He could have offset this by ensuring that it was his cabinet. But he could not. He had no clear vision, whether it should be his cabinet or whether it should help his teach win the 2007 UMNO elections. He did not make any important appointments, most dropped had wanted to quit anyway or move on to stare politics or retire. What we saw is not musical chairs, for that entails that when the music stops, there post less. It was jobs for the boys, even if they were not on his side. He announced Mr Muhammad Taib, aquitted in Australia because "he did not speak English" – rather strange for a University of Malaysia graduate of the pre-1970s – for having on him RM3 million in various currencies and which he had not declared. Mr Muhammad Taib, a former mentri besar of Selangor, is a warlord who could stop Dato' Khir Toyo so that he would not challenge Pak Lah's son-in-law for the UMNO Youth deputy leadership. But why should Dato' Muhammed's appointment to the Senate announced the same time as the cabinet reshuffle?

Malaysia would rather get westerners for which non-Malays are capable. All government-linked companies employ only Malays in senior positions. All University vice-chancellors are Malays, the non-Malays leave after a time into the private sector. As opposition to UMNO spreads down to the undergraduates, no UMNO ministers dare visit the universities. Before Pak Lah could visit the University, intense negotiations took place so that the students would not rebel or protest. The police are afraid of its own shadow since they took the position as guardians of the regime, especially against Malays who rebel. When the then deputy prime minister. Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, was arrested, Malays came out in their thousands to protest. This surprised the authorities, which acted against them irrationally. Over the years, this has worsened. Today, about half the Malays are against UMNO. The federal government uses the police as its goon squad in states like Kelantan, governed by the opposition PAS.

The Islamic religious department officials, who are civil servants, are a law into themselves. Jawi, as the IRD in the Federal Terrority is known, has said it would have the snoop squad to work only with Islamic couples in lovers' lanes. The Prime Minister is ignored. It has defied Malaysians to say the snoop squad will be formed. Two previous religious affairs department heads – Ustadz Dahalan in Selangor in 1969/70; Ustadz Ngah in Trengannu in 1979.80 – is known to Malays and Muslims, for they set up snoop squads, who later became licenced extortionists. They would take the jewellery or have sex with lthe women so that they are not reported. It is happening today in the University of Malaya campus. The guards find young undergraduates in lonely places, are told they would not be reported if the girl had sex with him. The University authorities take a harsh line on the students, because they students often do not support the National Front. No cabinet minister go to the University campus. When Pak Lah went there, the unversity authorities told the students they would be expelled if they went out of line when Pak Lah arrived.

Today, what Mr Khairy says goes in Pak Lah's administration. His only office in government was as his political secretary a few years ago. He is involved in high flying companies because he is Pak Lah's son-in-law. ECM Libra is one such. He does not have any experience after his studies. He got a PPE (philosophy, politics, economics) at Oxford, and LL.M from the London School of Economics. (In Malaysia, he would be a philospher, politician, economist, international lawyer as his father-in-law is a Islamic scholar because he has a degree in Islam from the University of Malaya!) He tried his best to stand for elections to Parliament from Rembau, from whence he came, but was not allowed to. The opposition to him was too strong there. He made a mess in Pengkalen Pasir, for UMNO could have won with a larger majority there in the byelection had he stayed away. UMNO had already lost votes for insisting on Dato' Annuar Musa, who is hated in the state, as the UMNO chief. Kelantan could have three more byelections, as UMNO state assemblymen may have to vacate their seats. If PAS wins any one of the seats, UMNO would be in the state assembly what it was before Pengakalen Pasir.

THE PRIME MNISTER IS an Islamic scholar because he has a degree in Islamic studies, so goes the spin. But while he is a deeply religious man, as many are, even he would admit he is no scholar. He has been built into one when he became prime minister. Tun Mahathir is a doctor, a great one at that, although he stopped practicing more than 30 years ago. The health minister, Doctor Chua Soi Lek graduated as a doctor, but gave it up for politics about the same time. But both are described as medical doctors. News reports, then of Tun Mahathir and Dato' Chua now, speak of their expertise in medicine, but neither would admit to all that. Dato' Ling Liong Sik, a medical graduate from Singapore, gave up his medical practice about a quarter of a centry ago, but he was treated in office as if he knew more than the specialists at the University Hospital. Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, before he entered Parliament, was known for his brawn than brain; but today in office it is reversed.

