THE most disturbing news of the week has to be Covid-19 returning with a vengeance. Sure, it never went away, but this looks to be the scariest wave of the pandemic yet.

The Health Ministry announced yesterday the disturbing news that we had 317 new confirmed cases, the highest number of infections since Malaysia became a casualty of the deadly virus.

Sabah and Kedah recorded the highest numbers yesterday, with 155 and 102 respectively.

The signs have been growing. New cases reported on Friday had already reached 287.

The bulk of them (128) were from the jail in Kedah identified as the Tembok cluster, while two new clusters were identified in Selangor, Seri Anggerik (eight cases) and Seri Setia (one case).

Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said Malaysia was probably experiencing a “new wave” as the number of cases continued to climb.

“If we look at the chart, we have an increase in cases lately. That probably is the beginning of a new wave,” he told a press conference on Thursday.

We seem to have gone back to the movement control order (MCO) period when we registered 190 cases on March 15.

Dr Noor didn’t mince his words when he tweeted on Thursday, “How about all stay at Home for awhile again?”, which hinted his frustration, and likely echoed that of the frontliners’.

He downplayed it later, explaining that it was merely an advisory, and suggested that Malaysians who need not be out and about should just stay at home.

Basically, if we need to leave the house, we should adhere to the standard operating procedures (SOPs) installed by the Health Ministry since Day One of the MCO in March, and the reason we have arrived at the recovery MCO stage.

Dr Noor’s tweet has snapped us out of our false sense of security, since alarming triple-digit figures have returned.

The number of new cases on Saturday was the highest registered ever in the country. During the first wave of Covid-19 cases in March and April, daily figures were below 260, although at that time, Malaysia’s testing capacity was below the current level.

Active cases yesterday reached 1,735, a level unseen since late April.

The number of Malaysians who found themselves infected while campaigning in the recent Sabah state elections has certainly set alarm bells ringing.

Last week, 35 teachers and 67 students were exposed to two SMK Pendamar Jaya female students who tested positive for Covid-19.

The girls and their family members had gone home to Sabah recently to attend a wedding, and a few of them tested positive for Covid-19 not long after returning to the peninsula. The family lives in Bukit Tinggi, which is close to Klang.

The school was not asked to close, with state health director Datuk Dr Sha’ari Ngadiman saying the infected students’ contact with other students was minimal.

He assured that necessary measures had been taken, but until the second tests are conducted on the teachers and students, parents, teachers and students will be on tenterhooks.

A different approach was taken in Penang. The school SK Per-matang Janggus, Penaga, was ordered to close from Thursday till Oct 8 after a teacher there tested positive for Covid-19.

Penang State Education Depart-ment director Abdul Rashid Abdul Samad said the closure order was issued to curb the virus’ spread.

“At the moment, the school will be closed for eight days and any other decision will be made after a meeting with the Ministry of Health (MOH),” he said.

So, two different approaches are being taken. The fear now is that more school children could be affected. It’s impossible for there to be zero infections because until a vaccine is found, we simply have to learn to live with this killer virus.

We must protect ourselves and stop being complacent, or even think it won’t affect us.

The consolation is that the authorities have now become more adept at dealing with the outbreak, and as Dr Noor has continually reminded, the onus is still on us to flatten the curve of the rate of infections by adhering to government guidelines.

But staring at us is the possibility of a general election being called within the first quarter of 2021.

Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin is facing enormous pressure to call for a general election. It isn’t only because Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim claims he has enough Members of Parliament with him.

There are Umno lawmakers, especially those not holding government posts or facing multiple charges in courts, pushing for snap polls, too.

Also, Sarawak is already preparing for the prospect of state elections, and time is running out since Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Abang Johari Abang Openg must call for polls by June 2021.

Talk is that the Federal Government wants him to hold the state polls simultaneously with the general election, and that can only mean by the first quarter of 2021.

As Anwar waits for an audience with the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, it’s very unlikely that the King will simply consent for him to be installed as PM.

