THE MAN WHO HELPED MALAYSIA and UMNO lose tens of billions of ringgit, guided a generation of Malaysian business men on a fantasy roller-coaster ride of fame, riches, deep financial straits and bankruptcy, is, if current fears are right, to return to "guide" Malaysia's financial and fiscal destiny after Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed retires. Tun Daim Zainuddin, for it is he, now forges links with and Dr Mahathir's successor, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. They meet, informed sources tell me, twice a week. His network is intact, his group of young -- Mark II -- accountants and deal makers out to become rich beyond Croessus has drifted deliberately into the Badawi network, waiting to pounce. No one seriously believed Tun Daim would retire, when he abruptly left the cabinet two years ago after he could not produce UMNO's accounts for the two decades he was its Treasurer. Too many loose ends to reconcile and settle. If he was Treasurer of PAS or Parti KeADILan Nasional, he would in the same cell block as one Anwar Ibrahim in Sungei Buloh. He is not. He has immunity.

KLIA is a white elephant. It was not meant to be any other. It was built not for a transport hub or a modern airport but so public funds could be diverted to private pockets. It was known at the time, and one man, I believe his name is Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, is in gaol in Sungei Buloh because he objected to a fellow cabinet minister's minions making off with billions of ringgit over KLIA and the Bakun hydroelectrict project in Sarawak (that was given to a Malaysian business man with no money, no experience, no clue to what a hydroelectric project is, but a friend of the Prime Minister, the usual way contracts are handed out without tender to Bolehland business men.) It was built in stealth, the government insisting the project is better in private hands, and the more inefficient the government. Since all this is done without parliamentary or political checks and balances, it just went out of control. One waits for the day KLIA and MAB is brought back into government hands, as the buses, and the trains and MAS now are.

There is panic in UMNO about it. These men and women wrote to Dato' Seri Anwar through his lawyers, and wanted proof he had seen them by insisting on an acknowledgement from him. The Prison authorities do not know what to do with the flood of books, greeting cards and letters that arrive daily at Sungei Buloh prison. When the Special Branch hears of it, they are taken away and destroyed. When they are not, they are sent to his wife. Each time, it runs into the thousands. Prison officers say more is destroyed than is delivered. And what is delivered is impressive enough.

The religious affairs department raided an apartment in Sungei Buloh recently and arrested the wife of an UMNO worthy and five Bosnians watching a blue film. It has thrown UMNO leaders into a frenzy, and every effort made so it would not be open knowledge. The husband, an UMNO MP and former cabinet minister, is said to be fed up and wants to divorce her. With an administration proclaiming its Islamic worldview, this could not come at a worse time. The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, is predictably furious, as he was, a few years ago, when this man was caught for the peculiar Islamic offence of "khalwat" -- being in the same house with no one else present with a member of the opposite sex who is not a spouse.

The National Front (BN) is, as my friend Shamsul Akmar of the New Straits Times writes today (14 December 2002), greater than the sum of its parts. It was once. Not now. If it is, the crisis of the past fortnight would not be. UMNO holds BN in his iron grip, and not let law and procedure stand in its way. If it decides on a course of action, it would not relent until it gets it. One man in Sungei Buloh prison can attest to that. So, when two MCA state assemblymen abstained on an opposition-initiated motion in the Penang state assembly, UMNO decided to make an example of them in high dudgeon and by ignoring constitutional niceties. What UMNO wants, UMNO gets. The UMNO supreme council wants the duo expelled. Nothing less would do. UMNO also wants the MCA president, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik's head, for setting the two state assemblymen up to abstain in an elaborate but sure-to-fail plan so it would provide the next chief minister of Penang. UMNO, MCA, Gerakan all lost their cool. The two state assemblymen must be sacked. It does not matter if everyone in this sorry episode failed to do their bit. And nine state assemblymen were not even present, as they should have been if the issue was as important as is now made out.

Nothing grows under a banyan tree. Dr Mahathir is so dominant in Malaysian politics that he creates a vaccuum in UMNO's, and the country's, leadership. UMNO leaders dare not venture into their constituencies, nor meet their constituences except in controlled situations where it would be impolite ("kurang ajar") to raise one's grievances. The UMNO is in such bad shape in the bondooks that it needs little for UMNO headquarters to go into rigor mortis. As after the Lunas, Pendang and Anak Bukit byelections in Dr Mahathir's home state of Kedah. The SMS service will not reverse this, as the UMNO website did not. It must take harsh and hard decisions it cannot. The hardest is what to do with Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, the jailed former deputy prime minister. Without resolving it, UMNO would be marginal in the Malay cultural world. His declining health worries the thinking and worried UMNO leaders and members no end. But neither Dr Mahathir nor his putative successor, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, would budge from keeping him in Sungei Buloh until he has served his full sentence. The mistake they make is to look at him as a convict when the Malay ground regard him as a political leader wronged.

