THE NATIONAL FRONT (BN) GOVERNMENT is furious that Friday sermons at some mosques throughout the country have a decidedly "political" - by its definition, anti-government - tinge. The only Islam it accepts is what it stands for, however vague or unacceptable it is to the Muslims in the community. Shamsul Akmar, in his political column in the New Straits Times, talks about it this morning (09 February 2004) but he narrows its focus to an irrelevant happenstance: that some mosque sermons equated the horrific rape and murder of a young girl as God's punishment for an UMNO official. The BN, and its predecessor Alliance, government, on the other hand, took it as a political decision since independence to control the mosques politically. But it took this position whilst ignoring how Islam developed in Malaya. There were three strands: in the Federated Malay States of Perak, Selangor, Pahang and Negri Sembilan; the Unfederated Malay States of Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan, Trengganu and Johore; the Straits Settlements of Penang and Malacca. Islam and the mosques developed differently in the three areas, with the added confusion that the five UMS states moved at their individual pace. In the FMS and in the Straits Settlements, the Religious Affairs Department had total control of the mosques in the state, directly or indirectly.

Dato' Seri Anwar has decided his hope now is in the court of public opinion, not of justice. The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, realised that with a shock when the Court of Appeal scenes stuck home. He had to defend the judiciary to protect his political life but that only questioned its independence. The former Prime Minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, had to deny he is Rasputin to Pak Lah. He told the New Straits Times: "When I said I would retire, I meant it." Yet even senior UMNO members, in the Cabinet and in the higher ranks of the UMNO supreme council, would tell you it is not so. It is, after all, Dato' Seri Anwar, more than any other, that forced Dr Mahathir to retire when he did. The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, is not Pak Lah's, but Dr Mahathir's, choice. So the cabinet. When Pak Lah appointed the Mahathir cabinet to his first cabinet, it revealed his umbilical cord to the Old Man. This is exploited with effect by the Opposition. The BN and UMNO does not respond as vigorously as it should. And could well lose the battle, if not the war, by default.

He appoints the defence minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, as his deputy prime minister. He had wanted the domestic trade and consumer affairs minister, Tan Sri Muhiyuddin Yassin, with the political bonus of Johore backing him to the hilt. He did not want Dato' Seri Najib. The New Straits Times editor-in-chief, Tan Sri Abdullah Ahmad, was sacked for writing and talking about it. It is no secret Dr Mahathir wanted him. As Pak Lah did not. Dato' Seri Najib has pressed his claim as hard as he could. He knew if he did not make it now he could be in the cold for ever. Besides he made his plans to challenge Pak Lah for the UMNO presidency if was not the deputy prime minister. Pak Lah could call that bluff. He did not. Why?

THE KEDAH UMNO SECRETARY, Dato' Abdul Rahman Ariffin, is attacked by illegal motorcycle racers in Alor Star. Malaysians react in shock, so the New Straits Times tell us today (03 January 2003). So illegal racing must be stopped. How? What about "stern action"? What about opening the barn doors after the horses have fled? The deputy home minister, Dato' Chor Chee Heung, wants illegal racers banned for life. The Kedah mentri besar, Dato' Seri Syed Razak Syed Zain, declares an all-out-war on illegal motor cycle racers in the state. The police, not far behind, is about to act against the racers. No one knows who they are, the police least of all, but the usual suspects would be produced. Dato' Chor promises to prevent the racers from renewing their licences and road tax. So, what is the penalty, dato? Ban them for life or not allow them to renew their driving licences? He knows not which. What he says is the rubbish that comes out of a BN politician's mouth when he opens it. There is no plan to crack down on the illegal racers. He clarifies: "If my proposal is accepted by the Government, repeat offenders will be banned for life."

THE FRENCH STATESMAN, CARDINAL RICHELIEU, of the 17th century, said: "If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in him to hang him." Tan Sri Abdullah Ahmad did not believe it and talked his way out as editor-in-chief of the New Straits Times. Now a cabinet minister talks intently for no purpose than to be sacked. In a remarkable tour de farce, the entrepreneur development minister, Dato' Seri Nazri Aziz, confronts a senior official of the Anti-Corruption Agency in a war of words. He is investigated by the ACA for allowing one individual 6,000 taxi permits. That he did that is clear: he says the ACA official, Dato' Nordin Ismail, did not understand why. Since these taxi permits can be farmed out at RM100 a month, this is a RM60,000 a month sinecure. It is not as profitable as the 150 AP permits a month the international trade and industry minister, Datin Rafidah Aziz, gave her son-in-law who then sold it to those who imported cars at RM10,000 a piece, or RM1.5 million a month. There are other cabinet ministers and politicians who offer similar sinecures for their loved ones.

