When a community is faced with an intractible problem, like Vision Schools and Indians in estates, the leaders keep mum. Leaders are discouraged from the ranks; the ruling coterie selects them. Basic issues and problems are forgotten, and widens the gap between community and political leaders.

There is one flaw in this plan: Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. UMNO, and to a limited extent, PAS, would not want him out of prison. He threatens both. Any agreement between UMNO and PAS would fail if he remains in jail. A new form of government in stealth and outside the constitution cannot be a permanent cure. It breaks open the divisiveness and contradictions in Malaysian society so far kept beneath the surface. The Malay Unity talks upset the surface calm, more so than Suqiu and Vision Schools. If it is for UMNO to lead an UMNO-PAS Malay ground, it would dissemble quicker than one dare predict. Especially when it isolates the UMNO ground as well.

The government's black eye, self-inflicted unlike Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim's, it gets so soon messing up its Vision Schools plans, an elaborate smokescreen to divest schools of valuable land for indifferently built schools in distant suburbs. It insists Malaysians should not object when its cronies, siblings and courtiers get what they covet, however inconvenient to those consequently deprived of services. When it goes out to bat for them, it is resisted, as now, and it must back down. It is an incontrovertible fact that all privatisation of government assets went to them, even one of them. Every one is mishandled. Some have returned to the government for re-privatisation.

But there is no debate. We talk at cross purposes. Threats and statements are made not in public but in their own websites and self-serving one-way statements. The opposition parties are ready to debate at any time on any issue. The government parties takes the initiative for one and then finds creative reasons why it should not be held. The MCA, as representative of the Chinese in the cabinet, has failed so badly that it is kept on as a pro-forma representatives of the community, malleable and kept on its toes. So when a genuine Chinese issue turns up -- as the Vision Schools and the Suqiu proposals -- they shut up. And throw the blame on anyone who suggests why. That is now political debate. But in Bolehland it is. There is nothing Mr Rustam need apologise to the MCA Youth for.

If this persists, racial discord and disunity is inevitable. The younger Chinese, born after independence, would rebel as the blacks in South Africa and the United States did at their inferior cultural status. The Chinese educationists and Suqui opposed Vision Schools for reasons yet unrebutted. But if the proposal had come with it one to open UiTM, the former Mara Institute of Technology, to non-Malays and allow more non-Malays into Malaysian universities, the opposition would not have been as severe. The UiTM is a Malay university, with a smattering of other native races. Is is right and proper for a university for one race?

With the Lunas fallout sharply etched into its future, the National Front government is nervous and found scapegoats in Chinese educationists and the Suqui NGO. It is caught in its own rhetoric over Vision Schools and wisely retired it from public discussion. But the Suqui's 17 points with its 83 demands is now used to raise racial tensions. The MCA president, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, says the government acepts "98 per cent of the 83 demands", or at most two demands raise the ire. Another National Front party, Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia, says Suqiu did not demand the removal of Malay privileges. Why did not UMNO discuss this with its Chinese partners before it shot off its mouth in public? The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, wants Suqiu to withdraw its demands and "heal the fissures". So long as he rails about it as he does in public, it must raise racial tensions.

This came to a head in Lunas. UMNO had lost the Malay ground, as the 1999 General Election showed: the National Front had been returned with four-fifths of the seats in Parliament but almost every Malay majority or dominant seat became marginal. In the three byelections since, this erosion showed. In Lunas, it was confirmed. The National Front ignored the Malay areas, with its 43 per cent of the voters, and concentrated on the Chinese and Indians. But the Chinese themselves were in a simmering cauldron, accused of treachery and worse for not agreeing to submit its schools to the voluntary, ill-thought-out Vision Schools, of which no one, not even the education ministry knows much about. So, in an election in which the National Front needed Chinese support, it did not. The National Front took the politically questionable way out of its predicament by attacking the Chinese. It hoped that this would bring back the support it lost.

While he casts a wide net, his target is the Chinese community which does not accept the Vision Schools. It is voluntary, of course, but he insists any who questions it are both racial chauvinists and arrogant.

THE MCA SUPPORTS Vision Schools, insists it is voluntary, and its president, Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik, instead of the education minister, Tan Sri Musa Mohamed, announces the first two Vision Schools to be set up -- in Subang Jaya and Johore Jaya. Far from being voluntary, the Prime Minister insists those schools who disagree are traitors and worse. The government cannot push this through so long as the Chinese schools refuse to participate. It is not that they would not. They do not know what it is all about. Even the MCA cabinet ministers are not confident about to face the Chinese community to explain it. The education minister announced it without consultation, it replaced the smart schools of his predecessor, which is now as good as nonexistent. As Vision Schools would be when the minister moves on. The government has not explained why this need to force Vision Schools into existence before the i's are dotted and t's crossed. And if it is clear policy, why does Dr Ling shy away from facing the Chinese community to explain what, in his view, is easily explained.

The National Front, especially UMNO, looks upon byelections as if the world is about to collapse if it lost it. When it should be treated for the everyday occurrence it should be, it heightens it to a national tamasha, with cabinet ministers and mentris besar fallowing each other to campaign. Too many cooks spoil the broth. As in Lunas. Where they forogt the spices. It annoyed the local National Front organisation. All we were told is what the carpetbaggers from Kuala Lumpur did or threaten to do, alienating the locals who knew not only where the voters were, but also where the skeletons of the opposition were hidden. But the National Front, which incidentally is registered and diffused as the Alternative Front is unregistered and focussed, was more interested in the form and not the substance of the campaign. The Malay ground was not there. The Chinese dissension was burnished by the confusion over the Vision Schools, which MCA sidestepped. But I do not see a change in the horizon. So long as the Anwar affair is unresolved. Until then, the National Front would throw the baby out with the bathwater. All this has nothing do with race and religion, which the National Front, more than the opposition, indulged in.

