Unlike in the other two, in Malaysia Dato' Seri Anwar is kept in the limelight by an efficient campaign mounted on his behalf by his supporters and the government not responding as it should. Every action it takes is seen as self-serving and vindictive. Last week, the government-run Radio Talivisyen Malaysia (RTM) was allowed into Sungei Buloh prison's restricted area where high officials, police officers and others who could be manhandled by the inmates at large are kept. No outsider, including prison officers other than those on duty there, is allowed into this area.

The central issue now is his deteriorating health, and how his life-threatening back pain can be treated. Dato' Seri Anwar holds his ground, and the government's response is both pathetic and vindictive. It then changes tack. Dato' Seri Anwar gets special treatment no other prisoner gets. That is true. He is treated with kid gloves. The cabinet meets to decide almost every one of his requests. The health minister is brought in to question his nationalism. The deputy prime minister's aides discuss with the Sungei Buloh prison authorities about his living arrangements. The New Sunday Times today (01 April 01) says an RTM television crew visited his hospital room and found he has "luxury treatment ... unprecedented for a prisoner in this country. If this is to show how well he is treated, the government should explain why it breaks its own rules and regulations to give this run-of-the-mill prisoner all these privileges. (And if this NST report is a sick April Fool Joke, it backfires with even more excreta on the government's collective face.)

If he is, as the government insists, a common prisoner, why are the deputy prime minister's aides brought in to decide what kind of cell he should be put in at the Sungei Buloh prison when he leaves hospital? Why does the cabinet have to decide what kind of medical treatment he is entitled to? Why cannot the government stand firmly and tell him bluntly to his face he is a common prisoner and he will get the treatment other prisoners can expect?

But should the government play havoc with his life? The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, wanted him returned to his cell in Sungei Buloh post haste even as he was in intense pain at the Hospital Kuala Lumpur. Even the Prime Minister now does not repeat the old canard he is a sodomist. He made no mention of that -- he was convicted by the prosecution changing the goal post to insist he is convicted. The point is he remains far more popular politically than almost any UMNO politician. I am told his illness is so severe that it could be life threatening. Now, if UMNO and the National Front wants to know what dread is, that should come to pass. Meanwhile, under the conditions under which his German endoscopic specialist may examine him, he might just as well not come.

One reason why permission is granted now is to make the Malay Unity talks not stumble over how he is treated. But it would not. Dato' Seri Anwar had fought a long battle with the authorities for the right to have a specialist of his choice. There was no suggestion that no one but he would pay for him to come. But the government had refused. Indeed, plans are afoot for him to be sent back to Sungei Buloh prison from his present ward at the Hospital Kuala Lumpur. Suggestions that he was faking his illness was made. Dato' Abdul Razak would have agreed to have him returned to his cell despite the extreme pain he is subjected to. Why did the good doctor agree to have him sent back for what he now says he cannot be on compassionate grounds?

The Prime Minister knows not, it seems, why Malays are divided, fractious, ungrateful, ignore him and, horror of horrors, believe the Opposition understands them better than an UMNO which takes them for granted. He insists the Malay must unite behind him and UMNO, or be forever irrevocably split. He, after all, is the benchmark of Malay comfort. Not that corrupt sodomite prisoner in Sungei Buloh, nor any who insists the Prime Minister has lost his right to the Malay cultural mantle. Corrupt sodomite? Of course, the brightest and the best in the Malaysian judiciary, their integrity so peerless and unquestionable that going on holidays with lawyers who get the judgement they want burnishes it, has so decreed. It is beyond the Prime Minister's understanding why the Malays want to be so divided and disunited by supporting a man who could not lead them before 2020.

Which is why I hear, I suppose, more talk these days of a a state of emergency to halt UMNO's political drift. But could the Prime Minister impose one and be fully confident he could then rule what is left of his roost? Could the armed forces be trusted to go back to the barracks after their work is done? After the 13 May racial riots, it did. Would it now? Would the Prime Minister's political health be enhanced should, after an emergency is imposed, He Who Must Be Destroyed At All Cost is released from Sungei Buloh prison to become president of Parti KeADILan Negara?

Lunas proved the Malay is not enamoured of Dr Mahathir and of UMNO so long as he leads it. UMNO and he is now stalked by Anwar from his prison cell in Sungei Buloh. The more racial UMNO's response -- the threat of another May 13, the Chinese treachery -- the more it would be marginalised. But it continues to raise the race and religion card. The opposition, to its credit, has not. We are only told by the National Front it has. The threats have all come from UMNO leaders. It had put its future upon the Chinese community. In 1999, its wholehearted support saved the National Front. A year later, it confronts each other. The Indians are irrelevant and marginalised. UMNO cannot depend upon the Malay vote anymore. It is this Malay marginalisation UMNO and the National Front should makes UMNO and National Front more racial than it should. That is a sign of fear not strength. The UMNO and National Front predicament is not over. Not by a long shot.

