When Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad chose Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, or Pak Lah as he known informally, to be deputy prime minister to replace the sacked Anwar Ibrahim, it was his prerogative. If Mahathir really decides to relinquish his premiership mid-term, it is also his prerogative.

If and when Mahathir does quit, Pak Lah will resume the premiership as a matter of course, since he is the next senior Umno party leader.

He had assumed the post of deputy president of Umno without an election, but courtesy of Mahathir. Soon he will be assuming the presidency without an election too, again courtesy of Mahathir through his mid-term resignation.

Election for the top party posts in Umno is deemed counter-productive, as it may cause severe conflicts which the fragile state of the party cannot endure. That fragility seems conveniently a prolonged affair.

Now Nash Rahman reports o­n the intrigues in the thought process of Pak Lah's selection of his deputy. Mahathir had earlier made known his preference, but then, that was not his prerogative. It is Pak Lah's.

When Pak Lah finally exercises his prerogative, it would probably singe the other unselected aspirants. In order to avoid a decisive election, chances are the deputy president post will also not be contested at the next party election.

Soon Umno (and the country) will then be led by two top officials whose qualifications for the respective posts rest very much o­n the prerogatives of the outgoing incumbent. Upward mobility at the pinnacle of Umno is now dependent o­n o­ne's acceptability to the incumbent rather than the pronounced choice of the grassroots through a secret ballot.

Not many of us would be surprised if this eventually becomes the practice rather than the exception.

Further, thanks to the creeping autocracy nurtured by Mahathir, the combined de facto power of the top two easily exceeds that of the rest of the leadership structure combined.

I guess that's why Nash's report was o­n the second-guessing of Pak Lah's mind rather than an articulation of the aspirations and expectations of the party membership. It is no wonder that Umno is losing touch with the Malay grassroots. Where it matters most, they don't really count.