That a golf course exists in a detention camp is a sign of permanence and that preventive detention is not about to end. When once, especially under the British, the aim was to rehabiliate, and care taken not to destroy the individual. But for the Grace of God go I was how they were treated, and if the roles were reversed, they expected to be treated likewise. The late J.J. Puthucheary told me, once, how when he was detained in the 1950s in Singapore, the Colonial Secretary of the day came to see him. He knocked on the cell bars, and asked if he had a moment for a chat. Brusquely, Puthucheary said no. The man went away and returned a few days later, when they met. When he talked of his desire to write what evenually became a seminal book: "Ownership and Control of the Malayan Economy", the man arranged for books to be sent to him from the University of Singapore library, and directed the economist and future Singapore deputy prime minister, Dr Goh Keng Swee, Prof. T.H. Silcock, Prof. Lim Tay Boh and others to visit and assist him in what way they could. And they did.

Mr Howard is off base not for what he said, but for insisting he stands by what he said. The countries in Southeast Asia should have consulted each other and responded with the reality, and ask bluntly if Australia does not intend to follow the conflict resolution proceedures already on the books. It seems possible that Mr Howard's statement was cleared with only one country in Southeast Asia, Singapore, and perhaps Washington. Singapore, like Washington, thought Mr Howard was right in what he said. Singapore has found Islamic terrorists within its terroritory as efficiently as it once did communists. It is all part of this deliberate demonising of Islamic terrorists, but said so casually and cavalierly as to get more Muslims incensed and against it. There will be more such. Which is all the more reason to put up a principled stand against such rhetoric.

The MCA stirs the issues so the Gerakan could be defeated. It plays with fire. For there is a third claimant to power: UMNO. Dato' Seri Abdullah Badawi reacted, in his outburst, to put the MCA and Gerakan in its place and, if possible, an UMNO chief minister. Penang is the only state in the peninsula with a Chinese prime minister, the result of a concord amongst the Alliance (the BN predecessor) leaders that Penang would have a Chinese minister and Malacca a Chinese governor. The Malacca arrangement was scuttled after the first Chinese governor, Tun Leong Yew Koh, when it was decided, without discussion, all governors must be Muslim. The concords that followed independence, indeed even constitutional promises, are cheerfully and deliberately ignored when it suits UMNO or the government it leads through the BN. In the current dissonance with Singapore over water, Malaysia ignores constitutional guarantees of water to Singapore in the separation agreement in 1965 which granted the island its independence. So, in Malaysia. The BN government breaks a contractual obligation to hand over to Trengganu the royalties it received from Petronas on its behalf.

The Soh trial is one nightmare of many. It could trigger his house of cards to collapse. He assumed it would, and could, not so long as he is MCA president. Which is why he must remain in office. No one talks of it but his debts -- directly, his wife's, and his son's RM1.2 billion for which he must be in the end responsible -- cannot be repaid. It is not known if he has signed any personal guarantees, but he could almost surely have. He is liable for RM600 million to one Malaysian bank and a like sum in Singapore dollars to one Singapore bank. There are others in the two countries and elsewhere. He manages, by the skin of his teeth, to pay the monthly interest, which raises another question of how he he gets RM100 million and more every month to do that.

Laws, in practice, are to keep the citizenry under control, not those in power. Those who do not mesh with the the rulers are given short shrift, even where the "rule of law" is supreme. The needs of justice is balanced with the needs of power, suitably amended as needs must. Justice in conflict with power must, in the end, give way. It is worse when the cultures these societies represent is in conflict. It is as true in the United States as in Malaysia, in Singapore as in Zimbabwe, in Jakarta as in Ougadougou. The rule of law stands for nought in the United States now, where those it accuses of terror in foreign countries are huddled like cattle into transport planes and flown to Guantanamo Bay, denied of basic facilities and rights.

