The BN, especially UMNO, insisted he was history, at least in public. It ignored the ground, that UMNO did itself a grave dishonour at bundling its prime minister-to-be to jail. UMNO insists the visible support groups for him declined sharply, and the Malay has returned to support UMNO. He did not. In private, Pak Lah had to destroy him politically once and for all, for his survival. But how he went about struck many as odd. He decided to confront him by proxy at Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim's old parliamentary constituency, Permatang Pauh, which his wife, Datin Seri Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, had represented since his fall. His secret weapon was the former National Mosque imam, Dato' Pirdaus Ismail, 38, a 'hafiz', one who can recite the Quran from memory. If he was returned, he would be in the new cabinet as minister for Islamic affairs. Two birds with one stone. But only if it worked. It did not.

The EC and its chairman, Tan Sri Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman, must take prime responsibility for what happened. For it becomes clear they colluded with BN leaders for what happened. He should have resigned when they acted beyond the law to order the polling to favour the BN: when they ignored the standard code of practice and made adjustments according to the whims and fancies of the moment. The two hour extension of polling in Selangor was illegal. The five hour suspension of polling in Sungei Lembing in Pahang was illegal. Allowing the BN to bus in voters to the northern Malay states were illegal. The freak result in Permatang Pauh when the National Justice Party (KeADILan) president, Datin Seri Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, when a wafer thin majority became a majority of 590 votes was the EC's doing: The votes are stacked in tens, but here it was in more than tens for Dr Wan Azizah and less than ten for her BN opponent. This could not have been done except by direction from above.

THE NATIONAL FRONT WON an unexpected landslide victory in yesterday's (21 March 2004), the best since it as the Alliance won 51 of 52 constituencies for the Federal Legislative Assembly in 1955. It is a result that defies statistical probability and logic. It swept the Malay states, routed PAS in Trengganu, a cliff hanger in Kelantan, where the votes are still being recounted, decimated the National Justice Party, KeADILan, and made its president, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, unbeatable in his own right. The only KeADILan MP is its president, Datin Seri Wan Azizah Wan Ismail. PAS saw its hopes dashed so thoroughly that it would be awhile before it recovers. The only opposition of any note comes from the Democratic Action Party (DAP). But this BN victory also calls into question the Election Commission's impartiality and ability to conduct elections. It stepped in in Selangor when as polls were about to close it was clear the BN and the Opposition were running neck to neck. Without warning, it extended the voting by two hours, breaking its own rules and without consulting the candidates. It was during this time that BN bussed in a surge of voters that turned the tide. Pak Lah's brilliant mandate comes with it deep-seated questions of fairness of the election process.

The prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, has another difficulty: he must appear at the UMNO general assembly in June with the Malay ground on his side. But he came into office too late in the day to address that before the elections. The battle is fought in Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan, Trengganu, Pahang and Selangor. His main opponent is PAS now and the National Justice Party (KeADILan) possibly in the coming years. PAS only has to show it has gained ground in these states by denying the BN its two-thirds majority, as in Kedah. If it can achieve that, and be returned in 50 per cent more seats in Parliament and the states, it has achieved what it wants for this general election. A problem for the BN, more narrowly, UMNO, is that PAS and KeADILan work hand-in-hand in this general election. In 1999, the BN strategy was to deny every KeADILan candidate but its president, Datin Seri Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, a seat. KeADILan had five seats in the last parliament.

All it needs to upset the BN and UMNO is a challenger for the UMNO presidency next year to release Pak Sheikh from jail with a free pardon to defeat Pak Lah. Dr Mahathir thinks not mentioning Pak Sheikh would consign him to oblivion. He did for five years and failed. His speech yesterday would have had an impact if he had at least mentioned Pak Sheikh. But he could not. He has painted himself into a corner. Mentioning him now would damage him more. Especially when Pak Lah is not about to. Indeed, his boys in Penang work hard to cut him down to size, with a special effort to wrest the Permatang Pauh parliamentary constitutency he once held and which wife, Datin Seri Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, the president of Parti Keadilan Nasional, now does, in the General Election.

KeADILan stayed where it was. With its merger with the Parti Rakyat Malaysia (PRM), it is the only political party that conforms closest to UMNO's founding ideals of a party that looks after all Malaysians devoid of colour, race or creed. It puts UMNO in a bad light. It cannot challenge PAS on religion and it now cannot KeADILan on a cultural polity in which religion does not dominate and is an important segment. There is more support for KeADILan than is admitted. PAS and now UMNO assumes wrongly that if a man goes to mosque regularly, he accepts an Islamic state. Yes, he belives in it - in the future, How do you resolve that contradiction if Dr Mahathir invites Datin Seri Wan Azizah Wan Ismail to join UMNO? Were it that simple.

Should Dr Jeffrey be an UMNO member, and he decides he would not support Pak Lah, that would be to Pak Lah's discomfiture. It is his mischief potential more than anything else that his application is rejected. He could well be accepted at a later date. He was prepared once to dance to UMNO's tune to sink PBS under his brother, then joined his brother to sink UMNO. He is too uncontrollable, and too pliable, for anyone to be comfortable with. So what should he do? He should accept the Pasok Momogun invitation, if for no reason that it is in the Opposition and close to the Parti KeADILan Nasional, (KeADILan), headed by Dato' Seri Anwar's wife, Datin Seri Wan Azizah Wan Islam, which could then present a stronger force than the sorry pastiche it is.