It is assumed the two are wrong, they should have kept their minds in safe deposit boxes once they are elected, and should never ever act as conscience dictates. When the country's, or indeed the BN's, security or well-being is at stake, then Dato' Seri Abdullah's front attack on the pair is justified. This requires the BN to shepherd its elected representatives, as PAS does, with clear statements of the national interest, and bring them into the discussion so they are clear from the start where they stand. But in the BN, this is assumed and transferred by an osmosis more imagined than real. It lately is the norm that anyone the Prime Minister and the deputy prime minister, in their various incarnations, attacks must accept it and not play, but be, dead. To challenge it is dangerous, not for the challengers but to those they challenge. There sits in a lonely cell in Sungei Buloh prison a man slowly wasting away in a wheelchair who did, and UMNO since is afraid of its, and his, shadow. No one in BN and UMNO wants more shadows like it. Besides, the fiercely independent BN partners will fight tooth and nail to compromise to cling to office long after their ground had deserted them. So, Dato' Seri Abdullah can get away with puerile and unconstitutional threats like this.

Once this principle is accepted, the party leader has a slate of candidates who must be re-elected without question. So we have moribund leaders who make a career of it. One ambassador told me recently Malaysia is the only country in the world where cabinet ministers hold office for decadess as a rule. Since the party leaders usually are in the cabinet, they would not give up easily. For the quickest way into the black hole of Malaysian history is to leave his source of power -- the cabinet or state assembly. So while there is the usual kerfuffle at party elections -- whichever the party -- the results are predictable. The party member who challenges the leader is foolhardy as to invite physical abuse and worse. One man who did is beaten to near death by the Inspector-General of Police, and his residence forcibly shifted from a comfortable bungalow in Damansara Heights, guarded by police officers, to cramped quarters in Sungei Buloh prison, guarded by prison officers. The leader decides where each leader is placed, and woe betide any who has ideas above his station. Even who succeeds him is carefully chosen.

The issue here is not legal, but political. UMNO is in tatters, all because Dr Mahathir, having made the unpardonable feudal sin of humiliating a Malay chieftain, could not ensure his demise, metaphorically and politically. Until the Anwar Ibrahim affair is settled once and for all, UMNO would continue to disintegrate. The signs are already there. The 'wayang kulit' (shadow play) over who would be UMNO president when Dr Mahathir steps down next year, the accusations and counter-accusations amongst the contenders for the Puteri UMNO leadership, UMNO's severe dependence on Chinese votes and on non-Malays in Sabah and Sarawak in the coming general elections as the Malay ground drifts away from it, the confusion over whether Malaysia is an Islamic state, the looming confrontation between UMNO and PAS continues to undermine political confidence in UMNO. In the UMNO Puteri elections, one candidate is the daughter of the man Dr Mahathir primed to challenge the then Prime Minister and UMNO president, Tun Hussein Onn, in 1978. This man's nephew is one Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, whose last known address is Sungei Buloh jail.

He needs the rulers more than ever. Especially when his own preferred successor, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, did a Hang Jebat on him. And destroyed him. But in such a manner that he has become a Phoenix about to rise from the ashes. Meanwhile, this uncertainty throws in doubt the succession to Dr Mahathir. The forces of Hang Jebat and Hang Tuah are marshalled against each other, and it is fought not on numbers or votes but on whether the Hang Tuah principle or the Hang Jebat principle should reign supreme in Malay feudal politics. This would be put to the test when whoever wins -- the Hang Jebatians have a tough battle ahead -- must come to terms with the modern Hang Jebat in Sungei Buloh who over his years in jail transforms himself into a Hang Tuah.

Amidst this state of affairs is the Ras Adiba scam. In one sense, it reflects the inability of the Government to handle matters as it should. It was meant to raise the government's caring image. Instead it is revealed as one not beyond participating in a scam. The government's public relations stunts have all come croppers, this one only the latest in a series. None in government would comment on this political folly, but it must. It reflects once again that unless it gets its act together, and reveal the Ras Adiba caper for what it is, it would be subject to more anger from the Malay community than it bargained for. Even UMNO-controlled Malay newspapers strain at their leash. It is not believed as it once was. Helping Ras Adiba to obtain funds for a medical checkup, seen at first as a sign of its concern, is today seen as crass manipulaton to cheat the Malaysian public. The kudos it thought it could get by caring for Ras Adiba's plight turns out in the end to be as destructive of its well-meant charity as when it refused the VIP prisoner in Sungei Buloh his much-needed surgery. The longer the government holds its tongue the worse it is.

