Let us first look at what the 30 January election is about. It is to elect a 'transitional assembly', not a parliament, to draft a constitution, which would has to be ratified in a referendum by 15 October, and then an election by 15 December based on it to choose a new government. Election is by proportional representation, not first past the post that is the norm in the United States and Great Britain, the ballot so complex as to perplex those who dare to vote. There are 7,785 mostly unnamed candidates in 83 coalitions of political parties and causes, each with between 83 and 275 candidates. A third of the candidates are women, their rights enshrined as in that other Washingtonian disaster in this war on terror, Afghanistan. There is nothing in this election to suggest that it is anything but an alien system to Iraq as it is to Washington and London.

The biggest casualty of Malaysia's democracy is democracy itself. Democracy is not what it is but a stick to beat people with, an ideology in which the opposition must be defeated at all cost. It is rare in a modern democracy for the government in power to lose. It is rare of a modern government not to put barriers, in the name of democracy, to put the opposition at a disadvantage. The United States goes on a crusade to impose democracy as proof it works, not that it does. There is not a democratic country in the world where corruption does not underpin elections. It does not matter if the country is the United States or the Ukraine. The party that can amass the most wealth by dubious means wins, especially when the electoral system is suitably modified against the opposition.

The United States and its satraps bit off more than they could chew; and rush through a cynical programme of elections to pull their troops out. It is unclear of its options, has no clear idea of what is in store, and hope others would rescue it from its morass and its military deaths.

THE United States IS in a quagmire in Iraq, as in Vietnam four decades earlier; the lessons unlearnt, mistakes afresh, its amoral rectitude hurtling it to doom. It fights in Iraq, as in Vietnam, an unseen enemy, whose numbers rise by the day with every indiscrimate bombing of innocent and helpless Iraqi men, women and children. Like in Vietnam, a civilisation three millennia younger than Iraq, Washington went to war on a lie: in Vietnam, an attack on a US patrol boat in the Gulf of Tonkin; in Iraq weapons of mass destruction. But by the time it was discovered, the war had solidified against the unseen enemy. Nothing could now stop it, political careers depended on it; but as American casualties mounted, and more young men sent as cannon fodder, the public reception to the war changed to outright hostility.

Anwar Ibrahim: The US war on terrorism unfortunately focus on what they perceive as Islamic terrorists. Of course this wouldn't go well to the Muslim masses. If you fight terrorism then terrorism amongst all, I mean whatever denominations or religious denominations, and you don't, this you have heard before, I mentioned to other Muslim leaders you don't talk about the Oklahoma bombing and refer to it as Christian extremist. So there is I think need to pursue it the United States, to understand the Muslim sensitivity. I agree again without the need to be apologetic that Muslims themselves must not be in a state of denial, they must be in the forefront in the war against terrorism, but we do not and we cannot assume that the position taken by the United States in articulating these issues something that is conducive or even acceptable to the Muslims. So I think we need to forge a better understanding. We are prepared to listen to the west and particularly the United States, but the United States also must be prepared to listen and adjust accordingly. The alternate interests for the sake of humanity is to combat terrorism, not to boost one's ego and to impose one's will or to act unilaterally. So I think this is something that is of concern to us when dealing with the United States war on terrorism.

We have in our midst now at least a thousand Malay Oxbridge graduates, several thousands more if you count the other prestigious universities in the United Kingdom and the United States. But, of course, the son-in-law with an Oxford degree should not be criticised because he is Malaysia's hottest property! But when this demand for respect and no criticism spreads like a computer virus to the body politic, it is a sign that the edifice that encourages this psychophantic adoration is firmly set to implode and explode. The question is not if, but when. On that depends the future of BN, the government it leads, and Malaysia.

MALAYSIA IS BEHOLDEN TO the United States more than ever. The prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, after a call on President George W. Bush in Washington, announces a "sufficiently big and not just a token" medical mission to Iraq. But in Paris en route to London shortly after the Philippines Government withdrew its token medical presence from its armed forces in Iraq in exchange for a Filipino truck driver it held hostage and threatened to decapitate.

THE MALAYSIAN PRIME MINISTER, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, left for Los Angeles last week, with his wife for her medical treatment for cancer. He is on leave. He should have been allowed his private moments with his wife there. One has absolute sympathy for his state of mind, and his concern for his wife's health. He is due back this week, after an eight-day holiday, but his spin doctors would not let him be. They had to create him to be what he is not, that in his moment of private grief and family concerns, he rises to the call of duty. They made a mountain out of a molehill. Bernama was on hand to report it, and thus, inadvertently, put a knife into the man. It was as usual ill thought out. It did not have the impact it should or could have. For it was a time of two major events in the United States during the time he was there: the death of President Reagan, and the G-8 summit.

WHEN THE United States adopted, in the wake of the jet plane attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington on Sept 11, 2001, detentions without trial for those suspected of terrorist attacks, the then Malaysian prime minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, was ecstatic.

POLITICIANS THE WORLD OVER are firm on the idea of democracy as an ideal, but not the messy elections that could give them nasty surprises. It does not matter where they are from: the United States, the United Kingdom, Iraq, Iran, the Soviet Union, Malaysia, Singapore, Zimbabwe, India. They spout the same slogans and political beliefs. twist the law and language to their advantage, and sulk when the result is not what they bargained for.