He would need to consult the current PM, too, to be assured Muhyiddin still commands the majority, even if it’s wafer thin. The two likely options include either asking for Parliament to be dissolved or waiting for Dewan Rakyat to reconvene next month.

Dewan Rakyat will sit from Nov 2 to Dec 15, with the Budget to be tabled on Nov 6, and it’s almost a certainty that this will be an election budget.

Muhyiddin will surely take every opportunity to conjure populist measures that will help him win the elections, particularly continuing relief for Malaysians, what with the Covid-19 pandemic still raging.

Then, there’s the 12th Malaysian Plan, which will be tabled in Parliament in January – and that will again be used to mirror the manifesto of the present federal government as it takes the final lap before dissolving Parliament.

Until these two important matters are tabled and settled, it’s unlikely that the GE will be held next month or in December, because there are no signs the machinery has been activated.

These plans will surely help Muhyiddin be portrayed as a credible leader to lead the country and earn him the mandate he desperately needs.

The endless politicking and instability have come at a heavy cost to Malaysia.

Foreign investors will not pour money into Malaysia if they are unsure who the PM will be tomorrow.

The longer we wait for elections to be called, the worse it will be for all of us, so the scenario is looking like a double-edged sword.

The concern here is, if the general election is called, we will have a serious problem dealing with the potential of a spike in Covid-19 cases, like with Sabah following its recent campaign.

Last week, financial analyst Fitch Solutions revealed its prediction that politics in Malaysia is expected to blunt economic growth for the next decade.

Combined with slower population growth and reduced fiscal space to cushion against negative future economic shocks, Fitch predicts real GDP growth to be at just 3.4% over the next 10 years, compared to 6.4% over the past decade.

“Having exhausted avenues of growth provided by lower-level industrialisation, Malaysia has to upgrade its economy in order to escape the middle-income trap,” it said in a commentary.

Fitch Solutions said any effort to upgrade the Malaysian economy may be hampered by political uncertainty and stalling reform momentum amid a shift toward populism, which is likely to present serious risks to its success.

The endless politicking, the worsening Covid-19 situation and the continuing slide in business and economy are dogging Malaysia. So, the least we can do now is restore political stability.

THERE’S a Malay word to describe the current state of politics in Malaysia: meluat. It means disgusted, but the gravity of its meaning is best delivered through the original Malay word.

Ordinary Malaysians, who are struggling to pay their bills with their limited salaries, have no time for the intense politicking that’s unfolding.

Why should they care about power struggles, be it the front door, back door or revolving door varieties, when most workers are only worried about losing their jobs? After all, they may be shown the door by their bosses in these tough times.

As the moratorium for loan repayments comes to an end, the brunt of Covid-19’s impact on businesses will now be felt as relief aid comes to an end soon, too.

Small businesses, which can no longer keep their heads above water, will likely pack it in because higher operating costs can’t offset dwindling returns.

Concerns have been voiced about the downward trend causing insufficient funds for staff wages and other expenses.

Employers can no longer dig into their reserves to pay the bills since their clients are showing little sign of paying up. Cash flow is running dangerously low.

Businessmen and workers are counting how much money they have left and not how many members of Parliament can be secured for a power grab.

They are worried sick looking at the pile of letters from debtors, creditors and banks, not to mention the Inland Revenue Board.

Who gives a damn about valueless statutory declarations (SDs) signed by disreputable politicians?

These squabbling elected representatives are more concerned about their own positions and what benefits they can secure for themselves and their cronies instead of our wellbeing, the common folk.

It’s about chasing a government post, being chairman or director. If it’s none of the above, then it’s about securing a Tan Sri or Datuk title.

Have we heard any concrete ideas or proposals from our 222 lawmakers on how we should take Malaysia forward in the current situation? The silence is deafening.

Even the numerous webinars involving our businessmen have been mostly disappointing and self-serving affairs because they invariably degenerate into whining sessions with few valuable ideas. What’s worse is, most of the time, they end up just being sessions to promote products.

