Now he has another UMNO problem on his hands. This issue of the 6,000 taxi permits. He must douse it by coming clean. Dato' Seri Nazri said he would reveal the details. He probably already has - to the ACA and Pak Lah. Especially now the ACA is caught out. It need not have. Dato' Seri Nazri sent in his letter of resignation when Dr Mahathir stepped down. No one else did. Dr Mahathir had said firmly there was no need to. But codicils to constitutional law, made on the spur of the moment, is not good law. In the end, he was persuade to withdraw it. It is too dangerous a precedent for cabinet ministers to live with. Many of whom remain in office long after their sell-by date. But Dato' Seri Nazri now taunts Pak Lah to sack him. He is the only cabinet minister openly supportive of the UMNO conscience now residing in Sungei Buloh jail. Other cabinet ministers and BN leaders said they would attend the wedding of Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim earlier this year and did not; but Dato' Seri Nazri not only turned up but sat at the main table at the reception. It does turn out now that it would have been better for Pak Lah to have accepted his resignation. It is unlikely he can sack him now.

When I met Dato' Ibrahim recently at a Hari Raya Open House recently, he was hellfire and brimstone personifed. He had changed sides now, reminded me of how he had changed the political landscape in 1990, and intends to do so again. He has announced plans to arrive in Kota Bharu and be greeted by tens of thousands of those who are upset he is sidelined. He can do it. The UMNO response to it is one of fear. One columnist in the mainstream media saw it as divisive and fears UMNO could be the loser. He is right, of course. If this is mishandled, UMNO can forget about returning to office in Kelantan for a few more general elections. If Pak Lah wanted to improve UMNO's electoral chances in that state, he made all the wrong decisions. The UMNO liaison chief is the well-regarded backroom boy but a hopeless politician, Dato' Mustapha Mohamed, and if the rhetoric is to be believed, the new mentri besar. He has sidelined the one man who can return Kelantan to UMNO, Tengku Razaleigh. Similarly, Pak Lah must erase the Anwar residue in Penang, so he religiously roots out any who is linked in any way to the UMNO ghost in Sungei Buloh. Which is why he must remain where he is. Dato' Seri Anwar is so dangerous out of harm's way; how more dangerous would he be when he campaigns in Penang and elsewhere? Besides, it would be another needless confrontation Pak Lah could do without.

THE NATIONAL FRONT (BN) AND UMNO is in a quandry. Both are split so badly, but it would not admit it. The BN parties are so dominated by their presidents and for decades that when they step down, it breaks up. The latest is Dato' Amar Leo Moggie's Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS), an offshot of another BN party, the Sarawak National Party (SNAP). What both have in common is that with the retirement of their long-time leaders, both are deregistered. Three more wait in the wings. The utter confusion within is so serious that the new UMNO president, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, cannot take the strong measures he must to prevent it going the way of PBDS and SNAP. He had to contain Kelantan, if only to deny the state as a base for the one man who can put paid to his prime ministership. But it only exposed the cracks to be more serious than imagined. The only other significant change was in Penang, to ward off another rival, whose poses a threat from his prison cell in Sungei Buloh.

THE STORY MAKING THE ROUNDS has the ring of truth: The outgoing Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, wanted his successor, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and the defence minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, to agree to two conditions: that Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim should remain in prison until he completes his sentence, and Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah should not be allowed to move up the UMNO and BN ladder. Dato' Seri Najib should not have been there since he is not yet the deputy prime minister. Rumours are embellished in the repeating. But when this is linked to another - that Pak Lah was denied his security briefing until he agreed to appoint him as his deputy - and Dr Mahathir's apparent refusal to leave his office until the last possible moment, there is more to this than is revealed. Pak Lah has his own reasons to keep Dato' Seri Anwar in prison: both are from Penang, and an Anwar out of prison, crippled as he is, is a dangerous man indeed. Look at the political trouble he causes from his prison cell in Sungei Buloh.

The deputy education minister, Dato' Aziz Shamsuddin, and who thought up the spurious charges which put Dato' Seri Anwar in jail, and a few anti-Anwar stalwarts in UMNO and the business community provided the spin to destroy, yet again, Dato' Seri Anwar, this time once and for all. Try as UMNO might, he refuses to stay dead, and is as forceful a political force now as he was in 1998, his unresolved fate causing UMNO and its leaders to stumble repeatedly as it try to get out of his reach. A group of UMNO leaders I met in recent days says, without conviction, he is no more relevant, that Pak Lah is clearly home and dry, that he need not fear the man in Sungei Buloh. Yet the facts prove otherwise. Pak Lah's hatchet man is in the United States to seek more information from those SBS interviewed. The Malaysian news agency, Bernama, whose chairman is the self-same Pak Lah hatchet man, was quick off the bat with a tendentious story about the programme, which Malaysian newspapers carried a version that took off some of the more damaging and unprovable assertions it made. It was of course front page news. The police the following day promised to investigate the programme's assertion that UMNO's enemy for all seasons - once attacked as an IMF stoog and CIA agent - is now an Al Qaeda terrorist, no less.

