'When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it.' So says Paulo Coelho in The Alchemist , a bestseller of the Brazilian author.

Unfortunately for Khairy Jamaluddin, the universe is not at his behest in his quest for the post of deputy leader of Umno Youth. Luckily still, our entire press has been conspiring in his favour to help him ascend to the second highest position in the youth movement by profiling the wunderkind of Malay politics as a frontrunner and the young talent to watch.

The 'most influential 28-year-old in Malaysia', whom the group editor-in-chief of the New Straits Times Kalimullah Hassan once lamented for being denied even the basic liberty to choose a career for himself, has been quietly but steadily mounting his charm offensive. Having earned the affinity of the Malay and the English press, the son-in-law of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, oh no, a gifted politician in his own right, has begun to court the attention of the Chinese press also.

On 14 July, Nanyang Siang Pau ran a prominent interview of Khairy , in which the Oxford graduate pledged to bring Umno Youth closer to the non-Bumiputra communities if elected as deputy chief. This seemingly sincere promise is, however, most oxymoronic to me. Pinning hopes on the Youth wing of the Malay supremacist party to channel the concerns of the non-Malays to the highest political echelon in this country is nothing but an ultimate pipe dream, as if to wish for snow to fall on the equatorial Malaysia.

But Khairy's tryst with the MCA-controlled daily may signal a new dawn in the relationship between Umno and the Chinese community; whether Ong Ka Ting had facilitated the interview is everyone's guess. After all, the prodigy of Umno Youth has all the essential powers to enchant Chinese Malaysians entrapped in the myth of personage politics: he is young, western-educated, and allegedly open-minded, a Malay elite representing 'the most liberal face' of Umno.

I would say Malaysians ignore at their own peril the swift mutation of an Umno politician from a liberal to a racist when circumstances call for it.

Fong's silly question

Political tokenism is a very part of the Chinese Malaysian community, but not exclusively. Thus, one should not be taken aback when Fong Kui Lun, the member of parliament for Bukit Bintang, actually posed the silly question as to whether a non-bumiputra would be appointed as second deputy prime minister. Little surprise, the Malay press was over the moon at hearing the PM's reply

Fong may have tried to prove to his Chinese constituents that he did speak up for the interests of the non-Malays. Although to criticise such stance as a propaganda stunt may be wide off the mark, it has to be said that the question per se reflects the deep obsession of the DAP with racist politics, in a way that is not at all dissimilar from Umno or the MCA.

Would one honestly believe having Dr Ling Liong Sik as deputy prime minister could in fact benefit the country in general and the Chinese in particular? I cannot help laughing at the idea.

Instead of pursuing the issue, the DAP would do well to educate the masses about the paramount importance of institutional building and to work for the entrenchment of democratic notions within all ethnic communities, the lack of which is a serious fault-line in Malaysian politics.

Another interesting catch of the past week has been the effort of The Star to bridge the gap between Malaysia and Singapore. I have noticed that, in tandem with Prime Minister Abdullah's increasingly conciliatory posture towards the island state in recent weeks, the best-selling English daily now has a 'Firming Ties' column to highlight the interdependence between the two (ex)rivals. Karim Raslan, the Malay elite par excellence, has even urged both governments to tap into the golden opportunity 'to return their two countries to the very forefront of global investing', something truly unthinkable just a few months ago.

Despite the upbeat mood, it must be said that how to deal with US presence in this part of the world remains a potential irritant in Malaysia-Singapore relations. In fact, with the exception of Singapore and Thailand, the Americans hardly feel at home in Southeast Asia. Even the Philippines has now signalled its intention to withdraw troops from Iraq in order to protect its own nationals in the Middle East. Unofficial figure now puts Filipinos working in Iraq alone at 4,000 or more. Confronted with a populace that harbours strong distrust of the United States, President Gloria Arroyo is now finding her hands tied by too cosy a relationship with the hawks in Capitol Hill.

Population alienated

The suspicion of and hostility towards the Bush-led US are most pronounced in Indonesia and Malaysia, which cannot be solely blamed on the two major Muslim countries in Southeast Asia. By dubbing the region as the second front in US war against global terrorism, policymakers in Washington caused many to raise an eyebrow and have effectively alienated a large part of the populations in the region.

Historical experiences, such as US debacle in Vietnam, continue to alarm the region, while many Indonesians now have the cognisance that Suharto's decades-long iron rule would not have been possible if not for the tacit support of Washington. Hamzah Haz, speaking to a group of Muslim clerics in September 2003 as vice president of Indonesia, accused America of being the real terrorist. President Bush must be delighted that Hamzah has now failed to make it to the run-up in the presidential election.

Not long before the US invasion of Afghanistan in November 2001, I had a chat with a US diplomat over Islamic politics in Malaysia. She couldn't conceal her fury over the burning of an American flag by some PAS members just outside the US embassy in Kuala Lumpur, and was flabbergasted by my remarks that 'but you Americans have been bombing houses of the innocent people the world over'.

Insofar as the US is concerned, it is always so ready to take the speck of sawdust out of the eyes of others, while the plank in its own eye remains unfelt. All big nations are misguidedly convinced of their own moral certitudes, which are hard to be knocked off, and all the more so with the US, with the exception of a minority group of social and intellectual elites such as Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky. Even George Soros is holding President Bush responsible for turning ordinary Americans from victims into perpetrators.

But for a small nation surrounded by unfriendly and mercurial neighbours, a mighty US will always be a benign superpower to count on, which leads me to wonder if The Star would quietly take off the 'Firming Ties' column should Malaysia-Singapore ties become sour over a more aggressive and assertive American foreign policy in Southeast Asia in the future.