The Prime Minister is horrified two UMNO members are beaten up in a fracas with PAS members at a mosque in Temerloh. He does not identify PAS, of course, but PAS officials inviestigate the matter. One wishes he was as horrified when the Inspector-General of Police assaulted a handcuffed and blindfolded just-dismissed deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim shortly after his arrest in September 1998. The Prime Minister now says piously that violation of the law is unhealthy. He worries that Malaysia would go the way of other countries where "disgruntled groups riot". The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, is not far behind. "Assault is an offence that is punishable under the Penal Code," he thunders, and warns, "There should be no accusation ... (that) ... we are taking action against the Opposition." But then, why is assault but a minor infringement of the law when the IGP beats up his predecessor? Since the law is, as the Prime Minister himself insists, neutral, what happened to the myriad of police reports He Who Must Be Destroyed At All Cost and others filed of ministerial corruption? Should not Dato' Seri Abdullah order that those reports be investigated at speed, as he wants the Temerloh mosque incident report? The events of September 1998 tests Malaysian nationhood as no event since the May 13 riots of 1969. The government the Prime Minister leads insists its view is the only acceptable, those who disagree anti-national and worse, It would not allow Malaysians to function as citizens, especially in politics. The restrictions upon the opposition, the onerous legal impediments for permits to publish and hold meetings, the restrictions on political campaigning, the refusal to allow other than the officially sanctioned view in the mainstream media are but a few reasons why the citizens, deciding enough is enough, take to the streets. If Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim had been treated not as an enemy of the state but as a political leader with a different point of view, this general public belief that they must stand up and be counted could possibly never be tested. But the Prime Minister could not stomach a deputy who challenged his grandoise vision centred not on the confidence of its people but of the megastructures that now bring us to the brink of bankruptcy. Malay polity discovered, with his dismissal, its power. Government panic showed when the first gatherings in support of Dato' Seri Anwar after his dismissal. The Malay heartland realised their leaders in UMNO and the government had feet of clay. And petty actions like the difficulty Keadilan has had to hold a dinner this month -- the hotels and dates are changed so frequently that one does not know where and when it would be eventually held -- reinforces it. The Prime Minister's threats yesterday (April 09) over the Temerloh assault last Friday only accentuates that. That, with Dato' Seri Abdullah's, underscores the Malay dilemma. It is the Malay dilemma, since the non-Malays are but shivering bystanders in the epic battle that is about to erupt and not necessarily on the streets. It is UMNO that puts on the pressure, not the National Front, which should have taken the lead. It has to be UMNO since without it the National Front would flounder like a fish out of water. And UMNO pressure rise in tandem with declining Malay support. The Prime Minister's response is to oligarchically coccoon himself as UMNO president, rewriting the rules to prevent challenge, as the Hermit of 31 Langgak Golf finds out. But that reflects not strength but weakness. Political quarrels like the Temerloh incident should only be expected when UMNO and the National Front look upon links with the Opposition as treacherous. The Malacca chief minister, Dato' Ali Rastam's hostility towards professionals and banks whose staff backed Opposition parties and candidates is yet proof that the National Front and UMNO are on the defensive. To suggest now that laws must be tightened, and to threaten that Malaysia would go the way of other countries where street demonstrations and riots are the norm is to sidestep the problem. The government should accept that governance cannot be in isolation, that opposition and differing views must be allowed to be heard, and accept that in a democracy the opposition should have as much an opportunity as the government to spread their wings and views. The government faced a determined Chinese left-wing opposition in the 1950s and 1960s. That was easy to destroy. The 1969 racial riots affirmed it, the political implications of which now haunts UMNO, whose role in that riots is not what the government insists it is. The Chinese community, to counterbalance the oligarchial power of the MCA, backed the Democratic Action Party in the opposition to look after their interests. The Malay community remained solidly with UMNO, with a small percentage with PAS. Not any more. The questionable 1987 UMNO presidential elections, which led to a divsion of UMNO, began the chain of events to Dato' Seri Anwar's arrest, assault and jailing that shook the Malay community's belief in UMNO's invincible leadership. UMNO split again with the Anwar backers forming the Parti Keadilan Negara (Keadilan). PAS, which had quietly burrowed itself into the Malay heartland, reaped the benefit of UMNO's deliberate destruction of Keadilan. The November 29 general elections brought that divide into the the ballot box. Which is why the Prime Minister and UMNO are on tenterhooks about a minor fracas at a mosque in Temerloh last Friday. M.G.G. 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