Worse, it comes amidst the UMNO leadership changes, but with the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, showing no signs of letting go. He insists on being Prime Miniser until midnight on 31 October, giving rise to doubts about his successor's ability to hold BN and the country together. The 22 years of misrule has come to a head. It comes when the Malay - more than the Malaysian - wants his right to be heard. When BN and UMNO is clueless on how to react. There is none with the strategic view to shake up UMNO and with it BN. The one who could sits forlornly in Sungei Buloh prison. When BN should focus on the coming elections, its leaders take positions to oppose each other. It hopes for a deux et machina to save it from disaster. One is the postal vote. Another is more voters who would vote - as a Chicago mayor once called on his supporters - early and often.

The power struggle is more vicious now than ever. The BN - and UMNO - is split so many ways that even a strong leader could only patch it up so long as the former deputy prime minister remains in jail. He was destroyed politically because he dared to challenge Dr Mahathir as UMNO president and Malaysian Prime Minister. Dr Mahathir in pique sacked him as deputy prime minister and UMNO deputy president without regard to the legality of it, treated worse than a common criminal and a near cripple today that his political career is probably past him. But the BN's and UMNO's political difficulties rose only since his dismissal in 1998. Dr Mahathir believes Dato' Seri Anwar - or Pak Sheikh, as his followers and supporters address him - is a spent force. Perhaps he is, but so long as Pak Sheikh's current address remains Sungei Buloh jail, BN and UMNO is.

As I said, MM cannot. Nor could AAB until after the UMNO GA in June 2004 and if he is returned with his wings not clipped. There is no question of a Malaysian PM visiting Singapore for a fresh POA. That was like the LKW article yet another poison pill. And as I said it may not be AAB even but TR. And he would be much more difficult for Singapore to deal with, especially if his number two happens to be a fellow not wheelchair bound in Sungei Buloh. This is talked about so often that I do not discount that any more. Malaysian politics, like Singapore's, is in flux. There is more to the water talks than meets the eye.

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.

Why does it do this? It continues to believe it is indestructible when it is anything but. The leadership transition in every BN member party, UMNO included, is in shambles. It does not have a philosophical and strategic worldview to underpin its political actions. Often each cabinet minister is for himself, make policy on the run, change it at will, and cannot understand why he is so misunderstood. There is, in short, a destructive cultural divide amongst its members and those it governs. No one addresses issues frankly. Party congresses, where issues out to be discussed, are merely a letting of steam, in much the same way Parliament is, only to show the forms are followed and the substance ignored or waylaid. And having allowed that, all is well. But if the government does not act intuitively and in the name of the people it nominally represents, chaos can result. Especially when the government, as the BN one is, does not have the moral or political authority to govern. Yes, it has the electoral majority, but it governs in fear. Of losing the Malay ground. Of the damage on it by a man it peremptorally confined to Sungei Buloh prison in a wheelchair.

Then there is one appointment both the MIC and PPP presidents are upset about: the appointment of Dato' M. Kayveas as deputy minister in the Prime Minister's department. The MIC president is unhappy the party is left out, the PPP president that he did not his minister in local government and housing. After all, he did, in his considered impassionate neutral view, brilliantly highlighted corruption in the Ampang Jaya municipal council. Why is he now swats flies in the Prime Minister's department. For one, in his publicity-seeking rush to contain corruption, he laid it at the feet of senior UMNO leaders. That is verboten, and inimial to his political health. Did he not know the natural progression for a BN politician who wants to swat corruption is to swat flies? Or if he is important enough, he gets to swat those flies in Sungei Buloh. That he is where he is shows both how lucky and how unimportant he is in the BN scheme of things. He should count himself lucky if he was transferred to Sungei Buloh after a sparring match, when blindfolded and manacled, by no less than the Inspector-General of Police. There is only one problem. He would be forgotten by the people at large, as he would soon be in his new position.

But some who promised fealty spoke with treason in their hearts. His continuance in office after the UMNO general assembly next year (in 2005), when elections are due, is subject to matters beyond his control. It would depend on how the BN and UMNO would fare in the general elections, which in all probability would be held earlier, and if he would be challenged for the UMNO presidency and by whom. UMNO treads into unchartered waters, its organisation in shambles, its political focus burdened by the overshadowing presence of a near cripple confined to a wheelchair in Sungei Buloh prison. The rot cannot be reversed without a reformation from within. But there is no heart for it amongst those in control. One officially requested intelligence assessment gives UMNO and BN only a majority of 20 parliamentary seats in an election if Pak Lah is leader.

