Some state assemblymen and officials decided on a holiday at the public's expense. They thought of Morocco but in the end settled for Egypt. Of the13 eligible, three opted out of the tour. So no one would have qualms, it was dressed as a study tour.

The eight days of the tour, including the "official" but touristy visit to Parliament and Malaysian students in Cairo, were a holiday: visiting Egypt's ancient monuments and sites, and a practical investigation into belly dancing, no doubt with ideas to spruce Malaysia's tired tourism policies. The group was set to depart when the penny dropped.

This, in a nutshell, is what the Selangor Public Accounts Committee, a constitutional body to check waste and pilferage of public funds in state, did. They planned it in secret. The state government approved it. It is after all an acceptable perk of elected officials and their families to go on holidays at the public's expense. The Malacca state government was in Hawaii on just such a study tour, the chief minister rushing home because the prime minister was visiting, and then returning to continue with the junket.

This is not unique to Malaysia: it happens even in Singapore which wears its priggish uprighteousness proudly on its shirt sleeves. It has come to be accepted as a perk. But in Malaysia there is, as always, that special twist: these trips are planned in secret: those who elected them should not know of it. To prevent leaks and unnecessary questions of elected representatives and officials caught with their hands in the cookie jar, the group is told of the itinerary at the last possible minute so that the public learns of it only after they have left.

There is a reason why: the long-suffering public has had enough of being shortchanged in its name, and react with a ferocity that puts the elected parliamentarian and state assemblyman on notice.

The DAP man who blew the whistle was not born yesterday: he knew the score when he agreed to be on the junket. His horrified moral outrage was for political gain. He knew that once the mainstream newspapers who will manufacture pseudo crises if it sells newspapers got this particular bone gnashed in their teeth, he could bask in the surrounding glory.

The Barisan Nasional (BN) PAC members, from Umno and MCA, seeing the junket disappear before their eyes, lost their cool and attacked like scalded cats: the whistle-blower is ordered to pay for the cancelled tour, even if several members then dropped out. But not before the study tour became a working trip for the itinerary. And lost all public respect.

Discretion observed

The Malaysian and Selangor governments, run by Umno on behalf of BN, kept silent and away from this political storm in the tea-cup. It did not want any part in this local difficulty, and less said the better.

When they step in, then end up with mud on their faces. Discretion is after all the better part of valour. That is a local difficulty best handled locally. So they remain silent. As in every other crisis: private companies taking the law into their own hands, the descent of universities into degree factories, inefficient, racist and theocratic civil servants, a refusal to reform amidst a culture of mismanagement and fantasy within a system breaking down beyond repair.

It does not matter what the issue is: PLUS highway imposed a fine on over-stayers on stretches of the North-South highway. In the hue and cry that inevitably followed, it did so because a few motorists found loopholes in the system which they exploited to the full. When caught out, it insists it had the right to do what it did. The cabinet ordered PLUS not to, but it insists it has the right.

TNB, the electrical utility, reacted similarly in the recent blackout which affected the southern part of the national grid. it washed off all responsibility for it, blaming it on every one else for it but not its own systemic failure of keeping its power stations in running as it should. The banks increase charges for no reason than they want to within a culture of making the customer pay for its mistakes.

No one area in Malaysian life escapes it. The public transport is a mess. A well-run system is pared to the bone so it would end up in Malay political control: a new system in place and run by cronies of the establishment soon withers. Even if it can run efficiently, political control disallows it. When voices are raised, the government insists it knows best, the whistle blowers often enough detained under the Internal Security Act.

Public policy is made on the run, often announced as an aside at the official opening of a restaurant or flower shop. Parliament and state assemblies are rubber stamps and for holidays in stealth at public expense. The BN government operates on a simple set of rules: Don't admit mistakes. Don't evaluate decisions. Attack to divert attention. And mumble when caught.

But that only attracts attention to the inherent systemic failure of which mishaps, miscues, lapses, arrogance are but early warnings. Refusing to face them, as now, so the cronies of the establishment could get a free ride at the public's expense, and diverting attention to an irrelevant side-show, would not resolve it. One need not look too far back into the past for this. When action is in secret for individual gain or benefit within a contested political environment, it must in time hit the individual in his face. The unity of purpose that protects him cannot hold if it is for individual gain or a denial of the common good.

The Malaysian political system has been in catharsis since 1988 when then prime minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamed, in political vengeance, destroyed, as president of Umno the mass movement and replaced it with Umno the political party. It did well for a decade because it was held together by one man, Anwar Ibrahim, the then deputy prime minister and Umno deputy president. When he was sacked, humiliated and jailed, Umno fell apart. If he was not, Umno would have survived intact a while longer. The Malay would give his life for Umno the mass movement but not for Umno the political party. That Anwar is now in revolt against Umno splits the Malay community in cultural confusion.

The non-Umno parties in BN is similarly split within themselves as Umno, and are deadweight to Umno.

Umno does not wield, in BN or the country, the power it once had. It is split into factions and war lords. Its president, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, caught in his own web of political deceit, is controlled and malleated by his own warlords and opponents only too happy to stand up and be counted. His talks with Singapore to resolve outstanding bilateral issues is stymied because he does not, nor can he, have an Umno consensus on them. He hopes to get by with inaction. But this inaction has brought into the equation business men who believe they can fish so far successfully in troubled waters.

The Malay opposition knows how to bell the Umno cat. The Chinese parties, in BN, and the opposition, are happy to go along. The PAC scandal is but a blip in this political defenestration.