon in politics, noted more for his promises to provide honours for the usual moola than for political leadership.

He sets the trend in the National Front (BN). The parties in it elect their leaders as UMNO does, by a curious osmosis in which only the current leader would be elected. Challengers and others are sidelined, expelled, or otherwise prevented from challenging the leader; their supporters and backers suddenly find financial and other pressures bearing upon them; some are threatened with bankruptcy. The Malaysian Indian Congress leader, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, as deputy president, succeeded the then MIC president, Tan Sri V. Manickavasagam, who died suddenly in 1978. He has been returned unopposed since, the challengers browbeaten into submission, and sometimes driven out of the party. He now insists he is the only hope of the Indian community, and demands a lien on it and his cabinet post. He curries favour with the prime minister-in-waiting, to press his luck. In Sarawak, the Sarawak National Party (SNAP)'s octogeneraian president would rather the party be destroyed than allow some one other than him be elected its leader.

THE MALAYSIAN INDIAN CONGRESS president, Dato' Seri (Dr) S. Samy Vellu, continues to peddle half-truths and half-lies over the Asian Institute of Medicine, Science and Technology (AIMST). The AIMST has nothing to do with the MIC -- its shareholders being two Samy Vellu cronies with 60 per cent of the sharecapital and a Malay with 40 per cent -- yet, he says MIC initiated it. In his mind, that is as good an MIC project as there can be -- especially when there is money to be made in the hundreds of millions of ringgit in constructing it.

In empires of old, the emperor has a court jester to provide comic relief. In the new Malaysian (virtual) empire, the emperor in his spanking, built to imperial order, capital, Putra Jaya, has his. Like all imperial clowns, he is unpredictable, often makes people cry when they should laugh, laugh when they should cry, drive all up the wall, occasionally with ideas above his station, often losing his head metaphorically, politically, literally with his belief he is the Emperor's alter ego. In the court of Emperor Mahathir Mohamed of the Malaysian National Front (BN) empire, the court jester is the deputy transport minister, Dato' M. Kayveas. He was brought in to put the MIC leader, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu in his place, and cause as much havoc as he can when political parties in the governing coalition need to be put in their places.

When the BN coalition is a static exercise in locking the Malaysian multiracial communities into a straitjacket of tokenisms, by which no matter how brilliant or useful they are, they cannot progress beyond a glass ceiling. In politics, that is the joy of being in the governing politician. The PPP is a BN member, but it is not allowed to contest for a state or parliamentary constituency, given a few senatorships and the odd place in a local council. It cannot aspire for more. It has a deputy minister in the governemnt by a fluke. The Prime Minsiter wanted to teach the MIC leader, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu a lesson. Giving the PPP president a deputy minister frightened him no end. But for that, he would be the nonentity he is.

The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, insists his cabinet is at the cutting edge, not chopping block, of Malaysia's development and progress. He does not say it is in the same league, no doubt, as Perwaja Steel, the Employees Provident Fund, Renong, United Engineers Malaysia, Petronas, Telekom, MAS, Putra Jaya, all synonyms for Malaysia's "development and progress". But hear him out: "This cabinet of ours, which we know and other's don't, is more relaxed than those of other countries. Sometimes we hear raucous laughter in the Cabinet as if they are not serious and are just attending a social function." He implies that others like Mr Goh Chok Tong, Mr Tony Blair, Mr Atul Bihari Vajpayee drool at the prospect of having the excellent Malaysian ministers in their cabinet as Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, Datin Rafidah Aziz, Dato' Seri Syed Hamid Albar, Datin Shahrizat Jalil. With them around, Malaysia's future is in good hands. No doubt theirs too. No doubt it is. Which is why they insist on staying on in the cabinet even after they have long begun their retirement in office. So they could be auctioned off to the highest bidder from foreign countries who need them.

