Sabah Chief Minister Musa Aman sups with the gods. He, as state Umno chief, led the National Front (BN) to another stunning victory in last year's general election. He is as powerful as the other megalomaniac in Sabah politics, Tun Mustapha Harun. His political patron is Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. He controls all that matters in the state, ignoring advice, consultation, the law.

His reach extends his power as Mustapha's once did: arrogantly, cynically, corruptly to reduce the powerful and the weak into blithering idiots. Along the way, he collects political and personal enemies and a corps of dissidents determined to bring him down. Like Mustapha, he did not recognise the tell-tale signs of his loss of power. He lost out when he could not appoint one in his extended family as Yang Di-pertua Negeri (governor). He holds office for two years, rotating it with other racial groups in the state. He wants to scrap that, again without consultation, and make the Umno leader chief minister.

In politically volatile Sabah, that is red rag to the bull. In an attempt to retain a hold on the state, it devised a system that would rotate the chief ministers from amongst the three main political groups the Malay Muslim, the non-Malay Muslim, the non-Malay non-Muslim holding office for two years in Buggin's turn. After the BN's electoral sweep last year, Umno decides to scrap it unilaterally without even consulting its cauldron of competing and often hostile chieftains. The chieftains in Umno and BN disagree. So did the state BN.

But they would not confront. The BN in Sabah, as in the centre, prove their loyalty to Umno in public displays of self-flagellation to remain on the team. But Umno chieftains, on the other hand, now refuse to. And behind the scenes, treachery and revolt lurks, which threatens to get out of hand.

But federal Umno decided for its selfish political power on a permanent Muslim-controlled Sabah to counter the dominant Roman Catholic-centred Kadazandusun political force. Since Sabah and Sarawak teamed up with Malaya to form Malaysia in 1963, the minority-Muslim constituency, with Kuala Lumpur's help, tried, so far with little success, to break it down. Federal Umno, in frustration, came into Sabah to re-order the political scene once and for all. All it did was to raise the shackles against it of Sabahans, not just the Kadazandusun. Especially now when the Mustapha redux in Musa Aman unites Sabahans of all persuasions against Umno.

Musa's corruption

So when the Internet website, Malaysia Today , focused its attention on Musa Aman, with a regular detailed look at his misdeeds with a wealth of detail which could only have come from those close to and around him, he did what all BN, especially Umno, politicians do when the political and public heat is on them: Keep quiet, work furiously behind the scenes to find who leaked the damaging information, suspect those around, step on unnecessary toes.

The exposes threaten not only Musa's, but Pak Lah's, credibility. The central core of the Malaysia Today expose is Musa's corruption of the state. Pak Lah's much-vaunted and touted crackdown on corruption has spluttered to an embarrassing halt. He arrested and charged two high profile men a cabinet minister and a businessman. His minister of law, Rais Yatim, said another 18 would follow. But this embarrassed Pak Lah. Various explanations were offered: it was not 18 individuals but 18 groups. But the anti-corruption campaign is no more. Bets are now taken that the two men would eventually be acquitted. What Musa has done, the expose concludes, is worse than all that.

The more so since the expose attracts to its website more evidence of corruption, the general cynicism towards the war on corruption, the rising anger towards Kuala Lumpur's attempt to re-order the state's politics in its faltering image. It is a matter of time before Musa Aman is sent packing. What should worry him is that the solid support he has from Pak Lah would disappear when it eats into Pak Lah's support base, as it now threatens. Since Pak Lah himself flounders aimlessly so he could be as strong as Musa believes he is, the unpalatable truth is that a chain is as strong as its weakest link: in federal Umno, it is Pak Lah; in Sabah Umno, Musa Aman.

When politicians order their official lives in deceit, foul play, arrogance, they can hang on to power so long as they can wield the whip. Dr Mahathir did until he could no longer. We know who caused that: the former deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim. Today's failing and falling Umno and, by extension, BN is traced to his political destruction in Umno. It defied feudal rules. The Malay community splintered. The rump behind Umno lost all reason and used the whip. But the whiplash can no longer keep them in line.

Islam vs Roman Catholicism

In Sabah, Umno tried a different tack. The Malay in Umno is in a miniscule minority. So it was Islam versus Roman Catholicism. Curiously, in Sabah, though many Kadazandusan politicians were Roman Catholics, religion did not intrude until Kuala Lumpur made it so. The opposition to Kuala Lumpur comes from all Sabahans, in BN, Umno, and opposition parties, united to expel Kuala Lumpur from its internal affairs. Musa Aman, with federal support, opposes this. He believes he is in absolute control, he awards contracts to his coterie and family on behalf of the state and Umno, without even discussing it with them. And ignores the opposition ranged against him.

He says the allegations are false. He has but one option now: lodge a police report and ask that it be investigated forthwith. Anti-corruption is the cornerstone of Pak Lah's political agenda. As Pak Lah should ask the anti-corruption agency to investigate Rais Yatim's claim that 18 individuals are on that list. If they are true, they must be charged; if not, he should sack Rais. He should also demand the ACA look into the allegations against Musa Aman.

Umno is in this mess in Sabah because it went there with ill-intent: to re-order the Umno electoral votes with the unusually high votes the state would have in an Umno election so its leaders coast home to power with ease. And, incidentally, to put the non-Muslim peoples of the state under its thumb. But when Umno splintered at the centre, it reflected in Sabah in a narrow chauvinistic form: to expel the outsiders. Which is the political concern of Sabahans now.

Sarawak barred Umno from power-sharing in the state, it stood out as a sore thumb in Sabah. Umno once controlled Sabah through its puppet, Mustapha. When he took that to mean he was now the puppeteer, it swept him out of office by switching its support to the Roman Catholic Kadazandusun from a distance.

But it is now puppeteer and puppet and beholden to the puppet's puppet. Umno cannot but continue to prop Musa Aman at any cost, and Sabahans gleefully snip off the confusing web of puppet strings. Umno's future in Sabah now rests on Musa Aman. One will pull the other down. But all that awaits Musa is a sudden catastrophic slide down the greasy pole.