I’m glad the Sabah elections have come to an end, so that’s one to consign to the past.

But it’s incredulous that the same politicians who expressed their disgust at party hopping are also the ones who toppled the Barisan Nasional government in 2018, and then formed the Warisan-led state government via the defection of six Barisan assemblymen.

And there were even voters who cheered and supported these politicians who planned the frog jumping exercise.

Then, we have these Sabahan politicians from all sides, who spoke passionately about their state’s rights and how the Federal Government has not fulfilled its responsibilities.

But the trouble is, all of them were part of the ruling Federal Government for decades, all holding Cabinet positions. So what were they doing all along?

They had access to the Prime Ministers and attended Cabinet meetings, but now, Sabahans have all been short-changed.

So these self-serving politicians need to understand why we are fed up with their antics. Meluat lah.

Come elections, which have become more frequent of late, they will promise to serve us 25 hours a day and 400 days a year.

They will guarantee to always be accessible and never live in Kuala Lumpur. Sure, we believe them.

However, you won’t be able to reach them once they get elected. If you get hold of their assistants, consider yourself lucky. These MPs will likely have more phone numbers once they become Yang Berhormat.

One special number is for family, one for party and government bosses, one for party members, and the one that is always unused is exclusively for us.

If a newsman like me, who has the numbers of most Cabinet members, can still find it difficult to get them to return calls, then all the best to everybody else.

But some ministers have professed to receiving an average of between 800 and 1,000 texts a day, and that excludes the numerous chat groups they’re in, alluding to life being tedious because of this.

Some have even removed the blue ticks indicating a read message on their WhatsApp, or they could likely have just blocked us without us even knowing. Welcome to the technological age.

And some don’t even have the decency or courtesy to respond with “noted”, which is as non-committal as it gets. Perhaps it’s just poor social media etiquette.

Malaysians feel a sense of hopelessness over the current political impasse. We have a Prime Minister, whom most of us think is doing a good job of handling the Covid-19 situation and managing the economy the best he can.

However, his position is precarious because he has a wafer-thin majority.

That explains why he can’t haul up lawmakers who respond nonsensically in Parliament, take off on holidays and return unchecked, or even have fake qualifications.

He probably can’t distinguish between who supports him and who can’t wait to stick a knife in his back in this cloak and dagger scenario.

Umno is divided and it’s impossible to tell who’s speaking on the party’s behalf anymore. After all, two of its bosses are fighting multiple court battles.

Then we have Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, who claims he has the numbers but has yet to cite his support. This isn’t the first time he has pulled this stunt.

The best way to fend off this cynicism and protect his reputation is to name the lawmakers, or better, line up all the MPs behind him.

The King can’t be expected to grant an audience to politicians claiming to have support to be PM every other month, and then go through the process of verifying all the SDs by speaking to each of the MPs.

His Majesty didn’t meet with Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who had also said he had the numbers. I don’t think Anwar is going to get the meeting with the King either.

But what could really impact the PM is that if some Umno MPs renege their support, because then his majority would be further affected, and that seems to be the pressure being applied by Umno to call for a snap general election.

Anwar may not have the necessary numbers, but it can decrease the weight on the PM’s bench.

Anwar’s supporters, however, are insistent that this time, it’s not a stunt and that he truly has adequate support. After all, never say never, because politics is the art of making the impossible possible.

The only hurdle is that if indeed he is walking the talk, it’s still unlikely that Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin will hand the reigns over to him on a silver platter.

So, in all probability, the only resolution is to have a general election after the Budget in November and the tabling of the Malaysia Plan.

Time is running out because the Sarawak state elections must be held before June 2021, and talk is that it will be held by November or December, though it will most likely be in January.

Let’s have the general and Sarawak state elections in one go instead of having them separately. Get it all done by the first half of 2021.

A snap election will cost taxpayers a whopping RM1.2bil because of Covid-19 standard operating procedures, unlike the 2018 elections which cost less than half of that at RM500mil.

