THE WAR ON TERROR, as dictated by the United States, is fast becoming one in Malaysia, as it already is in many countries with fealty to Washington. This is adopted to keep the opposition away from politics, but all it has done is to keep it alive. In Indonesia, this is more widespread than is reported in the news reports, that getting prominence only when this affects the government or foreign countries with an axe to grind, usually and not exclusively Australia. In the process, President Susilo Bambang Yudhyono is seen against the war of terror, the fine elements of which are Washington's, or Australia's dictates. Malaysia has gone wholly with the United States on this, because its largest opposition is Islamic, which it wants to say is pro-war on terror, mainly to blame it Islamically, but gets caught in a bind as the National Front's version of Islam – now Islam Hadhari, but that is under the present prime minister, Pak Lah, only; it was not under the former leader – does not cut much ice in the villages.

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 MIDDLE CLASS IS society's, to use a hackneyed phrase, engine of growth. Annoy it, and it is difficult to contain them. In India, the middle class provides the leadership of the masses, and keeps the government, and foreign investors, on their toes. The people do not like their rights or living taken but keep quiet because they do not have middle class leaders ...

THE NINTH MALAYSIA PLAN causes the spending of about RM200 billion. Yet this is not the major topic in Parliament. A minister's work dress is. It does not matter if the Ninth Malaysia Plan is discussed as it should, so long as the minutea of the minister's clothes is. So Dato' Rais Yatim is forced to explain why he wears the clothes he does ...

The Ninth Malaysia Plan (9MP), allegedly the prime minister's biggest claim to glory, does not mean what it says. It hoodwinks the people. I am critical of it because it benefits only a few, and not those in whose name it was announced.

SADDAM HUSSEIN'S TRIAL IS an example of victor's justice: First the trial, then the execution. That he will die is certain. But Iraq would be even more volatile either way. But putting to trial former leaders for what they have to do as leaders – that of Saddam Hussein is one, of Slobodan Milosevic another – would redound on US and European leaders once the worm turns, as it will ...

The Prime Minister, Pak Lah, has warned the people to stop complaining about the Ninth Malaysia Plan. He is not used to government plans being criticised, so his tetchiness is understandable. But it shows the Plan is not to improve the lot of the people in whose name it is announced, but of those who carry it out. This is, of course, not mentioned ...

It is money that makes the world go around. No where is this clear publicly than in the United States, and now Iraq. It is so in other parts of the world, but the world is told it is more important in these two countries. The publicity surrounding the release of Jill Caroll, a Christian Science Monitor reporter, from a Iraqi group, was a piece of good news for the United States in an otherwise bleak Iraq ...

A helicopter accident happened in Nibong Tebal on 30 March 2006. The newspapers reported how Dato' Patrick Lim was so sad about the loss of his friend, Mr Joseph Chan Sum Foo, the general manager of Abad Naluri Sdn Bhd, killed when the rotor blade struck him unexpectedly. Dato' Patrick is executive chairman of Equine Capital Berhad, and known to the cogniscenti as Patrick Badawi, and the Chinese face to his son's Scomi Berhad, one of whose subsidiaries has got the double tracking contract for Malaysian Railways. This company has no experience in rail way construction, but does it matter in Malaysia? Scomi came into the news a few years ago when the United States objected to Scomi making tubes for a Pakistani nuclear scientist for ultimate resale to Muslim countries of the Middle East as a component of nuclear weapons. here Front page photographs of Dato' Patrick crying over his friend's body near the helicopter are staged, but that is normal when they believe they are some body or want others to believe they are.

That is how Tan Sri Vincent Tan (remember him?) and others like him got into the press and into the public's mind ...

TELECOMS has charged me for a service I did not ask for. It assumed I needed it, although according to its rules, I must ask for it. All subscribers to the Telekoms service should have got it, earning it a tidy sum it would not have got otherwise. What the government or its linked companies cannot get from the consumer, they steal it by hook or by crook ...

We live in an age of public relations. What the spin meisters say is more important than what is. This is true for Malaysia as it is for the United States. What happened is not important, what the spin meister says is ...

THE GATHERING OF THE converted met yesterday (12 March 2006) to discuss the inexhorable move in Malaysia to be an Islamic state. No governmnent or official representative was there to give its view. That is not to say no UMNO representative was there. He was, but to chart his own support base outside UMNO, after his suspension as an UMNO member. Would he have said what he did had he been in the good books of the party? He got claps and cheers but did he mean what he said? Would his speech have been different had he been an official UMNO representative? No official explanation is given at the best of times for moves taken about Islam and its role in Malaysia ...