The other is extradition. Extradition usually entails third country nations in a second country from which the first want extradited. An interesting example of this is how the Barings trader in Singapore, Mr Nicholas Leeson, was brought to Singapore. Leeson, you may recall, disappeared to London when the scandal broke. Whilst Singapore pressed its case, Lesson left the United Kingdom for Germany, where Singapore eventually brought extradition proceedings. If it was in the UK, Singapore would not have had to go through the involved proceedings she did in Germany. All Singapore had to do, as a Commonwealth country, was to provide a prima facie case, and Mr Leeson could be extradited. In Germany, Singapore had to convince the court of the enormity of his crime and why he needed to be brought to Singapore for trial. He was, spent time in jail, and expelled.

The Malaysian Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, has a well-known aversion for beards. After 11 September 2001, and like President George W. Bush, he sees a terrorist in every Muslim beard, When he addressed a gathering of faculty and staff at the International Islamic University in Kuala Lumpur, his handlers ensured no one with beards or goattees sat in the front rows. There must be reason for this prejudice and fear. He orchestrates a tirade against bearded terrorists in his midst, Muslim to a man, helped with allegations and unverifiable 'facts' from Singapore and Washington, unverifiable at the best of times and with only assumptions and stray links that may not prove anything.

Malaysian diplomats caused havoc when they did not understand the nuances and meaning of what they negotiated with foreign countries. Much of Malaysia's problems with Singapore, in the final analysis, is a byproduct of learning English for everyday commerce.

When government is personalised in its leader -- as in Malaysia now, in independent Africa in its earliest years of independence, in Singapore -- something must give. Singapore survives better than most because the PAP government replaced the British administration at independence with one more attuned to its needs, and implanted a state which devolved around its eminense grise. The others did not. Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed's impact on Malaysia is no different to President Robert Mugabe's on Zimbabwe. The two men, like others elsewhere, personalised their rule to destroy the independence of the civil service they inherited, now so mired in the deep end, that they must brazen their way through.

Tan Sri Abdullah Ahmad, the editor-in-chief of the New Straits Times, in his alter-ego's NST diary (New Sunday Times, 11 August 2002, p8), draws a tenuous link between shingles (which Malaysia's first prime minister Tengku Abdul Rahman in 1965 suffered as Tan Sri Abdullah now) and major decisions of state. He makes an unfair hint that the Tengku, in pain, ordered the deputy prime minister, Tun Abdul Razak, to prepare to amputate Singapore from the Malaysian federation. Even more preposterous is his claim that Tun Razak, whose political secretary he then was, read parts of the Tengku's letter to him, and how he pleaded with the Tun to persuade Tengku to reconsider. If the Tengku had written that letter, it must have been later for the Tun received his instructions in person from the Tengku then recuperating at the London Clinic in London.

Look at how English is forced into the school curriculum. The Prime Minister decided it must, the UMNO supreme council decided it could only be to teach science and mathematics, the government accepted that, and it now policy. No one has worked out what it cost, how it could be implemented, how effective it could be, if even mathematics and science could be taught with the Esperanto English that is the officially encouraged norm. In this English, encouraged by Dr Mahathir himself when he was education minister, in 1975, "I go Singapore" or "I sleeping now" is correct; the nuances that come with "I shall go to Singapore" or "I ought to go to Singapore" or "I shall sleep" or "I think I had better sleep" missed. No one is interested, then and now, if it is. One Old Man decided it must be, so it is. Whether it could or not.

Some like President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of Bangladesh failed spectacularly to imprint their self-importance, only to impoverish, and divide, the countries they led. Fewer rose above self to be national icons: Mahatma Gandhi in India, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Sukarno in Indonesia, Mao Zedong in China, Chiang Kai Shek in Taiwan. Two succeeded spectacularly in imposing their personal foibles on the nations they led, only to discover that that was not enough, and the nation needed another direction which they could not re-engineer: Singapore, Mr Lee Kuan Yew and Malaysia's Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed. But they succeeded only to fail.

