I was too young to be a communist or a 'fellow traveler'. I am only 38 years old.

When I was born in 1962 into a rather petit-bourgeois family in Ipoh which operated a coffee shop, the anti-communist Emergency (1948-1960) had already officially ended for more than two years.

But my late father was still very cautious. Although he was then a non-believer and a 'soft' left, he sent me to a Chinese Catholic primary school in 1969 to make sure that I would be 'white' and not 'red'.

He also sent my younger brother to the same school which was the SRJK (Cina) Sam Tet. My sisters, both the elder and the younger, were enrolled into the Chinese Catholic Ava Maria and the Methodist Girls' School (MGS) respectively.

I grew up in a rather 'white' environment until I went to Australia for matriculation and then enrolled into the Monash University. I turned 'pink' because of the fact that in 1983, the Australia Labour Party (ALP) returned to federal power under Bob Hawke.

If I am 'red', I am only as 'red' as Bob Hawke, Paul Keating or Tony Blair.

'Our' bastards

I wrote about real communism, communist movements in Malaya and Indonesia, and the communist governments in Cuba, Chile and China only as a leisurely student of history and political science.

The purpose is clear for the clear-minded: to help Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mahathir and his generation speed up their mental journey out of the Cold War which ended more than 10 years ago beginning with market reform in China in 1978 after the death of the 'Great' Chairman Mao, the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the disintegration and implosion of the former Soviet Union in 1991.

And the government of Malaysia had also signed a peace agreement with Communist Party of Malaya in 1989. There is therefore no more communist threat - in or out.

But the disappearance of a great threat also poses a great problem or dilemma to the Cold War warriors like Mahathir - where and how to find or (re)invent new external or internal threats to justify the many unjustifiable policies, laws, measures and actions.

For in those Cold War years (1947-1991), leaders like Marcos or Suharto had only to cite "potential or imminent communist threats" to obtain Western support for their corrupt regimes. To the West, Marcos, Suharto and their likes in Asia, Africa and Latin America were certainly "bastards" but they were "our bastards".

'Bak kut teh' in Kelantan

Now, the West just wants everything to be 'back to normal'. It is called 'peace dividend'.

Why not try resurrecting the bogey of the Iranian Revolution (the 1979 Edition) with the 'Radical Mad Mullahs'? Well, this won't be very effective either. And why not?

It is because even in Iran, conditions and situations have progressed and improved under President Khatami, just as China had started to progress and improve in the post-Cultural Revolution era. The standard psywar images of Red Guards and Revolutionary Students are no more. And Americans are befriending Iranians openly now.

Here in Malaysia, the 'Talibans' in Kelantan and Terengganu have not only proven to the non-Muslims, especially the Chinese, that in their Islamic states their cultures, religions and languages are genuinely respected without fanfare, but also that their vernacular schools are assisted financially by the state governments with cash and land.

It is no propaganda. Thousands of Chinese and non-Muslims, organised by local community organisations have flocked quietly into Kelantan and Terengganu after the 1999 general elections, to see for themselves with their own eyes the largest statue of a reclining Buddha in Southeast Asia in Tumpat, or to enjoy bak kut teh.

Many of them who were well organised even met Tok Guru Nik Aziz who impressed them with a sincere, honest, caring and upright image of a good old gentleman.

Great Threat

PAS' partner in BA, Keadilan, won in Lunas with over 60 percent Chinese support. They, in Lunas, are not very worried about an Islamic state anymore.

In Lunas, many Chinese heard with their own ears Islamic scholars and leaders from PAS citing holy verses condemning racial discrimination. They heard too that in Islam, all languages, including Mandarin, are gifts of God the Almighty to mankind.

Thus, the end of the Cold War is nightmarish to Umno and Dr Mahathir. In the absence of a new Great Threat, they have to be Quixotic in order not to feel bored or irrelevant. It is psychological.

JAMES WONG WING ON, a former MP for Kampar, studied in the Chinese Catholic schools SMJK (Cina) and SMK Sam Tet, Ipoh, and later read economics and political science at the Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He now writes a weekly personal column on Western and Islamic topics in a Chinese-language newspaper. All views expressed in this article are his own.