Malaysia will host the OIC summit in Putra Jaya in 2003. The Prime Minister had gone to its last, in Doha, demanding no less. But Putra Jaya has no auditorium without superlatives to describe it. So, one would be built at speed, with money no object, for RM1 billion, give or take a few hundred million as it is fine tuned to garish opulence. No one can tell you how much it would eventually cost for not even the builders cannot be sure since the plans get changed by the hour, week, month, year. It would have been built with or without the OIC summit; but now that it would, the collosal expenses can be justified. This was decided upon long before it became the host for 2006. In his entourage to Doha was the architect who would make this maniacal dream to reality. In his bungalow in Sungei Buloh is spread the plans for this complex, to accommodate 135 or so heads of state, with facilities to match. Those who have seen the plans are aghast at this new, as usual, unmentioned project. I came to hear of it by accident, and the source clamped up when I asked for more details.

Though much was promised, tomorrow's EGM is but a half-hearted attempt to reform. The status quo, the leaders decide, is more important than change. UMNO has not in its 50 years willingly adopted change, with token moves to give it a populist face. This in itself is not bad if its leaders change often, by rotation or other means. If it had, as the People's Action Party in Singapore, UMNO's predicament would not be as severe. Which brings the focus back to the Prime Minister. When he should have reshuffled his cabinet, with new blood brought in periodically as others retire. But he has had the same cabinet since he took office in July 1981, the only changes brought when he is challenged. As UMNO, with both self-perpetuating oligarchies. With neither nimble to act as it must. And in fear of their lives for what a prisoner in Sungei Buloh could unleash.

While I cannot but live under an American security worldview, living where I am, the zone of peace, freedom and neutrality that is the flash point of the United States and China carving out their spheres of influence. But why should I then give up my independence or thought to fit into a Malaysian Uncle Tom to US interests? Many do, and I met several too happy to. The Malaysians voted for Mr Bush, which echoes the Prime Minister's choice, not realising his vice-president Mr Cheney is a special friend of his nemesis, who now lives in Sungei Buloh. No one reflected upon what this carnival that has become television coverage had upon the American electorate.

Malaysia is in this conundrum because it exports the Prime Minister's internal difficulty with his nemesis on to the world stage, warning foreign governmnents not to deal with his supporters. That, as the deputy prime minister noted yesterday, interfers in internal affairs. No doubt that is why, whilst the rest of the world is up in arms and hold massive demonstrations against what happens in Palestine, Malaysia keeps quiet but for an officially-organised protest. But he could not allow demonstrations. The Free Anwar Campaign plans to have 100,000 people gather in Klang on Sunday, 5 November 00, in support of the gentleman in Sungei Buloh. The police threaten the public, not the organisers, of dire consequences if they attend. This shows beyond doubt democracy is alive and well in Malaysia. The United States congressman who want a resolution to support Dato' Seri Anwar interfers in Malaysia's internal affairs. And so the spin goes.

THE PRIME MINISTER labelled as traitors those who discouraged foreign investors to Malaysia. They should not damage Malaysia's economy, he told reporters in Brunei yesterday (29 Sept 00), for that would redound on the "people's well-being". These days, the only traitors he recognises are his former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim and his hyper-active supporters. His nemesis persistently snaps at his heels from his prison cell in Sungei Buloh to encase the Prime Minister in an ever-diminishing nightmarish political coccoon that threatens to envelop him. The Prime Minister often incoherent attacks is in sharp contrast with Dato' Seri Anwar's carefully considered riposte.

UMNO could not but taunt PAS for the debate to recover lost Malay cultural ground. UMNO is in crisis, has been since it humiliated its deputy president, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, two years ago. The November 1999 general election is, for UMNO and the National Front, a pyrrhic victory. The UMNO ground talks of a revamped UMNO with the Prime Minister nor the deputy president, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, not leading it. The quiet, unexpected political strength the former Selangor mentri besar and UMNO vice-president, Tan Sri Mohamed Taib, displays catapaults him into potential leadership. The Hermit of Langgak Golf, long dismissed as a court jester, is back in contention. The Prisoner in Sungei Buloh making prisoners of UMNO leaders frightens them all. The Prime Minister throws caution to the winds with his peevish, petty behaviour: after a quarter century of UMNO misuse, he turns the solemnly signed oil royalty agreement between two UMNO leaders -- Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, as Petronas chief, and Tan Sri Wan Mokhtar Ahmad, the Trengganu mentri besar -- into a memorandum of understanding; and make Malay Rights a rallying cry to divide the Malays and frighten the non-Malays. For UMNO to debate Malay Rights 45 years into its governance reflects not its commitment to it, but its collosal failure. Insisting upon Shah Alam as a Malay city depresses property values, not strengthen Malay Rights.