THE OLD MAN WAS IN FINE FORM. He did not disappoint. As always. He let loose his feelings, in this, his penultimate speech at an UMNO General Assembly. The end is in sight. The UMNO president went into it with all hands flailing and warned UMNO and Malaysia of the perfidy of the Anglo-Saxon powers, which he did not identify but any who did not identify them as the United States and the United Kingdom is better off in a lunatic asylum. What a speech it was! He did not mention or refer to his deputy, who takes over from him in four months, by name or title, though he did his nemesis, now confined to his wheelchair in Sungei Buloh prison, offhandedly, and gave few any doubt he would hold office until the day he retires. It put paid to the belief of some of his cronies and aids that without him the country, and they, would suffer irreparable damage. If persuasion and hectoring was not enough, there were the copious tears, when he talked of the future of the UMNO he destroyed.

When this club holds its annual dinners, leading UMNO lights rush to grace their presence. It is, believe it or not, an important group in the UMNO political process, holds no loyalty to any UMNO leader - in fact its loyalties, by and large, are to an ex-UMNO politician whose political influence rise with every day he spends in Sungei Buloh jail. In the 1987 UMNO presidential contest, it was Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim who swung this club to swing to ensure Dr Mahathir's victory. His instructions then were clear: Dr Mahathir to be returned at whatever cost. As he was. When UMNO youth targeted Opposition, especial Parti KeADILan Nasional (KeADILan) workers in the Indera Kayanagan state assembly byelection in Perlis, and the Kedah parliamentary byelection in Pendang and the state assembly poll in Anak Bukit, it was this commando group which provided them protection.

This would continue so long as Kuala Lumpur finds it convenient to let matters lie. Dr Mahathir, never having controlled Sabah, although UMNO formed the government, could not, or would not, clean up the politics. Pak Lah comes to office weaker. The ghost of Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim blows an ill wind in the state. So it does not surprise that Sabah is the bell-weather state. It has 30 parliamentary and 60 state assembly seats after the next general elections. Kuala Lumpur controls only a faction of that. That officially-written-off political figure, whose last known address is Sungei Buloh Prison, is the beneficiary of that local defiance, and continues to spout, metaphorically for now, brimstone and fire. Kuala Lumpur hopes to wean that support with lots of money. So huge sums of money is spent, loyalties are bought with abandon, but when the crunch comes, almost all that funds is wasted. In other words, UMNO in Sabah is in power in name as it always was. Admitting Dr Jeffrey could have tipped that balance against it. So he stays out.

The courts had requested the Attorney-General, Dato' Seri Abdul Ghani Patail, on Friday to make arrangements for Dato' Seri Anwar to be present that evening and on the other two days of the wedding ceremonies. He agreed, so no order was made, and telephoned the Home Ministry's secretary-general, Tan Sri Aseh Che Mat, then in Dubai. The prisons department agreed but the police only if no more than 250 relatives were allowed. Five truckloads of prisons officers arrived with Dato' Seri Anwar at 4.30 pm for the 'akad nikah'. Four of five times more people were outside for a glimpse of the man. The simple ceremony over, he remained for another two hours before he returned to his cell at Sungei Buloh prison. But he did not return: The police would not allow him without a court order.

IF ONE MAN ALL BUT DESTROYED UMNO, the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, his putative successor, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, undermined the government's confidence and threatens the National Front's (BN) future, it is a frail, crippled, man in his early 50s, imprisoned in isolate at Sungei Buloh prison. His name is Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. His last salaried position was deputy prime minister. He was sentenced on 14 April 1999, convicted for corruption and sodomy, but he was arrested on 2 September, initially under the Internal Security Act. The courts unusually bent the prison rules to ensure he would not pose a political threat to Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, refused him bail, and insisted the two prison terms of six and nine years be consecutive, not concurrent. During his time in jail, the government all but collapsed as Dr Mahathir and his government rushed hither and thither to contain the political damage Dato' Seri Anwar wrought.

Washing dirty linen in public is how political vendettas are resolved. It happens in every political party, but especially in the BN parties. Party members cannot express their views. All those brilliantly crafted humourous and serious speeches that one hears at party annual general meetings, especially in UMNO, are made by chosen delegates who will not criticise the leaders, nor upset the decorum of the proceedings. The last time an UMNO leader tried to go against that now sits in his lonely cell in Sungei Buloh. So, whenever a crisis hits a political party, it is debated in excruciating and often embarrasing detail in public. That the Ling-Ong spat has made it to the front pages of the New Straits Times two days running is proof yet of more damaging revelations in the coming days. Does this mean Dr Ong libelled the MCA leaders? No. Only that proof that can stand in a court of law is lacking. Like corruption.

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