Does anybody know what time it is? It's a line from a song, fondly recalled as it was widely used among school chums to parody our other mates who never seemed to know what was going o­n around them at any time of the day - except their self-importance.

Same with Umno's chieftains, and their cohorts in the ruling Barisan Nasional, especially in their latest outburst caused by The Economist's articles o­n Malaysia, published o­n April 5. Malaysia's political elite thinks these articles to be outrageously slanderous and critical.

Old script

From the din arose, the 'rebuttal' - seemingly a new Malaysian buzzword - which often amounts merely to hysteria. Responses are always laced with the usual banalities: from the tedious flogging the old dead-horse of odious neo-nationalist drivel, which has become the centrepiece of Malaysian foreign policy, to the paradox of delusions of grandeur, carved simultaneously through denial of serious problems and posturing itself as a political economy "model" of sorts. It's an old and preposterous script which has long heralded the nonsense of Asian values.

Example: Under the auspices of the Malaysian government, and in the name of providing balanced reporting o­n the war in Iraq, a small team of reporters was despatched to the Middle East to counter the Western media's pro-war slant. Funnily, from the bylines, the team arrived in Baghdad o­nly when the war was almost over, when Iraqi sniper fire had fled so like Saddam Hussein did much earlier.

Not o­nce did any field reporting cover the "war"; those reports were filed from safe havens like Jordan, and mostly sourced from the wire-services. The team's subsequent reports, from Baghdad, mostly featured the war traumas suffered by Iraqi civilians. Fair enough. But these were hardly balanced, and hardly novel. Indeed, Western media were already filing such reports. And they were far better written.

Then came the Sars crisis. Incredibly, or maybe not, the BN government had miserably failed to forge a coordinated effort at containing, monitoring and providing honest public information of the disease's spread in Malaysia. It stumbled, and stumbled again. At first it did exactly what the Chinese government had done - deny Sars's virulence by covering it up. Then it came clean, but still the government fumbles: the Health Ministry puts out contradictory information - and spin. In this, reminiscent of the Asian crisis, the government again resembled a dismembered body.

Remarkably, though, the BN government succeeded in cobbling together a rant-and-bleat sycophancy over The Economist's articles. Equally striking is their bellyaching verbosity - which, curiously, emerged more than three weeks after the articles were published. Had the political elite been asleep until then? Admittedly Sars has kept them busy. So, too, the economy, which is again tottering, and not helped by Sars. Thing is, the Iraq war could never have, and hasn't had, the negative impact o­n the Malaysian economy than Sars will. But the economy's problems pre-date Sars.

BN protagonists woke from their slumber upon realising Dr Mahathir Mohamad's return within days from yet another of his taxpayer-funded international junkets. Some holiday: Mahathir was in and out of the country and making political speeches. The value of these junkets hasn't been detailed for public knowledge or enquiry. And the opposition parties have remained hopelessly silent o­n this. All the same, the BNers wanted to impress their master. After all, they're jockeying for key positions in the post-Mahathir cabinet, knowing the No 2 position is still wide open - and probably to Mahathir's influence.

Political loyalties

Mahathir wants defence minister Najib Razak, son of Malaysia's second prime minister, installed as Umno's No 2 and so the deputy premier. Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Mahathir's replacement in October, is ignoring his boss. No prizes for guessing the next government will be desperately divided over political loyalties within Umno. Still, rather than make effective contributions to the nation through constructive, responsible and accountable policies, the jockeys chose to whisk their bogey from their closets and, as ever, whip up a frothing frenzy against a yet another Western conspiracy to bring Malaysia to its knees.

The intellectual depth of Malaysia's politicians is stunning. Take Syed Hamid Albar, the foreign minister, who said The Economist had its own agenda. He wants the magazine banned in Malaysia. Umno Puteri's Azalina Othman wants The Economist's Kuala Lumpur office closed down. The journal doesn't have an office in Malaysia, but to Umno that's beside the point. Azalina says nobody has the right to criticise a democratically-elected government in Malaysia. That includes Malaysians. It's okay for the likes of Mahathir to condemn anyone they choose, but when the government is criticised they become hysterical.

Badawi has been paddling the same boat, as has Najib. Both want writer Christopher Lockwood and The Economist to apologise. Others, like the Malaysian Chinese Association's Fong Chan O­nn, also want the magazine to apologise. Deputy Information Minister Zainuddin Maidin, interlocutor extraordinaire, isn't worried about the journal's criticisms. He says its credibility has already been damaged for having conspired with the American media to legitimise the United States-led war against Iraq. Zainuddin would believe his own spiel.

Saving the best for last: the Malaysian Indian Congress's Samy Vellu, who, true to form, wants The Economist to pay financial compensation. O­nly Vellu can come up with gems like this. Perhaps he and Zainuddin could share the limelight with Iraq's former information minister, the ace of clowns, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf. Incredibly the People's Progressive Party's M Kayveas hasn't added his two bob's worth so far, after all the canard he's been unleashing lately. The Economist's Lockwood says he won't apologise. He shouldn't.

From the Malaysian 'rebuttals' it seems clear - frighteningly - that none have directly countered every criticism Lockwood made in his survey. The denials appear centred o­n Lockwood saying the best thing Mahathir can do for Malaysia is to retire - period. Nothing new, of course. And he's right. But the calls come late; the damage's done. Take democracy: it died ignominiously in 1969. Autocratic Malay rule replaced it. Mahathir institutionalised this, which the covetous Umno rightwingers, particularly Mahathir's cadres in the Youth Wing, have strenuously protected and promoted. The material prize of possessing political power in Malaysia is far too great a temptation to pass.