THE Sungei Buloh PRISON authorities would not allow the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, to visit his sick mother recently. He had visited her a fortnight earlier, her condition deteriorated since, the authorities would not relent. Appeals are useless. The Home Ministry decides, not the prison authorities, how he should be treated as a prisoner. He is in solitary confinement, which under prison regulations, should be for misbehaviour while serving sentence. The courts and the authorities bend over backwards to make his prison sojourn as uncomfortable as possible. So, he went on a hunger strike to visit his terminally ill mother. He is not well. He outstared the authorities, upped the ante in this ceaseless confrontation between the Prime Minister and the Prisoner. The prison authorities backed down, and he visited his mother in hospital.

More serious problems face him at home. The civil service, normally docile and subservient, has told him bluntly where he got off. After the November 1999 general elections, he called in 250 senior civil servants to Putra Jaya to tell them what he wanted from them and to find out their views on the government. He got more than he bargained for. They told him bluntly what they thought of him, that he handled the Anwar affair badly, that they did not like his ways not the rampant corruption his long term in office spawned, with the civil service, from top to bottom, distancing themselves from his excoriation of the former deputy prime minister, now in Sungei Buloh prison. They did not like the deliberate isolation of those who did not support him wholeheartedly or, worse, suspected of being friendly, let alone support, He Who Must Be Destroyed At All Cost. The Prime Minister clearly did not expect what he got. The top ranks of the service, except those who back him wholeheartedly -- a figure one civil servant put at "one percent loyalists and about 10 per cent hangers-on", move away from him, and by extension his administration. This does not, of course, account for the large group of civil servants who would rather duck out of the discussion: but they would shift their support for survival when the Prime Ministerial ship sinks. Today, it is not unusual to find PAS and Keadilan members in this group. In the lower ranks, the PAS intrusion is so widespread that officers holding sensitive posts are ordered to deliver sensitive messages and files themselves.

Can Malaysia fit into this millieu when the frosty relations with Indonesia is compounded by a failure of intelligence and personal ties. That the Prime Minister have difficulties communicating with President Abdurrahman Wahid, as with Presidents Suharto and Habibie (the latter for his Estrada-like sympathies for that man in solitary confinement in Sungei Buloh prison), is well known. The personal relationships that Malaysian officials once had with his neighbours, firmed through their frequent associations in Asean, is today no more. I remember once asking the then foreign minister, Tan Sri Ghazali Shafie, about some Singapore-Indonesian friction that had not yet hit the papers. He called his Singapore and Indonesian counterparts, Mr S. Dhanabalan and Prof. Mochtar Kusumaatmadja, on the phone, and asked them to speak to me about the problem, asked me what they said and gave me his interprepation. That camraderie has all but disappeared when foreign policy became not to further the country's interest, but the leader's. And we pay for that neglect. The failure of intelligence cannot be far behind. The failure for not toeing the official line is severe. Just ask any of those known to be in the other camp in Malaysian politics, be he Tan Sri Musa Hitam, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah or Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. The failure of intelligence is not far behind and inevitable. And fails us when we need it most. As now. The Abu Sayyaf fiasco is but a consequence of that failure.

Malaysia in recent years lived on its laurels. The official arrogance, the we-know-it-all view of the world, the others-are-stupid syndrome, an authoritarian administration that brooks no dissent, and the belief that its ill-thought out panacea for Malaysia's is the only one has reduced this once proud nation to beggary. This comes from the absence of a strong opposition. The customary debate that framed these policies is absent even amongst officials. The minority view strengthens the majority's focus. Sunni Islami is all the more dominant because the vibrance of the minority Shia Islam keeps it in check. The Malay community, which it thought it had proprietary rights over, is deeply divided, with the more important cultural heartland moving away from it. The Malaysian government is in a tailspin because it now has to contend, after 40 years of no challenge, with the forces of a man who sits in Sungei Buloh jail. Every move it takes is with an eye to what he or his supporters have in store. But because this challenge comes at the tail end of decades of autocratic dominance, the government does not know how to react. It bolts the barn door each time after the horses have fled. In all aspects of governnance. This and thoughtless action ties it in ever-tightening knots.

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