But it could as well be Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed in UMNO, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik in MCA, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu in MIC, Tan Sri Dato' Pattingi Abdul Taib Mahmud in PBB, Dato' Seri Lim Kheng Yaik in Gerakan, Mr Lim Kit Siang in DAP, and others less well known who equate longevity in office as proof of their contribution to society.

THE ASIAN INSTITUTE OF Medicine, Science and Technology (AIMST) would be, if the MIC president, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, is believed, one of Malaysia's premier centres of excellence in education. The Ministry of Education, however, does not seem to share similar sentiments. It has suspended AMIST's medical courses for the usual reasons: insufficient lecturers, short of medical equipment and laboratories; if it is not corrected in a month, the MBBS medical degree courses should not be offered. Classes must stop in the meanwhile. The AIMST vice chancellor, Prof V.G. Kumar Das, accepts the conditions. Not the AIMST chairman, Dato' K. Ampikaipakan, however. He insists the RM250,000 MBBS course would continue as scheduled. AIMST would explain to parents and undergraduates "what the problem is" on Sunday, 4 August, 2002.

A new crony-to-be accompanied him, the crowd unenthusiastic, when the donations were handed out, only RM100,000 was collected: half went to daughter's AIDS Foundation, the rest to cancer research. For an anniversary as momentous as this, with Malaysia's economy is, in the government's view, in the pinkest of health, one should rightly expect more than a crony's small change. No euphoric cheers from the crowd, no one cared a hoot, not even the Works Minister, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, who was next door attending an Indian function which elicited a more racuous and enthusiastic crowd. But then when could Dr Mahathir ever outstage the mind-numbing extravaganza of South Indian film stars?

The MIC president, Dato' S. Samy Vellu, meanwhile, asks each MIC branch to donate RM11,000 and each Indian RM1,000 for AMIST, to be set up near the Bujang Valley in Kedah; the place supposedly chosen to replicate a great Indian civilization that flourished there in the first two centuries of the Christian Era. Forgotten, however, is the promise MIC president made previously that he would not touch the Indian community for donations. The MIC branch chairman who pointed this out was even suspended. Hyperbole and highfalutin nonsense of this kind is proof all is not right. While Tafe College is in trouble, AMIST threatens to be a non-starter.

THE SELANGOR MENTRI BESAR, Dato' Seri Mohamed Khir Toyo, took the Indian bull by its horns: if the National Front (BN) partner, the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC), could not contain the rampant Indian gangsters in the Klang Valley, it should ask the Indian Progressive Front (IPF) to help out. The Indian bull here is none other than the BN's Indian godfather and MIC president, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu.

It is not only UMNO and MCA so in danger. BN party leaders hold office for as long as they could get away with it. Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu is MIC president for a year short of a quarter of a century; Dr Mahathir of UMNO for more than two decades; Dr Ling of MCA for a decade and a half; Dato' Seri Lim Kheng Yaik for a decade as Gerakan president. The Sarawak National Party (SNAP0 president, the octogenarian Dato' Seri James Wong, marks his third decade in office to insist he is there for life, and sacks who disagree. He believes only his children could run the party after him to safeguard what he built up. Two decades ago, a split led to the Ibans and non-Chinese tribes forming the Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS). It made no difference: the man who led the breakaway, Dato' Seri Leo Moggie, headed it from the start until he decided to retire. There is talk of a reconciliation between the two parties. But is this sustainable when one leader insists on holding office until his dying breath?

When this is challenged, the party Leader is quick to strike. The UMNO president, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, did it to three of his deputy president and Malaysia's deputy prime minister, with the one who failed in an open confrontation sitting in Sungei Buloh jail. The MCA president, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, and the MCA president, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, view challenge as one which should be crushed with the heaviest political weapon they could bring to bear. The MIC has had only five presidents in its 56-year-history. Its first, Mr John Thivy went on to join the Indian foreign service on independence. The next two were forced out in palace coups and one died before he would have been. Every MCA president from the first in 1949 is forced out, kicking and screaming of treachery. So in UMNO, although the manner of the departure is more dignified. Only one died in office.

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