Given the mood, and the relevations, UMNO cannot afford another election in that constituency. It would lose it. The days are gone when the Election Commission and UMNO could decide that the election result would be. This byelection was important for the hidden money spent - about RM100,000 per vote, but Malaysian electoral laws that is allowed so long as it is unofficial, which it is - and the promise to give the state a University if it won. This is like the election in Sabah in 1994 when among the promises made was 394 kilometres of railway. It won that election, but not one kilomtre of railway has been laid in the past 11 years, nor will it ever. But would a University be built in Kelantan, as it promised in Pengkalen Pasir? It would have to set aside money for the University. Gone are the days when National Front promises are made in elections and byelections, with no intention of honouring it. The hidden Malay Dominance policy in force since early 1970, and which has governed elections since, only meant that the National Front, particularly UMNO, must win at any cost, especially if the candidate was an important UMNO leader. It does not work as the National Front thought it would any more,

AFTER 45 YEARS IN journalism, I have been told to join the people who run this country. I should be concentrating on other issues, like the poor. I said the poor in this country is poorer because of the policies now carried out. Another in the group said an average person in authority would not feel comfortable unless he has RM50 million in assets. Now, I know why a former civil servant is working hard at 77. He has only RM10 million in assets. He tells me he is a failure. This is not the first time I have been asked to give up my principles. Thirty years ago I might have, although I doubt it. I am 66, with my life behind me, I treat the offer with the contempt it deserves. I have known all the UMNO presidents and prime ministers, some of them personally, but they have not asked me to join them. I know the present prime minister, Pak Lah, well enough for him and his wife, now alas the late, to drop in at my flat while I was recuperating from my open heart surgery, though I have not met him a while. I hear from friends he is angry with me for what I write about his policies. But that is how the other prime ministers thought of me. I have been expelled - from Singapore - for my views, taken to court - one has not finished although it began in 1994 - and threatened with arrest. I do not intend to migrate, although there was pressure on me to go to the United States after my Nieman fellowship at Harvard University. I had a lifetime visa to the United States, but it is not valid after 11 September 2001. I do not think I would ever visit the United States again. The only place I will migrate to if I am asked to leave is to Kerala, in India.

It tells us of the dominance of the West in our lives, and we espouse their fears as ours, but 5 million children die in countries other than those of the West - or to put it another way, a Boeing 747 jumbo jet carrying children crashing into pieces every 45 minutes - of malarial, and influenza and respiratory diseases. We are vicarously heartbroken when a Boeing 747 crashes. Should we not be sorry at the deaths caused by 30 Boeing 747s every day. But no one worries about these deaths because no Caucasian children from the West dies in it. Bird flu is not an issue in Asia, but children dying in Asia is, but we have got our priorities wrong because it is forced upon us. APEC this year became another talking shop for the West, and it is used for the West talking to Asia about its priorities. In other words, it has become another talking shop around the world to separate the rulers from the ruled in member countries. Modern medicine in our time is geared for the West, and we take them elsewhere because our doctors are trained in the West and are bombarded by pharmaceutical salesman. The medicine I take would cost me about RM200 if I buy them at the University Hospital, or for a song at my doctors. I can get it cheaper if I go to a particular clinic frequented by retired senior civil servants. A friend who is in the private sector cannot afford these astronical prices and had his bypass done for less than RM500 after he was referred to the IJN (the National Heart Institue) by this clinic and his medicine and consultation every three months is a ringgit, when the University Hospital charges upwards of RM40,000 for a coronart bypass and the medicine about RM200 a month. The charges at the latter can be reduced, but only after a humilitiating interview. But even to a beggar, what is money when his dignity is challenged?

So the tragedy that has struck Dato' Aziz is normal if you are on the outside. In the course of finding out what happened, I was told he was a 'mamak', which is not what he would have described him. In Malaysia, Malay means a Muslim as well. Dato' Aziz's ancestors became a Muslim perhaps a century ago. In Singapore he would be known as an Indian Muslim. By identifying himself as a Malay, he thought he rise up the civil service ladder. He did. But because he was an Indian Muslim, he was identified and regarded as an outsider by the Malays in the civil service. The ancestors of some Chinese became Muslims long before Islam came to the Malaysia. But they are kept aside because they are Chinese. That is why PAS has decided to field Chinese and Indian candidates for elections in their control. PAS realises that they cannot isolate Muslims other than Malay. The spin we hear is that PAS is doing that for political reasons. What does the National Front say about the Malays treating the Muslims as "mamak" and worse? In this rush for racial purity, the Malays are making nonsense of race. The Filipino Malay can be a Christian, a Muslim or any religion. It is so for an Indonesian. Lieut.-Gen. Benedict Loudevik Murdani is surely of the Malay race. But a Malay Christian in Malaysia cannot be. The brother of the former rector of the Inslamic University was an Anglican priest. He was driven out of his residence in Petaling Jaya. Another served time in jail under the Internal Security Act. An English Catholic became a Muslim before he married his wife but retained his name. He spent time under the ISA.

