Dr Mahathir Mohamad wants to know how Barisan Nasional lost in the Lunas by-election. As if he did not know what happened to the whole country after the Anwar Ibrahim debacle!

He did not want the flunkeys, toadies and sycophants in his own party to tell him what he did not like to hear. He made Anwar an excellent example of what would happen to anyone daring to do so. So, he heard nothing.

To strengthen his debilitated government, he fabricated a huge propaganda machine that engulfed the country's entire broadcast and press media and the media functionaries, and knowing which side their bread is buttered on, these institutions even went beyond what their Great Leader expected them to do, at various times, making unwholesome news disappear into thin air. After all, to them, their career bounty and corrupting gifts count for more than courage, moral sense and religious principles. In pursuing a campaign to misguide the masses, they ultimately misguided their Great Leader as well.

Don't expect the Great Leader to study the opposition views and news, where it is grudgingly allowed, for to him they are one and all transmitters of the fitnah virus and should be avoided like the plague. After all, an all-knowing leader doesn't need anyone to tell him what he has to do, or ought to do, especially since in all things Malaysians are told that "Malaysia (homologous to Mahathir) Boleh! "

Now that the liars, the disrupters of public peace, the despoilers of the Malaysian economy, the rupturers of Malay unity, the destroyers of ethnic harmony and whatever else, have put another one of their representatives in the state assembly of Kedah, the Great Leader must be dumbfounded and thinking what madness must have assailed the electorate for them to do such an unimaginable and absurd thing.

The Great Leader or his party does not have to carry out a comprehensive study or survey of how and why such a thing happened. After all, all his minions, to save their skin, would respond in the same manner as they had before - in fact, because of the debacle, more so.

All he or they need do is just read Sabri Zain's diary note of April 20, 1999 which succinctly encapsulated how the Great Leader and the Great Country lost their way:

"Greatness that provided the people with abundance left their souls in want. Greed poisoned men's souls, muting them to servile submission and blinding them to ruthless cruelty.

"The rot set in and the Great Leader gradually dismantled, piece by piece, day by day, the basic principles of justice, freedom and democracy, and replaced it with a system that owed allegiance to the Great Leader and the Great Leader alone. And the Great Leader seduced the people and held complete power.

"All forms of democratic opposition and dissent were swept away. They used the secret terror police to shame, suppress, blackmail and terrorise all criticism of the Great Leader. They vilified or banned books or newspapers they disliked. They bred a contempt for democracy, a hatred for free expression and they scorned independent thought. And they bred a rabid devotion to the Great Country and a blind loyalty to the Great Leader.

"And they built a propaganda monster that swallowed whole the independent media and threw up endless images of the greatness and power and success of the Great Country, and the greatness and power and wisdom of the Great Leader.

"And the Great Leader screamed and shouted that the Great Enemy was all around the Great Country and inside the Great Country...

"And the Great Leader made the good judges weak and the good laws impotent, the bad judges strong and the evil laws stronger. And around the Great Leader gathered sycophants, flunkeys and toadies - men without courage, men without conscience - but full of praise, awe and loyalty to none but the Great Leader. And the rich and the greedy gathered around the Great Leader and praised his strength and lauded his wisdom as their snouts plunged into the ever-flowing trough of prosperity.

"And dissent does not flourish on prosperity. And the Great Leader appealed to the people's baser instincts - insatiable greed, arrogant pride - and he used their weaknesses, their fears, their insecurities. And he was successful only because the people were willing to be used, willing to be led."

Therein lies the rot and, for a Great Leader attributed with great wisdom, therein he could also find the solution. Blinkered by its own ballyhoo, Umno could not see where its disintegration lies and so spend much time, effort and money to amend its Constitution as if that is the cause of its downfall and the way to its salvation.

Men with courage, men with principles and men with conscience there are, but they are no longer in Umno. They have shown, in the case of Lunas, that with their courage, the people will be on their side and the winners will be not just them, but the people and the nation, especially when the reformasi movement gathers momentum and the support snowballs.