WHY DID DATO' SERI Syed Hamid, the foreign minister, and others in the cabinet, make a fool of themselves days before the Prime Minister, Pak Lah, said the crooked bridge to replace part of the causeway with Singapore would not be built? Why had they not been penalised for making the Malaysian government look stupid? What was the basis for Pak Lah making his decision? Was it because his son-in-law, Mr Khairy Jamaluddin, is reported to be close to Singapore and many believe is its representative here? Why did Pak Lah defy his cabinet ministers? He cannot say he is boss, and can do what he likes. He was a member of the Mahathir cabinet which approved the bridge. Much money has been spent in preparing for it. Just because Singapore says the crooked bridge is unworkable? The public reasons for the crooked bridge is as obscure as against it.

THE MALAYSIAN FOREIGN MINISTER, Dato' Syed Hamid Albar, has told Thailand not to interfere in Malaysia's internal affairs. Why he needed to do so escapes me, when he did not interfere when the Thai prime minister, Mr Thaksin Shinawatra, told Pak Lah off at the United Nations last month (September) about the situation in southern Thailand, in Dato' Syed Hamid's presence, and both did not respond. Why? It is no use playing to the gallery because UMNO general assembly is around the corner. For Malaysia's record in southern Thailand, where Thai Malays are fighting for independence from Thailand for more than a century, is based on the belief that Britain in the early years of the 20th century should have insisted on the Thai Malay provinces be given to the Malay peninsula. Malaysia has interfered in south Thailand from the early days of independence. I spoke to the PULO representative in the prime minister's department more than 30 years ago. (PULO is the fighting arm of the Thai Malays in southern Thailand.) Malaysia has internationalised the conflict by bringing in the Muslim nations, and brought in the global war on terror that the United States launched. Mr Thaksin has added the pressure recently and so has PULO. Southern Thailand in the East is not safe for the Malaysian. Recently, southern Thai separatists killed a Thai monk, one of several in recent months, and a friend whose mother is from southern Thailand was trapped for months when he went to visit his relatives across the border. It is unsafe to visit southern Thailand by crossing the Golok River In Kelantan state. This is a stream most of the year, and one can wade across into southern Thailand. It has now become a conflict also between Buddhists and Muslims, a religious war in what has been a territorial dispute.

The Malaysian foreign minister, Syed Hamid Albar, has called on Thailand to win over its Muslims. He meant the Malay provinces of southern Thailand, which has remained provinces of Thailand for over a century, as Kelatantan and Trengannu was until 1942 and during the war years part of Japanese empire. It was only after the war that it became part of Malaya. On the west coast, Kedah and Parlis was under Thai suzerainty until it was separated from Thailand in the early 20th century. Tengku Abdul Rahman Putra, born of the Kedah royal family and this nation's first prime minister, was educated in Thailand and his mother was Thai. But Malaysia was after independence in 1957 have blamed the British for allowing the southern Thai Malay provinces to be under the control of Thailand. In 1976, when Thailand abrogated the rule whereby the Malaysians could operate in southern Thailand to prevent the Malayan Communist Party from using the area as a safe haven and Malaysian troops prevented them from coming the border.

Malaysia blotted its copy book when the foreign minister, Dato' Seri Syed Hamid Albar, made statements about illegal workers he should not have. It raised temperatures in Jakarta. Bringing in workers from Pakistan, Nepal and elsewhere could help Malaysia's worker shortage in the short term, but it must in the end bring the Indonesian workers back. That would be at a heavy cost. Malaysia's edge in bilateral ties with Indonesia is no more. As with Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines. The new breed of Malaysian diplomats and civil servants does not understand the cultural niceties and run foul of them time and time again. But no attempt is made to right it. This belief that the world must fall in line with Malaysia's local standards is compounded by a diplomacy that has seen better days.

The ISG report suggests, to the laymen, of one set of rules for us and another for them. That Pak Lah's dictum is "do as I say, not as I do". Pak Lah, in Hanoi for the EU-Asean summit, promptly denied it. The foreign minister, Dato' Seri Syed Hamid Albar, ever the lap dog, ordered Wisma Putra, the foreign office, to investigate how Pak Lah came to be on that list, and to protest at the highest level in Washington. The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, exenorates him in praise dipped in vitriol. The mainstream newspapers carried the denial and of all who said it was to denigrate Pak Lah, and moved on to other irrelevant issues: Pak Lah has explained it, he is never wrong, and that is that. But the Iraqi, a relative of Uday, Saddam's son, by marriage, was once married to Pak Lah's sister-in-law. Pak Lah does not like him. That does not matter.

The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and the Foreign Minister, Dato' Seri Syed Hamid Albar, insist there is no torture of ISA detainees. The deputy Internal Security Minister, Dato' Noh Omar, says he has visited the detainees, and they all told him that they have repented, and want nothing more than be reunited with their families. He says the recent allegation by suspected Islamic terrorists of torture is a desperate attempt to link their plight with those in Iraq and Afghanistan subject to brutal torture.

Southern Thailand is, in one sense, a Southeast version of Kashmir, for which India and Pakistan vie for control but the Kashmiris want independence, no less. Kuala Lumpur was initially dismissive of Mr Thaksin's request for a bilateral meeting in the Malaysian capital with Pak Lah, but to which it now agrees. The foreign minister, Dato' Seri Syed Hamid Albar, is clearly caught flat-footed: the Thai leader wants to discuss Malaysia is a training base and safe haven for Thai Malay separatists, that Kuala Lumpur is involved in southern Thailand far more heavily than it admits, and more frighteningly for Malaysia, that Thailand would ask the United States for help in this violent war on terror in the south. There is another unmentioned fear in Bangkok: that Malaysian support is part of an ill-thought out policy of pressuring Thailand to cut the Isthmus of Kra canal for its own foreign and security policy reasons: to keep both Singapore and Bangkok at bay.

Unfortunately, the BN takes the overwhelming victory as proof that it does well. The foreign minister, Dato' Seri Syed Hamid Albar, is certain the BN is right all along, now that his opponent has withdrawn from the election. It is the new election rules at work: candidates can withdraw from the race by the third day of nomination, but would loss their deposit (but is allowed only one hour to be a candidate). It opens the way for weak candidates to be bought when ambitious politicians want to be returned unopposed. So Dato' Seri Syed Hamid is returned unopposed. But does it follow what he said? Not on your life. The BN's problems began when it pruned almost half the sitting members, in parliament and the states.

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