So we are left with the official history written with UMNO help, and with no official papers of retired politicians. This is so with the history of Singapore's ejection from Malaysia. The University Kebangsan Malaysia has a "Scholar in Residence" programme, by which prominent Malaysians are invited to write their history of the country, or aspects of it. Tun Ghazali Shafie has written his memoirs on the formation of Malaysia in Malay, and now being translated into English. This scheme allows aging Malays in Malaysia and Singapore to write their memoirs. But the money is why they write it. A Singapore journalist told me, when I asked him why he had not written his memoirs, that it is a matter of economics: he would get more writing his journalistic pieces than he wrould writing his memoirs. The same rationale holds in Malaysia. But it enables the future historian to write sensibly of the events of the present time. Now we know of only different accounts by foreign historians and political scientists. It is also true that the foreigner gets an interview easier than the local. It is depicted in the ads. There is ln "Deeparaya" until there is a Caucasian present if we believe the advertisements we see on television by government agencies or companies.

PRESIDENT BUSH IS IN trouble. Mrs. Cindy Sheehan is to his politics what the National Guard killing undergraduates at Kent State University in 1970 was President Richard Nixon's. The Watergate scandal was the immediate cause of President Nixon's resignation. There is no way that the controversy over the CIA leak would go away soon, and could well force President Bush to resign. The actions of the two men are similar. President Nixon was on eight months into his second term when he abruptly resigned, the first president ever to do so, when it became clear he would be impeached. But he did what President Bush now does. He offered officials in his regime much as President Bush now does. The latest to go is "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Cheney. Karl Rove, who planned President Bush's election, is next. President Nixon had the man who secured him the presidency, John Haldeman, to the baying crowd, and eventually went to jail. President Nixon's Attorney General, John Mitchell, went to jail as the Watergate scandal touched the White House. But Congress went on regardless, and was all set to impeach President Nixon, when he abruptly resigned. The man who succeeded him as president was Mr Gerald Ford, the Republican leader of the House of Representatives, instead of Vice President Spiro Agnew, who resigned to save the president. What we see now is the President making sacrificial offerings to save his skin, but it would not save him. The Republicans, his party, are mired in scandals, and the conservative wing to which he anchored his politics are split whether to support him. More officials will be offered for public opprobrium as he tries to wriggle out of his predicament.

What is Datin Seri Rafidah Aziz's offence? She gave her son-in-law APs. You are not, by the government rules, allowed to favour your relatives and she did. That is the offence. It does not matter she gave APs to other UMNO figures, or their relatives, APs. She is a figure of propriety at cabinet meetings, and wigged off a cabinet minister for daring to ask her for APs to be given to the string of co-operatives he controlled. Nor does it matter if the former Prime Minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed's son, got APs. She should not have given it. She did. She is responsible. She must go. She won't. Nor would she be sacked. It is a far cry from the time she was appointed a senator. She was then a lecturer at the University of Malaya. She traipsed into the staff canteen room, where I was talking to a lecturer, saying she did not have to pay road tax anymore. When some one asked her why. She said she had been appointed a senator. She resigned from the University, and in 1978 stood for Kuala Kangsar, and later became one of the Perak warlord, of whom the main one is Dato' Tajol Rosli, whose father was warlord before him.

When he interviewed Jomo Kenyatta, after his release from prison in the 1960s and unpopular in Britain, on the origins of the Mau Mau movement in Kenya, he noted at one point in the interview that the Mau Mau rebellion was led by uneducated tribesman. "I would not know," he replied softly, "I have a Ph.D from London University, Tom Mboya graduated from an American University ..." and as he listed the educational pedigrees of the other Mau Mau leaders, the camera shifted to Mr Freeman reeling in shock at the response to his question. It was a moment to be savoured. Mr Kenyatta went to be President of Kenya. There was none such in the Hard Talk interview with Anwar Ibrahim.

In this week's episode of The Editors, panellists Steven Gan, Editor-in-chief of Malaysiakini, veteran journalist MGG Pillai and Bunn Nagara, Associate Editor of The Star newspaper examine change under Malaysian prime minister Abdullah Badawi's leadership. Also this week our regular panellist Pramit Pal Chaudhuri, Foreign Editor of the Hindustan Times and Janet Hunt, Senior Lecturer at Melbourne's RMIT University discuss non-profit Non-Government Organisations. Are they generally a force for good, and to whom are they accountable?

Now, President George Bush himself returns to accuse SCOPE of being part of this black market. In his speech to the National Defense University on 11 February 2004, he returned to the theme of black marketing of nuclear technology, and spent more time on Malaysian involvement in it than the rest of the world. He also lied. But how can you tell the world he lied. Better to reject what he said. Soon after, Malaysia agreed to have the SCOPE factory in Shah Alam shut down. Why did it have to do that? Could it not have told Mr Tahir to find a new supplier, and go about its business? A factory of this type costs as much as RM100 million. It agrees to shut down after supplying RM13 million of centrifuge parts. Curiously, Mr Tahir is its only customer. In other words, SCOPE has taken a bath on it. There is more to it than is revealed.