But states also awards dato'ship on the principle of "ambu bodek", to curry favour, by the state political leadership recommending federal leaders and their wives for high awards. So, the deputy prime minister wife, Datin Seri Endon Mohamed, is awarded titles from three states in succession after her return from cancer treatment in the United States. As Datin Seri Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, was before her. This is nothing new. It is common practice for all states to award the wives of the prime minister and deputy prime minister. What have they done to deserve the honours? None. But it is infra dig for a state BN chief minister to not award one to the wives of the UMNO president and deputy president. When attention is focussed on it, something is wrong. Such awards are in bad taste, and on par with buying titles.

Dato' Seri Anwar's wife, Datin Seri Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, met senior State Department officials for breakfast at the residence of the US ambassador, Mrs Marie Huhtala to discuss her husband's plight. Mr Powell would have been there but for a request from the visiting Ghaniain president to see him. The Malaysian government would wish Dato' Seri Anwar disappear into the woodwork, as no doubt Pretoria once of Mr Mandela and Britain of the Mahatma. But it cannot now go away. When the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, called on President Bush in the White House, it was made clear to him bilateral ties were linked to the travails of Dato' Seri Anwar. Malaysia can pressure other visiting dignitaries from calling on the Opposition, but it cannot the United States.

Miss Nurul Izzah Anwar, the 23-year-old quiet, shy, almost taciturn, eldest daughter of the jailed former deputy prime minister and UMNO deputy president, has blosommed into a young, assertive, confident woman and politician in her own right. She would have ended her life as an engineer and housewife, as her father wanted her to be. He had kept her mother and her sister in the background, but his politically motivated incarceration changed all that. Her mother, Datin Seri Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, marched right into politics, became president of a political party, Parti Keadilan Nasional (KeADILan), succeeded her husband as member of Parliament for Permatang Pauh. In between her undergraduate studies, she helped her mother in her political campaigns, and soon acquired a persona of her own. She is the darling of the crowd now. And this begins to worry the more formidable women in UMNO.

A day later, the Johore mentri besar, Dato' Abdul Ghani Othman, demands the Keadilan president, Datin Seri Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, come clean about the party's tiff with its former deputy president, Dr Chandra Muzaffar. "When is Datin Seri Wan Azizah going to take up Chandra's challenge to come clean and what the party's struggles are?" He told an UMNO political gathering that for Keadilan, the end justifies the means. As if it does not for UMNO? It did not strike him or UMNO leaders that UMNO presumes the unfettered right to criticise is its, and no one else's. UMNO leaders, from the president down, are quick to drive a wedge into opposition ranks, with its newspapers lending a hand. The only time Malaysians know of developments in the opposition ranks is when UMNO leaders criticise it. They do not know how weary Malaysians are of these one-sided attacks, and how it has begun to wean support for the parties UMNO and the BN chastise in its newspapers.

The health minister, Dato' Chua Jui Meng, lies in Parliament about the jailed former foreign minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. The foreign minister, Dato' Seri Syed Hamid Albar, meets European Union ambassadors individually over two days, after he meets ASEAN and other envoys after the Keadilan president, Datin Seri Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, meets them over her husband's medical problems. The government arrests eight under the Internal Security Act to yet destroy the likes of what makes it nervous. Its nervousness is reflected in the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's remark when he told police after the arrests that "one black eye is enought" and did not want two or three more.

This is what happened in May 1969. The victory celebrations the UMNO youth leader and Selangor mentri besar, Dato' Harun Idris, planned for 13 May turned ugly when the Alliance, as the coalition was then known, nearly lost control of two Malay states, Selangor and Perak. Those who came for the celebrations came armed with weapons. In other words, UMNO, who lead that coalition as it does this, is promising violence should it lose control. The opposition used to losing in every elections since the KL municipal elections in 1953, is not likely to run riot because it has lost another one. But the National Front, and UMNO, has much to lose if they lose ground, especially if it is badly tarnished. The Malay cultural and political support the National Front traditionally had is dented, a return to status quo all but impossible so long as the Prime Minister cannot explain away the humiliation of his protege and potential successor. So much, in exasperation, the Prime Minister uncharacteristically accused Anwar's wife, Datin Seri Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, of courting for sympathy votes from her husband's jailing.

The newly appointed deputy inspector-general of police, Dato' Jamil Johori, wants to prosecute the jailed former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, for his false police report that he has been poisoned. And his wife, Datin Seri Wan Azizah Wan Ismail. After all, the Prime Minister and deputy prime minister is sure He Who Must Be Destroyed At All Cost lied, he does not suffer from arsenic poisoning. The book must be thrown at any who lodge false police reports. Mind you, Dato' Jail intends to let Malaysians know that he and his force would not tolerate any one, be he disgraced deputy prime minister or opposition party membe, who lodges police reports that are false or lead police on false trails. Dato' Jamil even suggests the severe penalties that await Dato' Seri Anwar if the arsening poisoning report was false. "I cannot comment more", he says helpfully, "as investigation is in progress." If it was in progress, why did he come out to say what he did? Dato' Seri Anwar knows -- should know by now -- the dangers of false reports to police. I would not be uncharitable enough to suggest that the new kid on the block wants to ingratiate himself with the Prime Minister and the deputy prime minister who doubles up as home minister. He is too much of a professional to want to have to do that.

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