Fair analysis

Lockwood's analysis is fair, even if in parts he gets a few details wrong. But these are minor, and forgivable, against a solid examination of what Malaysia has achieved, has not, could achieve and may not. None of the articles can be read separately, given the inextricable mix of Malaysia's heady racialist socio-political and patronage-driven economic policies. But the bellicose rebuttals seem focused o­n just two of the nine articles - 'The changing of the guard' and 'A qualified success'. Hardly fair to the writer, but so like Malaysia's politicians. Which raises the question if any of them had read all nine pieces, or just two; whether they had merely glanced over the two, or if they were o­nly briefed by their minders. Wager: the latter three.

Read carefully: amid the criticisms Lockwood also praises Malaysia, the government, even Mahathir and Badawi, for some of the economic successes. But "success" requires definition and context, given the previous hocus-pocus by free-market economists championing the rise of the Asian economic 'miracles', and lest the misguided think their return in Asia is imminent. None were miracles; none will come back, not even for Malaysia. Those days are pass. The excesses under Mahathir over the last 22 years, and especially since 1991, have made sure of that.

Even the post-crisis reforms, for the most part, and Danaharta's and Danamodal's successes, are measured - by half, if that. The devil should have been in the details. So far both live separate lives. The banking, financial institutions and insurance sectors' consolidation will be severely tested when they are opened to further global liberalisation and competition in the next two years. So will the automobile sector. Already the government is putting up serious limits to the coming competition at a time when foreign (and domestic) investments are rapidly falling and the economy isn't adding value, with a startling over-dependence o­n the long-suffering manufacturing sector.

Danaharta's former boss, Azman Yahya, says Malaysia's stock of non-performing corporate debt is down from 20 percent to 8 percent. Maybe. Again, the proof is in the pudding, but the pudding hasn't been dished out for independent scrutiny. The government wants people to take its word as gospel. After 33 years of the New Economic Policy, and 22 years of a Mahathir regime, with the glare of a multitude of emergent problems, the people know better.

Lockwood expresses such questioning through his "ifs and buts" metaphor. And why not? The Malaysian government isn't renowned for accountability nor transparency. Which is o­ne reason why foreign direct investment has stayed away from Malaysia in droves, and even 'hot money' (finance capital) won't touch Malaysia with a barge pole. Malaysia still carries far too many risks, including o­ngoing government bailout of cronies, the tendering of major projects which remain opaque and shrouded in secrecy.

No apology

Lessons haven't been learnt. Malaysia still wants to pick 'winners' in the way successive South Korean governments had since the 1960s. But look where picking winners has left them: bedevilled by cronyism and corruption and economies that are stagnating. Reforming the family-controlled chaebol in South Korea is possibly 30 percent to 40 percent more advanced than is the case in Malaysia. But there's disorder in the house, and so suffer the economy.

Lockwood and The Economist have nothing to apologise for. Not o­ne red cent should be paid in compensation to mealy-mouthed Malaysian politicians. If these politicians had o­nly bothered to closely read the survey pages, they would have found that Lockwood had also acknowledged some 24 people in Malaysia for discussions o­n the state of Malaysia's economic and socio-political life in 2003.

Included in the list are the DAP's Lim Kit Siang; Tan Siok Choo of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank run by Noordin Sopiee, a Mahathir loyalist, speech-writer and adviser; Khairy Jamaluddin and Ahmad Zaki Zahid, both from Badawi's office; Malaysian academics, intellectuals and corporate heads.

Lockwood gleaned information from these people, and from other sources, mulled it over, and wrote what is a splendid analysis that's as near the mark as most analysts o­n Malaysia have been stating for years. More than Malaysia's own mainstream media, corporate heads, most academics, and the conceited politicians in the coalition government would dare to admit. Truth gets sucked into a giant Malaysian government vacuum-cleaner, emitting o­nly a stench of untruths and half-truths and intellectual canard.

New ideas are disallowed. Progress is thus framed, restricted. Vision 2020 stays an empty shell, save for the hubris. And for all of Mahathir's rant, nation building is among his major failures. It was not a priority over his neo-(Malay) nationalist cant. Mahathir was always the reactionary, not the visionary. Talk is cheap, especially behind a hedonistic charisma, backed by authoritarian institutions, both of which have repeatedly duped the masses and frightened them into submission to state power and its excesses.

Beneath the glitter of Mahathir's tall towers, long bridges, sweeping highways, the wireless-ness of the Multimedia Super Corridor and his fairyland in Putrajaya lies very possibly the Mahathir creation of ersatz capitalism. It's riddled with political patronage and corruption. It's filled with rent-seekers, pariah entrepreneurs, client or proxy capitalists and big-time speculators - the very people whose excesses, supported by the Mahathir regime, brought the economy to its knees in 1997, the price for which Malaysians will pay dearly for many more years.

Some old rent-seekers like Halim Saad and Tajudin Ramli - former finance minister Daim Zainuddin's protgs and avid Mahathir's loyalists - may have gone, but in their place step a thousand more Halims and Tajudins. New cronies will mix with the old cronies.

As long as the vast crony machinery in the BN government remains unreformed, starting with the feudalistic Umno, neither will Malaysia's economy nor polity. Policies won't change if the faces in government don't and new ideas are barred. Clearly, the BN government has lost its way. It has no credible policies. And mindless rebuttals won't make up for their delusion of grandeur. Simple as that.

MANJIT BHATIA is managing director of AsiaRisk - a political and economic research and risk analysis consultancy in Australia. The writer specialises in international economics and politics and the Asia Pacific region.