"Power is not a means; it is an end.”

- George Orwell, 1984

COMMENT | Kadir Jasin is right when he says that the prime minister’s continuing obsession about declaring an emergency makes him look weak. Not only does it make him look weak, it also is further evidence that a fractured Malay uber alles government is an unstable proposition and any time political operatives make pacts with traitors, the end result is a weakening of the Malay political establishment.

When Umno that has a pedigree of autocratic rule distances itself from such a gambit, you know that the current prime minister is scraping the bottom of the political barrel. What exactly does the PN hope to achieve with the emergency rule?

Forget about the political ramifications of such a move. What this would mean is that the state security apparatus then takes centre stage in enforcing diktats from the state. Does the PN government understand what this means or does the PN state assume that emergency rule would not disrupt the normality of the economic and social life of this country?

As I have detailed in numerous pieces about the state security apparatus, what we are dealing with is an organism composed of fiefdoms aligned with various political power structures whose loyalty is more often not to the state but rather various power groups inside and outside the government.

How do you think the PN state which has demonstrated that it could not...