He found there was rampant corruption in Ampang Jaya. How did he know? A three-man inquiry he set up found it in three days, without even bothing to do a thorough job of it. It was appointed for a report Dr Khir wanted so the public would know he is on top of what happens in Selangor. He would look at other councils, and would you believe, he has heard that something is not right in Kajang. What about Petaling Jaya, Shah Alam, Klang, Rawang ... and so on in every local and municipal council in the state, indeed in the country. What about in his own state executive council? The land department? So what is so special about Ampang Jaya? That is caught out so publicly and blatantly?

The MCA is not alone. The UMNO is in the throes of a leadership struggle. Its long-time president, Dr Mahathir, retires later this year, and the infighting has begun to establish the line of succession. The deputy president, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, would succeed Dr Mahathir as Prime Minister, but he could well face a bruising fight to be UMNO president. As battle lines are drawn, two UMNO vice presidents are intent on politically destroying the third, and each, according to PAS sources, offered RM2 million for a strong candidate against the UMNO vice-president, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak in his parliamntary constituency of Pekan in Pahang; one, Tan Sri Mohamed Taib, wanted a weak PAS candidate in Shah Alam in Selangor as well so he could return to federal politics in strength. It is he who went to Australia on a holiday some years ago with RM2.4 million in cash in his briefcase. But understand that is not money politics nor corruption but, in BN's view, a legitimate perk of office.

When a policy is decided and implemented on the run, it opens up communal tensions, anger, a deliberate move away from the multiracial society Malaysia is. The Malays decide on Malaysia's future with no thought to the non-Malays who reside in it. The non-Malays retreat into a self-contained communal society from which it moves out only when they have to. The government once had a policy of mixing up the races in housing projects. But that fell by the wayside when Shah Alam and Putra Jaya were built. Both are Malay cities to which the non-Malay ventures on sufferance, much like the black in the Orange Free State in apartheid South Africa. The Roman Catholics in Shah Alam cannot build a church on land alloted to them in the Shah Alam Master Plan for that purpose. Nor Hindus a temple. The state government has since decided that promises are meant to be broken to make Shah Alam a quintessential Malay, and by constitutional inference, Muslim city. As Dr Mahathir wants a federal capital that is quintessentially Malay in character and form.

Dato' Fawzi does it to declare, for no rhyme or reason, Universiti Malaysa would, from 2005, be known as the East Harvard University. This name change, he infers, would transform this ho-hum university into a world-class institution of higher learning. Why then do we not change the names of our institutions to East Yale University, East Oxford University, East Massachussetts Institute of Technology, East Edinburg University, so we could have not one world class institutions but tens of them. It would save much money and effort, since all that is needed is to change the name for world-class educational superiority! But then MIT in Shah Alam is now UiTM!

The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, cannot come to mention his former deputy president when UMNO celebrated its 56th anniversary in Shah Alam last week. He must have seethed when President Bush insisted the US remains wedded to its premise Dato' Seri Anwar is victimised for his politics, not punished for why he is jailed. It is not only him. The more irrelevant UMNO becomes to the Malaysian Malay heartland, the more important he looms.

But could the Anwar problem be removed from the Malaysian political equation so easily, as Dr Mahathir believes so confidently? That is where both the good doctor and the PAS president went wrong. Dr Mahathir, at the Shah Alam rally to mark UMNO's 56th anniversary, went beyond his normal caution to taunt the Opposition, telling them that the Anwar isssue (though he could not come to mention his name) is no more, and UMNO and the National Front (BN) would romp home with an even bigger majority. He is right in his assessment of the BN's electoral chances, for what he did was to divide the opposition parties even more. It becomes even more difficult for the Opposition to get together, for he has sown suspicion and calumny on it so deftly that it goes into the polls with both wings broken as always.

Petronas, Malaysia's public cash cow, was lumbered with it. It had no licence to run a taxi service. So it was farmed out to a company called Eco-Transit, run by people who had none either. Taxi drivers paid a large deposit and a daily rate and everything went smoothly until Petronas, fed up with not being paid for the vehicles, put the pressure on Eco-Transit. Eco-Transit had signed contracts with drivers in which it passed off as owners when it was not. It could operate only 200 of the taxis, the rest for other towns and cities in Malaysia could not operate because Petronas never got to put the natural gas petrol pumps elsewhere. Unlike some of the converted taxis which ran on petrol or natural gas, this only ran on natural gas. The remaining 800 cars were first parked in the basement of the KLCC and later at an open yard in Shah Alam. Some were cannibalised for spare parts. The cars are brand new cars left to rot and cost, I understand, RM138 million. It would probably take RM10,00 each to bring it to service and run it.

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