"May you live in interesting times," is a Chinese saying often invoked by pundits holding forth on the subject of tantalising outcomes in Malaysian politics.

"Never a dull moment, eh?" is the likely rejoinder whenever coffeehouse chats revolve around the intriguing ways an impending political event may play out.

Both oracular saying and rejoinder serve to reinforce the view that as a parlour sport, few things beat Malaysian politics for topical value.

Don't believe the theory that the country, like the number of holidays it affords its work force, suffers from a surfeit of politics and voters are blase from by-election fatigue.

Initially, Sunday's poll for the vacant Bagan Pinang state seat looked decidedly unappetising in comparison with the majority of the eight by-elections that have been held since the stunning March 8, 2008 general election.

The seat is an Umno stronghold in a swath of the country that stayed fairly aloof from the opposition irruption that freed four state legislatures from BN's control and enhanced its standing in one.

Furthermore, the presence of over 4,000 postal voters in an electorate of 13,000 in Bagan Pinang made the initial prognoses less tantalising than the identity of the BN candidate (the allegiance of postal voters being as predictable as that of Malay voters, outside Kelantan state, before the 1999 general election when that block began a tilt to the opposition).

isa samad 061009 smile So Bagan Pinang was decidedly unexciting as a subject of parlor chat until, that is, Isa Samad was announced as the candidate after a prelude to nomination day whose orchestration was masterly.

Normally, Umno divisions nominate at least three candidates for elections. But the Telok Kemang division, in which Bagan Pinang is situated and which is headed by Isa, had only his name on the list.

No cracks developed in the unified stance for Isa put up by the division. It is as if his past misdemeanor for practicing 'money politics' (Umno's euphemism for corruption), for which he earned a six-year suspension - later slashed to three years - in 2004, did not matter at all.

Not even the fate that befell Umno's Rohaizat Othman whose shady past proved calamitous to the party's chances in the Permatang Pasir by-election in Penang in August had cautionary effects on the Telok Kemang division's support for their man.

In the end, a threat to boycott the election should Isa not be the Umno candidate - nobody has any doubt about who was behind the threat - must have swung matters in his favour despite the Umno rhetoric about wanting to clean up its act following a disastrous showing in March 2008 election.

The opposition Pakatan Rakyat preferred Isa to be the Umno candidate for the easy meat he would be on the score of corruption, regarded as BN's Achilles Heel.

Erosion of Khairy's influence

With four days to go to polling, the easy target's popularity is not much worse for the fire it has taken. Isa, menteri besar of the state from 1982 to 2004, continues to be popular, his tainted past notwithstanding.

batu talam by election 220107 khairy smile Does this make the Bagan Pinang poll horribly passé?

The word on the grapevine is that victory for either side would be bittersweet.

A win for Isa would almost certainly intensify internecine feuding with present Umno Menteri Besar Mohamad Hassan. Five of eight Umno divisions in the state support Isa for the position of MB.

Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin is Youth chief in Rembau, one of three divisions aligned to Hassan, a Khairy ally.

Isa's victory this Sunday would lead to erosion of Khairy's influence in Negeri Sembilan, just about the only support base Khairy enjoys after being unceremoniously excluded from Prime Minister Najib Razak's cabinet despite winning the high profile Umno Youth chief's post last March.

negeri sembilan state seat breakdown 300109 Although both Mohamad and Isa paraded unity on the goal of ensuring an Umno win at Sunday's poll, appearances can be deceptive. Isa's win will make Mohamad's tenure as MB more precarious than it already is.

As Khairy's ally, Mohamad was already on unsteady ground once Khairy's father-in-law, former prime minister Abdullah Badawi, was out of power and Najib was ushered in as replacement.

Although Isa's victory would end BN's run of losses in by-elections (they have won one out of the eight so far), it would also pave the way to a power struggle within Negeri Umno.

A Pyrrhic victory

This will redound to Pakatan Rakyat's advantage, a position that the DAP chief in Negeri, state assemblyman and parliamentarian Anthony Loke, is poised to exploit.

The industrious politician is increasingly seen as an effective representative and a force for change in Negeri politics. His rapport with PKR and PAS leaders in Negeri is the sort that commends him as someone who comprehends the larger picture.

Thus Isa's victory could be a Pyrrhic one: BN could lose the state in the next general election if internecine feuding in Umno veers out of control.

bagan pinang 061009 zulkefly omar On the other side of the electoral ledger, a Pakatan win by Zulkefly Omar ( left ) of PAS would strengthen the cards of hardliners in the party who see their third-place standing, on account of their fewer parliamentary seats (23 in comparison to PKR's 31 and DAP's 28), in the opposition alliance as unrepresentative of their actual influence on the ground.

There is little dispute that PAS has the better cadre network on the ground. Party stalwarts claim that both PKR and DAP have leveraged on this network to leap to their better standings in terms of parliamentary seats.

A PAS win in Bagan Pinang would embolden the Islamic party to push their claims for the right to stand under the Pakatan banner in constituencies where Malays are more than 60 percent of the electorate.

PKR would be hard put to cajole PAS into acquiescing to their claims to the same seats. This is a thorny issue, not amenable to easy resolution.

A PAS with more doctrinaire than liberal leaders in their ranks would not be a malleable interlocutor in matters hedged with ambiguity.

bagan pinang by-election nomination 031009 muhyiddin and isa If both a BN and a Pakatan victory are equally problematic, wither the interest of the rakyat who want genuine reform of Malaysian politics.

They must hope for a PAS win because the reverberations from a BN defeat would make inevitable a debate on the necessity of fielding morally untainted candidates, a question that will implications for the top leadership of Umno.

Umno must be hoping the Bagan Pinang contest ends in a draw, for victory for their man would be as unpalatable as defeat.