PAK LAH SAID the people are angry with the 30-cent increase in petrol but warned the opposition parties were taking advantage of it. He withdrew the subsidy to petrol companies, a practice started about 40 years ago to keep prices down. The oil companies had not increased the prices, but with the removal of the subsidy increased the price. The government explained that petrol companies have not increased the prices for some time but the government has withdrawn 30 cents of the subsidies! Whatever the reason, the people now pay nearly two dollars per litre in petrol. but It was not he who withdrew the subsidy but his son-in-law, Mr Khairy Jamaluddin, so that the government would have enough money for his projects under the 9th Malaysia Plan. This may or may not be true, but the studied silence in the government and civil service to allegations on the Internet and alternate press that now takes as read that the son-in-law demanded it. That sticks, whether Pak Lah likes it or not and he refuses to say otherwise.

THERE IS A TRITE SAYING that the Indian community in Malaysia must blend with the other races if it is to survive. Trite because the party that represents the Indians here do all it can to separate the Indian community into Tamils, Malayalees, Sikhs, Bengalis, others. The Malaysian Indian Congress, which once represented the Indian community in the governing National Front coalition, has done its job badly in representing the Indian community that the People's Progressive Party – which in its previous life was the opposition and multiracial Perak Progressive Party led by the redoubtable Seenivasagam brothers, both lawyers and with the younger, D.R. Seenivasagam, the more dominant, particularly in the opposition benches in Parliament – to also represent the Indians. His death in the late 1960s lead to his elder brother, known as SP, taking over, and subsequently joined the ruling National Front, After his death, it was the vehicle for a Chinese leader at odds with the Chinese party in the National Front, the Malaysian Chinese Association. But the PPP came back into Indian hands, its president being appointed a senator tough he is elected to parliament now. He, an Indian, is a deputy minister, but the party is a pale shadow of its old self.

"THE OFFICER IS ON leave" is the frequent answer to Malaysians who turn up on an appointed date. The office should not shut down because the officer is on leave. But the practice in Malaysia in the last 35 years is for files to be under lock and key, which the officer takes with him on leave. This is not how the Malaysian civil service should function ...

THE PETROL PRICE IS what it is, only the subsidy the government pays to the oil companies has changed. The subsidy withdrawn amounts to RM4.4 billion annually, and with it comes the promise that petrol prices would not be any higher this year. But the prime minister, Dato' Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, is worried. He has told UMNO to explain the fuel increase. But should it not be his government which should explain, not his political party? The government was ordered to withdraw the subsidy to meet the shortfall of RM20 billion for the projects proposed by his son-in-law under the 9th Malaysia Plan. As if on cue, the public ignored the larger amounts misused, and demonstrated against the withdrawal of the petrol subsidy.

DATUK SERI ABDULLAH AHMAD Badawi – formally but known to all and sundry, even himself, as Pak Lah – is trapped. There are many reasons why: his son-in-law, the deputy prime minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, his office, UMNO headquarters, the non-Malay and non-Islamic parties in the ruling National Front, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, his political enemies. The withdrawal of RM4.4 billion annually, because his son-in-law wanted RM20 billion for his projects, led to Pak Lah being trapped. Mr Khairy Jamaluddin proposed to meet a RM20 billion shortfall in the 9th Malaysia Plan by raising the petrol price ...

THE GOVERNMENT WILL SAVE RM4.4 billion annually by raising petrol prices but it will cost Malaysians five times that. This saving will be spent on public transport, says Pak Lah. So we must be happy the petrol prices are up! In 1990, it was RM1.10 a litre, today it is RM1.92. This is said to be inevitable, but is it? Its explanation why this is necessary comes after the public rebelled. Will the Malaysian government tell us, as rumours put it, why we are selling oil to Taiwan at about RM20 till 2010. Again as rumours, which turn out to be true most of the time, tell it, Malaysia is paying Taiwan US$40 a barrel for all the oil we do not sell or use. Most of that oil is now left in the ground, but we pay nevertheless. I was told this cannot be true: "If what you say is true, this is an unequal contract, and will be set aside." This rumour may be false, but before it gets wider publicity, the government must come clean about it. But can there be an unequal contract when the sale is by a willing buyer to a willing seller?

PAK LAH IS IN DIFFUCULTIES because his son-in-law. Mr Khairy Jamaluddin, does what he likes and any one who questions him can be entangled in libel suits. Mr Husam Musa, a PAS MP, asked a few questions, in an online PAS hewspaper, about his sudden wealth, and ECM Libra has sued both. The company has decided that asking Mr Khairy questions like Mr Husam's is a blight on it ...

NATIONAL UNITY IS NOT possible in Malaysia so long as there is the New Economic Policy, which in practice is for one race, the Malays, only. And the NEP is not for 20 years, as when initiated in 1970, but extended for ever when it was renewed in 1990. The races are kept apart, as a result, and go their own way. The Chinese, for instance, are intent on seeing that they can do what they like. The recent Extraordinary general meeting of the Lake Club was an exercise in racial superiority by the Chinese to ensure that a vote to expel the club president, who happened to be Chinese, for hiding his past , just as the DAP's was unthinkingly on 12 May 1969 in the Chow Kit area of Kuala Lumpur ...

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