The Lunas byelection, as the Prime Minister knows, was not about Chinese perfidy or Indian ungratefulness, but of Malay alienation. It was not the National Front that met immediately after it lost in Lunas, nor the MIC, but UMNO. That it lasted four hours said more than the Prime Minister's incoherent, wanton, unjustified attacks on the Chinese. The National Front decided, wrongly, that the Chinese held the balance, but the Chinese parties, the MCA and Gerakan, did not or would not campaign, leaving it to UMNO cabinet ministers to convince the Chinese about Vision Schools of which they already were suspicious. The Gerakan, with better sensitive ground rapport amongst the Chinese than the MCA could ever hope for, was sidelined, and stayed away. The MCA went about it half-heartedly. The Opposition -- PAS, KeAdilan, and, in the closing stages, DAP -- took the issue head on, with Chinese educationists and the Suqiu NGO in its corner -- and made mincemeat of the National Front's tepid responses. The Indian were taken for granted, as a "fixed deposit" for the National Front. This angered both communities, and forced enough Chinese and Indian voters to have the opposition's Saifuddin Nasution Ismail as their state assemblyman.

The Chinese demands his rightful cultural place. This time it was Vision Schools, an allegedly carefully thought out policy that no one but the education minister, Tan Sri Musa Ahmad, understands. The Prime Minister insulted Chinese educationists when they met, the MCA ministers, who support the Vision Schools, dare not explain how good it would be for Chinese schools, and hide behind the coattails of the Malay ministers. Only the official views are heard. So, in Lunas, the Chinese educationists took to the hustings to challenge the official explanations about it. And they came out tops. Faced with this, the Vision Schools proposals were altered, but the fundamental question remained unanswered: why is this rammed down the throats of the Chinese schools, and why is the Tamil school left out? Vision Schools is Tan Sri Musa Mohamed's hope for a name in education ministry. As the smart schools was to his predecessor, and now defence minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak. None would answer my question if it had to do with the expensive lands in major towns that the government feels is better in the hands of the cronies, courtiers and siblings.

The opposition, poorly funded, less inclined to raise the little profile it has, dug into the villages and house-to-house, ignoring the National Front taunts to raise national issues that strike a chord. They understood the voters must be convinced they could deliver, which they did by raising few politicial issues often and ad nauseum, sinking the message with repetition. For the Malay, the federal-state crisis over the Trengganu royalties, the humiliation and demonisation of Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, the jailed former deputy prime minister. For the Chinese, there is the botched Vision Schools, which Chinese educationists effectively demolished. Its biggest problem is to convince the Indian, though the murky circumstances of the state assemblyman's murder that brought this byelection about could well give it more votes than the MIC hopes. And corruption as a general issue. In Lunas, as elsewhere, corruption is a problem. So, it struck a chord. Which is why Datin Rafidah Aziz, the international trade and industry minister, denied allegations she is corrupt, indeed is incorruptible, even if the Attorney-General prepares charges, ready in a week, to filed once ordered to from high above. The Malays want the Prime Minister to convince them of his promise to root out corruption by going after the more blatant corrupters in his cabinet.

A pharmacist-turned-educationist-turned-business man. uninterested in politics but a crony of the Prime Minister, moves in with his Vision Schools. True to form, it lacks the vision implied in it. It is a variation of what Dato' Seri Abdullah had proposed when minister. What is it? How will it reverse the appalling illiteracy after 11 years of school? How is different from the integrated, smart, Baku policies of his predecessors? Look, Tan Sri Mohamed Musa knows what he wants. If you do not, that is your problem. He has decided, in Archimedian fashion but without the thought, that this is how schools would be. The schools will be integrated with the language streams sharing common facilities. Does this not sound suspicously with what Dato' Seri Abdullah wanted to make his mark? Yes, but this is better. The Chinese and Tamil schools were not consulted. They were ordered to confirm. No ifs and buts. When Chinese educationists and cultural bodies had their doubts about it, the stick was produced: no less than the Prime Minister said they were communists and racial extremists for not following his crony's vision. When the government itself is unclear of what this new fangled policy proposes, and proves it by contradictory statements on what it is, what it does, how it would be implemented is grist for the mill to confuse any who wants to make sense out of it all. So, the office, not just education, makes one pompous, arrogant, a false security and power. If you are confused, then a National Front ministry is not for you.

And so, according to latest rumours, the Rulers would consider four names -- one Court of Appeal and three high court judges -- for promotion to the Federal Court when they meet next week. The man who, despite his judicial sleights of hand and behaviour, has a brilliant legal mind, Judge Gopal Sri Ram, is not favoured anymore. But Judge Mokhtar Sidin -- who in the Vincent Tan libel case allowed the plaintiff's lawyer, Dato' V.K. Lingam, to write the judgement giving him a total of RM10 million in damges even if neither libel nor damages were proved -- is. The inclusion of three high court judges raises judicial and legal eyebrows. Why should it? If kindergarten children can get double promotion, as the much-vaunted, ill-thought-out Vision Schools allow, why should not high court judges to the federal court? After all, the Malaysian judiciary has a more serious problem with judicial libido than dispense justice. If a man faces a prominent business man in court, he cannot succeed. The court would find creative reasons to damn him. This is so ingrained that few would rather opt to have disputes arbitrated. Indeed, in almost every contract involving foreign investment or investors, disputes are by arbitration overseas, usually in Singapore. So much for the integrity of Bolehland justice.

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