Umno's annual general assembly began today and it attempts to do the near impossible: To seize the cultural high ground. Without it, its political power dissipates.

MCA finds life in Umno's shadow, beckons mass suicide when its leaders act to please the Umno president than the community they represent.

Gerakan, a party which exists to be the state government in Penang, is sandwiched between its own irrelevance and maniacal pressures from a bleeding Umno and MCA.

The Sarawak Barisan Nasional is discomfited at peninsular parties encroaching on its turf. Umno, through a local satrap, and DAP, PAS, Keadilan all venture into Sarawak as the state assembly elections approach. In Sabah, Umno went in, only to be trapped by unattainable ambition.

The 13 parties in the Barisan Nasional (BN) are frustrated by an unalloyed belief in its invincibility. Indeed, MIC is the only party that keeps its sanity, but it is also its weakest.

BN believes the northen peninsular states are vulnerable to PAS, the central and southern states to PAS and Keadilan, that it hopes to retain power with Johor, Sarawak and Sabah. In other words, it sees the prosperity of power slipping from its hands.

Second fiddle

Umno is shaken to its roots because when it decided, after the May 13 racial riots, and in a virtual coup d'etat , that a multiracial Malaysia must play second fiddle to Malay dominance (it bought Malay sympathy with its New Economic Policy{NEP}), it did not expect it to haunt it three decades on.

The Anwar revolt was possible only because he and his acolytes, NEP beneficiaries all, disapproved of the riches and benefits accrued to favourites in the court, and not to those who deserved them. But this was ignored with Malay dominance left to its own devices as the dominant interest became wealth at any cost. Until it exploded in Umno's face.

Indeed, Anwar Ibrahim is but a catalyst who converted those myriad frustrations into open anger. Wealth creation without an overriding plan is dangerous to the nation's well being.

Umno reacted in anger, its leaders not knowing where to turn when the un-nurtured Malay dominance, and the ruling oligarchy was challenged. It thought it could control it by cutting off its head, but like the Hydra, another took its place.

Umno and Malay Dominance were forced to retreat. And with it a way of life, in which Umno decided how Malaysians would live and non-Malay cabinet ministers lost their say in policy making.

Uncle Toms

The non-Malay parties in BN implied a multiracial government, but they were content to remain in Umno's shadow, unwilling to confront when their communities' interests were abrogated or sidelined.

Their leaders gave up the ghost, stayed on too long at the helm for the benefits they, not their communities, got, and became Uncle Toms.

Umno determined the agenda and all, including the opposition, followed it. But when the Malays rebelled, when Anwar was dismissed and humiliated, it was for reasons far removed from Malay dominance.

It was cultural, but when the short-changed nouveau Malay, educated and standing on his own feet, revolted at the crony culture Mahathir espoused, Malay dominance was in mortal danger.

Independently, another revolution, this from denial of opportunities, happened without the Malays aware of it. The Chinese, sidelined by the New Economic Policy, cemented their cultural roots firmly to the Malaysian ground, and challenged the Malay world view of them.

The Suqui episode, in retrospect, is as important as the Anwar affair in confronting Umno and Malay dominance. Umno realises in impotent rage that the Chinese businessmen would no more underwrite Malay dominance as happily as they once did.

When Umno's raison d'etre is on the run, BN unscrambles. But Umno hopes forlornly that if it changes, what it, not the Malay community, thinks it should, all is well. It would not.

Umno and its coalition partners, think in political terms, but the communities they represent, culturally. The chasm widens, as it now appears, inalienably. What went wrong?

Malay dominance was to teach the Chinese a lesson for the May 13 riots following the Penang hartal over the removal of English as an official language and to create rich Malays who could take on, and over, Chinese businesses.

It was the revolt of the Malay aristocracy who disagreed with the patrician world view of Malaysia's founding father, Tunku Abdul Rahman. As British public office records show, there is more to the riots of May 1969 than we are told.

Billionaires or millionaires?

A contentious discussion at that time was if the government should create hundreds of millionaires from whom a few billionaires would emerge, or a few billionaires under whom an entrepreneurial class of millionaires would emerge.

Tun Razak and the majority believed in the first option, and Mahathir and his backers which then included former deputy prime minister, Musa Hitam, the second.

When Mahathir became prime minister in 1981, he switched course, putting his minority view into practice, creating instant billionaires, many collapsing soon enough by the wayside. Nature abhors a vacuum, and Daim Zainuddin with a foot in the Cabinet and in business, took full advantage to build a corporate empire.

But Malay dominance was ignored with Dr Mahathir believing wealth creates its own resonance.

It does not. Mahathir insisted upon wealth creation for its own sake, not on the fruits of labour but on greed, gambling and as commission agents, and ignoring the other facets of governance. But he stayed on too long, his policies induced potent enemies from amongst those who benefitted.

His success spawned an arrogance that spread downwards to the village level. Politics suffered. Corruption flourished. Arrogance became a fact of life. He created a hybrid society of Malays languishing in a half-way house between his culture and Valhalla.

When money is the raison d'etre for governance, as in Malaysia it is, corruption flourishes. This is protected by laws that make it all but impossible to charge a corrupt politician or official in court, unless the authorities want to.

They would when the man is opposed to whoever is in power. But that only adds to the divide between the rulers and the ruled.

Nation or tribes?

What complicates it is how a country in 1957 ripe for a united nation is now an agglomeration of tribes and tribal loyalties. It was on course in 1969 when the racial riots hijacked it.

Malay dominance presumed the non-Malay parties would accept it. But it forgot that besides the Chinese, there are other races equally frustrated at the practical and political implications of that policy.

Indeed they are more organised against it than Umno is for it. And tribes do grow to demand their fair share. The BN succeeded because they had no Malay rivals who could challenge or unseat Umno.

Now it has not one but two. Malay dominance is attacked from within, and Umno is tethered to it as the Malay cultural typhoon puts it in fear of being swamped. The challenge comes not only from the Chinese, but the native tribes of Sabah and Sarawak which are more threatening than the Chinese ever could.

This cultural dissonance cuts into every member of the BN. If Umno cannot reinforce Malay dominance with Malay support, it can write itself off. And so the BN too.

The time has come for the Independence generation to make way for its children, but it still clings on to power. That is at the root of Umno's lemming-like rush to self-destruct.