The government did not care if that cost five times the RM100,000 it would in Germany. Under no circumstances would he be allowed to leave the country. The operation was not done. The man is in a wheel chair now, perhaps for the rest of his life, cannot stand up without a neck brace, is in continual intense pain. That man is the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, now in jail in Sungei Buloh what now turns out to be trumped up charges of sodomy and corruption.

To blame the Federal Court for what happened is to expect too much of a battered institution which Tun Dzaiddin attempts to alleviate. In one sense, the judgement it gave is the only one possible. It does not make it right. But it reveals the horrific task ahead to return the judiciary to its past glory. The political confrontation between Dr Mahathir and Dato' Seri Anwar, in which the Federal Court is co-opted, only worsens its task. But that it did what it did now enables Dato' Seri Anwar to raise the ante and turn it into the polemical battle as he sees it. If anything, it puts Dr Mahathir and UMNO, the party he leads, even more defensive. Worse, the man in Sungei Buloh prison is the man UMNO has to come to terms with if it wants to return, like the judiciary, to its past eminence. The judiciary slipped badly in how it tried Dato' Seri Anwar, as UMNO slipped badly in how it tried Dato' Seri Anwar.

Nothing could be more wrong. Especially in a Malay society where the first hint of argument draws out the kris. Malay politics is littered with the bodies of those who fell foul. We need not look far a more recent example: He Who Must Be Destroyed At All Cost, now living in pain and in wheelchair in Sungei Buloh prison, in isolation beside what until recently was the prison mortuary. This debate if general elections or UMNO elections should come first would in the end bring forth more corposes of political generals. There is a tinge of hope and worry in the ramblings of UMNO leaders, especially of the bloodbath that must come if UMNO is to return to the Malay cultural centre. All hinges on if UMNO elections or general elections is held first.

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.

As always, a disabled prisoner in Sungei Buloh who can now barely stand up without help continues to throw a spanner at any attempt to seize the advantage. The White House meeting is marred by the US view on him, the CNN interview did not go the way it went because of him, his political life in Malaysia is marred by his refusal to address his nemesis' impact on his feudal claim to lead.

The Malaysian defence minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, commits every sin in the book as the jailed former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, when he called on the US defence secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, at the Pentagon early this month (May 2002). Both went with the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed's blessings, but one stuck to his feudal script and other did not. One returns in honour and the other sits in his lonely prison cell in Sungei Buloh. Dato' Seri Najib went to lay the groundwork for Dr Mahathir to officially embrace Washington. He is honoured and praised for his role in fracturing Malaysia's foreign policy of equidistance into one of total reliance on Washington where it matters. He is warmly received, he made commitments to allow as many as 1,000 US military overflights over Malaysia every month, reinforced US-military links, took the United States into his confidence than he would ever the Malaysian public. Yet, Malaysia has for the past 35 years prided in its foreign policy of equidistance from the Big Powers. Dato' Seri Anwar did not such thing. If he had, he would probably be hanged as a traitor by now.

UMNO decides it needs a new more vibrant UMNO in Kelantan, one in which its eminense grise -- one Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, of whom it is possible you might not have heard of -- must be given a chance to weave his magic to unseat PAS. In Dr Mahathir's view, for UMNO's survival, PAS must be routed in Kelantan. The last time PAS was in office there, UMNO forced it out in a deliberate confrontation of the type one Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim adopted when he was dismissed from UMNO and the government. In Malaysia, what is sauce for the gander is not for the goose. So, UMNO ran PAS out of town in what it saw as a victory. Dato' Seri Anwar cools his heels in Sungei Buloh for doing exactly that.

UMNO seethes at this development, and the arrest of KeADILan activists under the Internal Security Act is in part to remove any who actives promotes its cause. It wants KeADILan destroyed, PRM is too small to bother now though it could be a threat in the long run, and UMNO hopes it could snare its nemesis back into its fold: that it hopes could kill two birds with one stone. But there's many a slip 'betwixt the cup and the lip. The Opposition's new found strength is fixated, like UMNO, to what the man in Sungei Buloh would do. That is good neither for UMNO nor BN. As for the Opposition, the jury is still out.

But Dato' Seri Najib became an useful ally in his perennial search for a successor, and he was brought back to defence. He closes his eyes to what the minister's wife does. In Malaysia, all is forgiven if on the side of He Who Thinks He Is Lord Of All He Surveys. Corruption it is if you and I or Dato' Seri Anwar did but not those basking in the Great Man's benevolent gaze. So, Dato' Seri Anwar goes to jail for what the MCA president and transport minister, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, is lauded. Sergeant Senapang bin Peluru goes to Sungei Buloh or Kajang for which Datin Seri Rafidah Aziz goes to Putra Jaya.

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