THERE IS NOTHING SURPRISING at the immediate sacking last week (20 November 2003) of the New Straits Times Press group editor-in-chief, Tan Sri Abdullah Ahmad or Dollah Kok Lanas as he is more well-known. The new UMNO president wants his own around in key positions. The NSTP is its public relations arm. Pak Lah does not want his predecessor's men around, certainly not a 'loose cannon' his aides believe Tan Sri Abdullah is. When I asked him at a diplomatic function early October, how long he had left at the NSTP. He enigmatically shrugged his shoulders. Within a month he is out. The official reason of a Saudi Arabian objection to an article he wrote about the monarchy is at best specious. The government, not UMNO, would have complained to the NSTP board. He was sacked after the UMNO management committee met. I heard of it a few hours later, in the middle of the night. Since the article appeared a week earlier, why this rush to sack a man without giving him a chance to be heard? He was in Hong Kong when he was sacked.

Let us look at what he said when he broke his Ramadhan fast with the Seremban UMNO Youth on Thursday, 20 November, 2003. Since the New Straits Times is a newspaper controlled by UMNO interests, one should accept that what it reports of the meeting is as accurate as one can get of what happened. He said PAS must first prove its sincerity by reaching a consensus with the other opposition parties on its Islamic State Document before it wants to debate it with a BN party. He presumes it would not. It would or it would not. But does that amount to insincerity? Did UMNO discuss Malaysia's declaration of an Islamic state with its BN partners? Is it not a fact that MCA, for one, was caught flatfooted, and rushed for cover when the former Prime Minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, declared it?

But this is enough for the MIC to manufacture a crisis. Why is Dato' Subramaniam silent? Or as the New Straits Times' puts it yesterday (28 October 2003), "Subra's silence fuels speculation". The MIC vice presidents told Dato' Pandithan to "mind his own business", which in a sense he was. After all, his aim is to see the IPF in MIC, and he does what anyone in his position would do and create confusion in MIC ranks. But just in case the MIC vice presidents' comments could be read wrongly by the MIC God, they add with more passion than anyone thought they had to reaffirm the great and glorious leadership of a leader past his prime. The MIC vice presidents are more frightened they would be forced off their perch if the party is turned around into an efficient representative of the Indian community. We see this trend in every BN party - UMNO, MCA, MIC, Gerakan, PPP, Sabah and Sarawak UMNO - when partly leaders opt for the status quo however untenable. The PPP demand is seen in MIC as a call to revolution to overthrow its leaders.

That this is an environmental disaster in the making is ignored by all, including those who should be concerned about it. The villagers say the desecration of their ancient fishing lands, but could do little about it. Their MP would push them away. How dare they interfere in this development in their name. That he comes to the island in the company of Tan Sri Vincent or on his account is enough for the villagers to not raise any matters which could redound on them. But patience has its limits. Even the worm would turn. More dramatically it is reported in the UMNO-controlled New Straits Times. It is for any number of reasons - the new Prime Minister flexes his muscles, general election is in the air and however small the Malay voters every vote counts, PAS could step in and challenge UMNO in its heartland, there is doubt if he could transform into athe Pak Lah crony, whatever - but the reasons do not matter.

THE MANUFACTURED CRISIS OF A Western news magazine threatening the Malaysian Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, is enough for the New Straits Times and UMNO leaders to be more royal than monarch. The NST says in an editorial (NST, 12 September 2003) this "threat" is "a black day for journalism". It assumes there was one and asks if Business Week should have threatened Dr Mahathir for an interview. It takes the high ground which it does not in its daily coverage and reports, and why an "immaculate reputation for accurate and unbiased information" makes or breaks a magazine. Even if the editorial did not say it, at least it explains why the NST circulation nosedived so disastrously as it has, that when a self-serving newspaper serves as the mouthpiece of the ruling party and ignores the fundamentals of the marketplce, its circulation should skid badly.

So to be seen to be in charge, he must divert attention. He got that in a request from the American weekly, Business Week, for an interview for an article on his legacy. The New Straits Times reports today (11 September 2003) on its front page how Business Week threatened to write adverse articles about Dr Mahathir. (At his press conference, he kept insisting it was not Business Week but Newsweek.) The letter its Singapore correspondent, Mr Michael Shari, wrote is not released, only Dr Mahathir's skewed reading of it. It reports as fact Dr Mahathir's reading of it: that it would publish adverse articles about him, Malaysia and BN. Mr Shari wanted his response to, horror or horrors, cronyism and corruption in Malaysia, and if he did not respond to the request for an interview within 48 hours, the article would be published nevertheless. Dr Mahathir took it to be threatening and rude, and "reflected the attitude of the Western press which continued to dictate to and slander leaders according to their whims and fancies".

Take one case in point. The National Economic Action Council placed a series of high profile advertisements in Malaysia and regional papers to press its case with Singapore for an economic rate for the water it supplies. As the two countries exchanged insults, in a typical tit-for-tat reaction, there appeared in the New Straits Times on 01 July 2003, a seemingly reasoned and well-argued article on how bilteral ties could be improved. The writer of that article? Tan Sri Lim Kok Wing. He would not written that article off his own bat. He could not even have written it. And the New Straits Times is not about to print an article of this importance from a man who in the past has shown no interest in issues like this, unless it brings him lots of money. And he would not lend his name to it unless Dr Mahathir wants him to.