THERE COMES A TIME, in every colonial and military occupation, when a simple act of defiance puts it on notice. It is downhill after that. Often it is not recognised until years later. In India, it was the Dandi salt march in 1930; 17 years later, it was independent. In Vietnam, the Vietcong, during the Tet offensive 1968, briefly captured Saigon; seven years later, the United States was defeated. In Iraq, it was the return of the former Saddam generals, in their old uniforms, and the old Iraqi national flag, invited to take over security in Fallujah, after the Marines walked into unexpected resistance from the locals; the two generals it chose promptly declared their arrival as a defeat for the US.

Those who know southern Thailand view what happened as an abberation, and suggest a hidden hand. Who that hidden hand could be is any one's guess. But the news out of Bangkok is that the United States offered to set up a base in southern Thailand as a direct response to the riots there. Bangkok is said to have turned it down. Mr Thaksin's recent extended tour of southern Thailand comes amidst this geopolitical development. There is another. Whereas once Washington favoured the Isthmus of Kra canal, it does not now: it would benefit China more than anyone, and therefore it does not want it now. The Thai government had allowed to consider it provided it does not involve government funds. If the canal is cut, it would divide Thailand into two, with the four Muslim provinces firmly on the other side of the canal. It is now too great a risk to allow it. Besides, as Washington has found out to its cost, that when races and religions are demonised for a narrow geopolitical worldview, the results could be catastrophic. Thailand, with its firm belief in its own destiny, understands it. Malaysia does not. Which is why Bangkok fares better in south Thailand than Kuala Lumpur.

IT IS IN THE tradition of Western colonial experience that genocide is important in the armoury of conquest. It is couched in the highest of motives and ideals - to civilise the natives, the remove a dictator the natives would not - in which only one view matters: that of the invader. As the United States sank into the Islamic quagmire of Iraq this month, a few thousand miles to the south, in Kigale, in Rwanda, Western statesman gathered to show how sorry they were for the Tutsi-Hutu tribal massacres in which their countries played a less than honorable role to pit one against the other. When I discussed this with a European ambassador recently, he was quick to assert that it was the French and Belgian problem in Rwanda, and a US and British problem in Iraq. He hotly contested my view that it did not matter which individual nation was responsible, it follows a shared genocidal practices of Western colonialism. What the US and its allies want in Iraq is no less than what Belgium wanted in the former Belgian Congo and its offshoots: the riches for its grandees, with a quisling regime in charge. Western political correctness cannot erase the horrors of its past

The idea of opinion polls is alien to most Malaysians, even in the cities. But Malaysians have studied in the United States of America is the hundreds of thousands, and those in power believe polls could sway voters as it does in the West. Those in power believe in it, which is why they are jarred by the unscientific and needling Harakah surveys, and believe so would the rest of the country. It is as false as assumption as it can be. But with the media in its control, it could get away with it, until one day in the future it is stopped in its tracks by relying too much on opinion polls.

The BN candidate list is fluid. Pak Lah has to wait until the last minute before he can announce them. The BN, and UMNO, is so fractured from within that whoever is chosen has a ready-made opposition in the constituency. Pak Lah and Dato' Seri Najib frequently call on UMNO members to unite during the campaign. That is easier said than done. There is not one state where this is absent. In Sarawak, it is more serious: the state BN threatened to go it alone, for the Council Negeri elections, if Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud remained BN head and state chief minister. He cut short an overseas holiday to quell the revolt. He failed. To staunch the crisis, the Council Negeri elections is not held. The Kayveas caper tests Pak Lah's political mettle for how that is revolved would measure how successful he is. For, if Pak Lah does not know it, it reveals a weak centre, and the rise of the warlords. Meanwhile, lists are drawn up for candidates in some constituencies. The newspapers mentioned it, but what these problem constituencies do not have is a crisis: the candidate invariable is the man closest to Pak Lah. Meanwhile, Malaysia now attempts opinion polls. They are popular in Britain and the United States. So they must here too. But one must disbelieve them. The pollsters learn as they work, there is no serious attempt to find an acceptable and fair sample of voters, what is acceptable and allowed in the West would not work here, no one, especially a Malay, would tell you what he thinks, many are inaccessible to the urban-based pollsters. The result is not worth bothering about. Perhaps it might in a hundred years. Certainly not now.

He had to hold it so his honeymoon in office would excuse his governmental lapses. But he was caught with two major political mishaps: his war on corruption went awry; and his son controls a purpose-built company which produced centrifuge parts for nuclear weapons. It does not matter what the official spin is, and if the Malaysian police had cleared his son of any wrongdoing; but the United States wants blood. The unfortunate fact of this crisis is that Pak Lah is on the defensive, even with the United States, and this could redound on our ties with Washington. The fact is that Malaysia is the nut in a nutcracker that Washington wields.

There is no international law which can accuse Malaysia or even Pakistan of what it did. The United States continues to strengthen its nuclear weaponry programmes while it threatens others from getting into it. It unilaterally decided the only nuclear powers should be restricted to those who have the technology. No new comers are allowed in after the cut-off date. The racist rationale behind it clear enough: nuclear weapon technology should be confined to the Judae-Christian countries of the West; others should not be. But Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan broke the barrier; several more are on the verge. Israel and South Africa have nuclear weapons, but their role is played down for the two countries are inextricably linked to Washington over it. The others are not. The idea of Muslim countries like Iran and Libya and communist North Korea is frightening enough in Washington, free lance transfer of technology more so.

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