What gives hope is that pockets of conscience, in every institution, will not give up the ghost. They fight back. A well-ordered set of institutions, amongst the best in the Commonwealth at independence in 1957, is now destroyed beyond repair. With no replacement. The Singapore civil service is cast in the image of its ruling party, the People's Action Party. It replaced the British administrative practice with one of its own, so wholly obsequious to it, but the result, to the layman is one it can depend on for the basics.

In one day last week, the newspapers reported three instances of nepotic behaviour of heads of government that must send shivers down the spine of the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, and his three sons. South Korean President Kim Dae Jung's son surrendered himself on the normal crimes and misdeameanours leaders' children are active in: influence peddling, wealth and businesses acquired by their closeness to the Leader, official favours they could otherwise not get. In Jakarta, Tommy Suharto is on trial for his unfair and extra-legal actions as the former president's son. In Singapore, the former Prime Minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew's children and in-law in prominent positions, which though justifiable on merit, nevertheless tarnishes the gloss on the island republic's vaunted meritocracy.

The government re-introduces English in the same way it removed it from the schools in 1970. It now says without it Malaysia would be at a disadvantage in the affairs of the world, and it must be brought back without further ado. But Malaysia argues its case for English with an unconcealed contempt for the Malay cultural worldview and therefore ensures the confrontation that can do neither any good. The government now wants English to dominate national life as in Singapore; while the Malay cultural ground wants it removed. In other words, both disagree and turn it into another politically-charged issue. Both are wrong.

Most governments cannot decide which must apply in their society. And fall between the two stools of local and external pressures. Malaysia is one such. And complicated here by an autocrat leader whose view of which should exist changes by the day. He is confused, for instance, whether and how English should return to Malaysian society. He does not accept the reality of Malay and English co-existing, one strengthening the cultural nationalism without which Malaysia would turn into a Singapore, where money and English are the only Gods worshipped, or an India, where English flourishes along with 20 and more regional languages, in which English plays a honourable role as a link. In Singapore, English dominates to the exclusion of every other; in India, it remains as important as the others, and helps ensure its international outlook.

US is the sole super power, but it is now engaged in a not too subtle policy of containing China. Dato' Seri Najib's visit puts Malaysia firmly in the US camp in this looming contest. And to put pressure, at Washington's bidding, on Indonesia if that nation decides to act independently of the United States. Dr Mahathir has left for Washington to confirm this new role of national subservience to a foreign power. This, we are told, is in this larger worldwide war on Islamic terror, but it is more. The US has satraps and client states around the world to fight its enemies. The end of the Cold War changed not the policy but the satraps and client states. It has India now in South Asia. And Malaysia in Southeast Asia. Singapore allowed the United States to establish bases, allow her navy ships to be repaired, have a battalion or two of US troops, but stopped short of direct commitment as Kuala Lumpur wants. Malaysia does not get the bases but allows herself to be tarred with the US super power brush more contentiously than Singapore ever would.

Not only the civil servants. The present spat between Malaysia and Singapore is reduced in the end to a political squabble between two Johore politicians in which each sharpens his knife by pointing to a Singapore fault. Which is why Malaysia cannot yet send a formal diplomatic note of her reservations at what Singapore does.

When I was with the Singapore Herald more than three decades ago, it was under more trying conditions than malaysiakini would ever face. We were denied official press releases, the government deliberately issuing press releases about our deadline, just after midnight, so that the Herald could not get it. More worrying was the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, amidst this problem.

The Singapore Prime Minister, Mr Goh Chok Tong, loses his temper, as he should not, at the Malaysian media's reporting of the island republic's reclamation work on its side of the Straits of Tebrau that separates Malaysia from Singapore. He says they raise issues which poisons bilateral ties. He mentions three of recent vintage: the price of water, the tudung, and now land reclamation. Mr Goh's stance suggests, like Malaysian leaders often, he, unusually, did not think this through before he talked. Both view the other's media, often in truth, as storm troopers against it, thoroughly unreliable and potentially hostile. So, why did Mr Goh blow off his handle, as Malaysian ministers often, without thinking through? Unless it was more than problems with Malaysia that weighs on his mind?

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