A FEW MISTAKES TURNED UP in this piece but the arguments I make is not deflected. The survey was done not by the Business Times but the Malaysian Business, a monthly publication of Berita Publishing. Malaysian Business, in pointing this out, says I should not have added the total remuneration of Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong and Tan Sri Vincent Tan for by doing so I would be counting the total twice or thrice. The Business Times, in its report, does not make it clear. Not every one has access to either the Malaysian Business or the annual reports of the companies on which this survey is based. So one depends on papers like the New Straits Times and its business insert, the Business Times. I therefore asked several in the corporate field, including one CEO of a listed company, to read the article and tell me what they thought of what the two Tan Sris earned: not one said it was not as I had described.

The New Straits Times' Business Times supplement on 02 August 2003 surveyed the renumeration of the chief executives of the 448 listed companies whose highest paid executive is paid more than RM300,000, and published the top 20 highest paid. Top of this list is the nonagenarian CEO of Genting Berhad and its offshoot, Resorts World Berhad, Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong, who received a total of about RM110,000, which with his stake in the two companies, brought it up to RM133.5 million in 2002. Both companies are associated with gambling and leisure, and is proof how important gambling is to the Malaysian economy.

THE NATIONAL FRONT (BN) IS IN DIRE straits. Its main party, UMNO, is in shambles. Its long-time president, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, who is also Prime Minister, leaves the party worse than ever. But he cannot let Malaysians know of it. So spurious issues are raised to mask the quagmire UMNO is in. No one is prepared to address the causes of that quagmire, one man in a wheelchair in Sungei Buloh. So they find other issues as a smokescreen. What afflicts UMNO spread to the BN. Dr Mahathir has warned, in a front page banner headline in The New Straits Times today (09 July 2003), BN election candidates must first list their assets; if they did not, or to avoid it transferred their assets to "someone else", they would take action.

The Prime Minister understood this quickly enough, and he set the matter right: he promised the Harakah licence would not be revoked. The New Straits Times, in its report on 19 June 2003, said: "The permit of Harakah, PAS's official organ, will not be revoked despite having published a cartoon insulting Datuk Seri Mahathir Mohamed," and went on to insult Dr Mahathir by referring readers to the "offensive" cartoon on page 2 of the same edition. Dr Mahathir put a political spin to it and said: "Such an action will be tantamount to the Government stooping to their level." There has been calls to revoke its permit. On this, the good doctor said; "What is there to comment? It is shows their level of thinking ... we can gauge. So, there is no need for me to say anything more." Indeed.

But Dato' Seri Adnan, in an interview with Al-Jazeera yesterday, a sanitized version of which appears in today's New Straits Times (15 May 2003, p12), accused PAS of using me, a non-Muslim, to further its political agenda. How do I know this? Last night, Al-Jazeera asked me for a comment for a programme it does on the casino controversy. I write a column twice a month for Harakah. I chose the subject and slant. Sometimes they want changes, which I do only if I agree. On more occasions than I care to remember, the columns are not accepted, and I write a new one, if there is time and I am otherwise not engaged. Or send a piece I had already written for Sangkancil. I rarely go the Harakah offices, nor meet with its editors, nor indeed with PAS officials except at gatherings and the like. I also write a fortnightly column for the KeADILan organ, Seruan KeADILan.

The late James J. Puthucheary, the prominent advocate and solicitor and an active trade unionist and politician earlier, told me once how when he was detained in Changi prison in the 1950s, the British colonial secretary of the day came to see him, knocked on the open cell door and asked if it was convenient to see him. James brusquely said it was not. The man went away and came back a few days later, established a friendship that lasted until the man's death decades on. Ten years' later, in independent Singapore, in a second bout of detention, all these niceties had disappeared. It is worse now. The former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, was bound and trussed after his arrest under the ISA in 1998 when the then Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Rahim Noor, beat him to a pulp. The New Straits Times editor-in-chief, Tan Sri Abdullah Ahmad, was promised release from ISA in December 1976 if he provided a statement the authorities wanted. He gave it, but he remained in detention for another five years.

So when he who would be Prime Minister wants to show Malaysians he is the right and fit person for the job, he is interviewed in the foreign media. And reported verbatim in the local media. He hopes to get the best of both worlds: the local media carrying a foreign interview. So, when Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, was interviewed on BBC's Asia Today programme on Wednesday, he was strutting out into the world's stage, to tell the world he is his own man, indeed a man for all seasons who would not turn Malaysia's foreign policy upside down as Dato' Seri Mahathir did. But the interview, a full transcript of which was in the New Straits Times yesterday (03 April 2003, p2), did not reveal any insights except that his choice of weapons is the rapier not the blunderbus, which he would not use even in extremis. In other words, he takes the view that when rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it.

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