The potential challenge posed by Umno supreme council member Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah reveals to party leaders how dangerous he is to their political health. Not just to the acting president and his deputy, but to every division leader.

All stops are pulled so he gets not a single nomination. He needs 58 to be a candidate for the presidency. The supreme council decreed that Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Najib Abdul Razak should be returned unopposed to the top two posts.

Ku Li defied the council. Panic set in. A chorus of orchestrated attacks reverberated in the media, including vicious personal attacks. He pushed ahead. Panic set in.

There were talks of defections. The monolithic coalition the Umno leaders had built began to crack. The intelligence agencies had told them the Tengku had garnered at least 68 nominations. That if nothing is done to stop it, he is a candidate.

He has not held office since 1987, when he resigned after he lost the presidential contest to then party head Dr Mahathir Mohamed. He wound up his Semangat 46, formed after the High Court declared Umno to be an illegal body, but disallowed to exist when Mahathir formed Umno Baru.

He joined the new Umno and was kept in limbo, but built an impressive political machine that has its roots at every nook and cranny of the party.

He remained out of the public eye, ignored by those in office, but is the archetypal politician, fully aware of what is happening around him, visited upon by friends and foes alike. He remained a sphinx, tightlipped in public, ignored by the media, but one who could not be ignored.

Ku Li entered this contest for the Umno presidency after much thought and self-doubt, but he took this fateful step when the groups marginalised in Umno swung their support to him if he were to stand.

His strength is his non-involvement in the Mahathir epoch's financial and political shenanigans. More important, he represents the traditional Malay cultural worldview, which challenges Umno's deliberate ignoring it for God and Mammon, this belief that Umno must change its stripes from culture to Islam to keep at bay its main political rival, Parti Se-Islam Malaysia (PAS).

In other words, he represents one important even if sidelined pressure group in Umno. He has much support for this view, and he would not come a cropper as Umno wants to ensure.

Not unusual

This is what his attempt to be Umno president is all about, this belief that Umno has strayed from its ideals, that it must be brought back, by reform and other means, to the centre stage of Malay thinking and worldview.

It attracts Malays out of the loop and impotent after Umno has been hijacked by a leadership that is there for no reason than to be forever in power. So the fire power to stop it is brought in. For the leaders know that, left to the divisions to make up their mind, Tengku Razaleigh would be a candidate, and if a candidate, nothing could stop him from being elected Umno president and made the Malaysian prime minister.

That not one division has nominated him yet is not unusual. He must be stopped at any cost. The government agencies have redoubled their efforts to destroy him. In Kelantan, one delegate in Kuala Kerai, who would have nominated the Tengku found he could not: he was served with papers in the middle of the previous night - he is now a bankrupt and therefore unable to attend the meeting.

In Kota Bharu, the doors were shut to prevent entry to those who could have nominated him. In Jelebu, nominations for Tengku Razaleigh were stopped at the insistence of its eminence grise and cabinet minister, Rais Yatim.

To stop the Tengku, the election code of ethics has been cheerfully thrown into the dustbin. Votes are being bought and sold with impunity. In Kubang Pasu, one leader paid RM300 and more to buy up delegates.

The former chief minister of Malacca, Rahim Thamby Chik, ( photo ) complains of large sums of money changing hands to defeat challengers. Money speaks, he says, and if that is not enough, government contracts, licences, and other official perks are offered. It is hard to resist, when refusal means political destruction.

Before it came to that, pressure was put on Ku Li, even from amongst his advisers, that he ought to go for the vice-presidency instead and when that failed, against Najib for the deputy presidency instead. This is justified on the grounds that since Mahathir changed his deputy prime ministers often, why should not Pak Lah? The Pak Lah camp was prepared to sacrifice Najib if the Tengku could be sidetracked from challenging him.

Pak Lah has decided he and he alone must be president at all costs. Najib is on notice that should any division aligned to him have the temerity to nominate anyone else for the presidency, he would be exorcised from Umno more severely than the former prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim. It is now an article of faith, which Mahathir remarked upon, that the Tengku could be allowed only one nomination - from his division of Gua Musang, Kelantan.

War chest

The fallout of this is more frightening: it threatens to become the dirtiest party election ever. If the acting president can pull all stops to prevent challenge, why could not every one down the line? If he cannot be challenged, why should they be?

If the rot starts at the top, how could it be stopped lower down? Street talk has it that those aspiring to be division leaders must have at least RM2 million in their war chest: one man in Kuala Lumpur, brother of a cabinet minister, spent that much to retain his position. If money, not belief or culture, is the only currency, why are we surprised?

Nevertheless the Tengku bandwagon rolls on. The mainstream and the instant analysts, political and economic, have had a field day repeating the officially orchestrated belief that he is history. He is not. If he does not get at least 50 nominations, it shows how frightened Umno is of him, that his name alone is enough to give its top leaders sleepless nights. If he gets less than 10, it shows up an Umno prepared to destroy itself to stop him.

The Umno leaders have decided, in fright and terror, to do just that. The more thoughtful Umno leaders are worried about this trend, but would not voice their thoughts for what it would be represented as: a challenge.

For Umno today is not what runs the government; it is the prime minister, whose word is law that even Umno must bow to him in fear. Umno today is cast in the Mahathir image, with the rules so constructed that an appointed prime minister must not be challenged, for as prime minister he is more important than Umno.

What this reveals is, for want of a more apt word, a dictator, who as prime minister adheres to the theoretical norm to show he is not but which his actions show he is. For Pak Lah, it is yet another node in the catalogue of disasters from when he became prime minister last November, and continues unabated.

The Tengku Razaleigh challenge reveals Pak Lah in his true colours: he wants his way, and would stop at nothing to get it. Even if Umno is destroyed because of it.

The one man who comes out of this with any semblance of dignity and respect is the Tengku. Whether he gets one nomination or 58.