In Pak Lah's cabinet are two men who should not be there: one who failed his SRP and his degree examinations in a British University; another who claims to be a Malaysian prince when he is not: his only connexion to Malay royalty is that he married a tengku and divorced her soon enough. Friends of the other man told me, in defence, that the Hermit of Langgak Golf aka Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah is a drop out too, as if that excused the man. But the Hermit is an economics graduate from Queen's University in Belfast, went on to read law, which he discontinued when he returned home after his father died in 1962. What is more he mentions this in his curriculum vitae.

On his appointment, the news agencies and the media are quick to garland him, and others, with superlatives. He is, one news agency reported, a "British-trained economist". He is not. He is a British University drop out. He rose in politics as the son of the second Prime Minister, Tun Abdul Razak, and which began when his father died in 1976. He has an awesome political machine but is a political lightweight known more for his political treachery, and his wife's defence deals. Dr Mahathir wanted him as deputy prime minister to repay what the Malays call "hutang budi" (a cultural debt one must honour in one's lifetime). His father, Tun Razak, protected Dr Mahathir when the then Prime Minister, Tengku Abdul Rahman, sacked him from UMNO after the 1969 racial riots for openly challenging him.

The reaction to it is predictable. The gobbledygook is not far behind. A University lecturer, Mr Zamri Ahmad, - he is described suitably as the "University Putra Malaysia Communication Department Faculty of Modern Languages and Communications lecturer" - is worried that without "proper planning" and "time management" pupils would be "deprived of their play time". How would he rectify that? Reduce the afternoon session to 3 or 4 pm. He is certain the scheme is not open to abuse and make teachers want to teach more. How can he come to this conclusion when every other system is abused and ignored once the spotlight shifts? Another - "Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Social Linguistics and International Communication" Professor Saran Kaur Gill - saw no need for the tuition but "hard-working" teachers should be honoured for they "strive hard to ensure excellence". If she is right, something surely is wrong about the tuition plan.

WHO ORGANISED THE KUALA LUMPUR WORLD Peace Conference, which ends its inaugural two-day session today, 10 August 2003? Tan Sri Lim Kok Wing. Who is its chief sponsor, The Limkokwing University College of Creative Technology? Who got the inaugural award for fostering world peace? President Jacques Chirac of France. Why? The LUCCT wants to open a Paris campus as part of Tan Sri Lim's grand scheme to bring kulture to the cultured Parisians. He believes in his own rubbish: that without any basis, Malaysia and Malaysians can take on the world. The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, was on hand to grace the occasion.

What about the rumours? Would he address that? Utar is an MCA project. One important faction, that under its deputy president, Dato' Seri Lim Ah Lek, is kept out of it. The rumours are that like the Malaysian Indian Congress's University, the Asian Institute of Medicine, Science and Technology, it is not owned by the MIC or its its investment arm, Maika Holdings, so Utar is not by the MCA or its investment arm, Huaren Holdings. It is owned by eight individuals, as AMIST is by three. Two amongst the eight are Dr Ling and Dato' Seri Ong, and not as one as trustees either. MCA headquarters does not want to talk about it. It is, I am told, a rumour spread by Dato' Seri Lim Ah Lek's faction. It does not matter how the rumour started. The confused political fog Dr Ling spreads in MCA gives rumours a life of its own. And there is truth to it. So he must come clean. Otherwise a cloud would hang over the MCA, Dr Ling and Utar. As it does over the MIC, Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu, and AIMST.

Pak Lah (1364)   United States (636)   Straits Times (412)   Samy Vellu (224)   Putra Jaya (200)   Chief Justice (200)   Saddam Hussein (188)   Vincent Tan (164)   Civil Service (154)   Parti KeADILan (148)   Islamic State (118)   Johore Bahru (100)   Sungei Buloh (94)   Bukit Tinggi (88)   Abdul Razak (80)   Pengkalen Pasir (68)   Ting Pek (64)   Armed Forces (59)   Soviet Union (58)

Malay Dominance (58)   Yong Teck (56)   Hong Kong (56)   Human Rights (56)   Syed Hamid (54)   Puteri UMNO (52)   Islam Hadhari (52)   Royal Commission (51)   Hussein Onn (51)   Rafidah Aziz (48)   Indian Congress (48)   Open House (44)   Vision Schools (44)   Shah Alam (44)   Malay Unity (42)   Chua Jui (42)   Abdul Taib (42)   Ampang Jaya (36)   Ras Adiba (36)

Osama Bin Laden (36)   Nik Aziz Nik (20)   Ling Liong Sik (18)   Lee Kuan Yew (18)

High Court Judge (14)   Wan Azizah Wan (9)   Lim Kit Siang (9)   Megat Junid Megat (8)

Mahathir (2960)

Anwar (2399)