And naturally, we will also need to think of the spike in the number of Covid-19 infections, as is happening in Sabah now.

Politicians can talk about the figures they claim they have, but none of this is going to benefit us. Well, those of us, the “marhaen”, who place bets with gaming outlets, can at least win some prize money gambling with numbers.

In a world gone bonkers, espionage takes precedence in topping the competition. Just look at the US and China today.

IF you grew up reading MAD, the classic American humour magazine, you’ll be familiar with the segment “Spy vs. Spy”, which features two agents, who in their desperation to outdo each other in the name of espionage, end up being a pair of comedians.

In the comic strip, the characters are drawn apart by their all-black and all-white attire, but they are virtually the same, typified by their bird-like heads.

They’re always at war and despite their colours, both are certified villains. There’s no black and white here, just grey matter for one’s own interpretation.

The original MAD magazine, which started in 1952, ended in 2018, though an online presence remains.

And to throw context into all of this, in recent weeks, Malaysia has unwittingly found itself in the world news as US and Chinese spies cross swords. The rivals have accused each other of spying games.

We’d be gullible to believe that only the Chinese – in the purported guise of being academics, diplomats and scientists – are involved in such cloak-and-dagger activities.

Yesterday, the South China Morning Post reported that Beijing has claimed that US Air Force had used fake identities – at least in 100 times this year – putting civilian airlines at risk.

The Americans, Russians and the British have been immersed in intelligence work for decades in formalised institutions such as the CIA, KGB and MI6. And of course, there’s Mossad, the Israeli spy network.

The rest of the world has certainly been shaken and stirred by them on many occasions.

They all do intelligence gathering, covert operations and counter terrorism. In Russia, political opponents even get poisoned. Of course, no one will admit to it.

It’s common knowledge now how North Koreans spies came to Malaysia to kill Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of Kim Jong-il, the powerful leader of the country.

The agents poisoned him in 2017 and disappeared from our shores without being caught. It was a clean job in the world of espionage, where the bottom line is escaping capture.

Certainly, hacking and using more capable geeks has become routine for all intelligence networks, including those operating under the police.

Last week, the US Justice Department announced charges against five Chinese nationals and two Malaysians from Sitiawan, Perak.

They have been accused of running global hacking operations for at least six years to steal identities and video game technology, plant ransomware, and spy on Hong Kong activists.

It was reported that three of the Chinese suspects operated out of Chengdu 404, a Sichuan-based company that supposedly offers network security services for businesses.

They hacked the computers of hundreds of companies and organisations around the world to collect identities, hijack systems for ransom, and remotely use thousands of computers to mine cryptocurrency like bitcoin.

Two other Chinese nationals who formerly worked for Chengdu 404, and the two Malaysians, were indicted for hacking into major gaming companies to steal their secrets and “gaming artifacts” – likely tradable in-game chits and credits – and reselling them.

Together, the seven were long recognised by cybersecurity experts as the “APT41” hacking organisation, identified by their shared tools and techniques, according to media reports. While some suspect the group could be run by the Chinese government, the indictments don’t suggest a strong official connection.

It was widely reported that a Chinese company with links to Beijing’s military and intelligence networks has been amassing a vast repository of detailed personal information on thousands of Australians, including prominent and influential figures.

It is said a database of 2.4 million people has been leaked from the Shenzhen company Zhenhua Data, which is supposedly used by China’s intelligence service, the Ministry of State Security. Apparently, the People’s Liberation Army and the Chinese Communist Party are among its clients, too.

Interestingly, it was also reported on Sept 10 that a US airforce aircraft had electronically impersonated a Malaysian plane while flying over the South China Sea.

The RC-135W Rivet Joint reconnaissance aircraft flew off China’s Hainan island on Tuesday, coming within 55 miles of the Chinese mainland.

But the caper was exposed on Twitter by a think tank operated by the Chinese government, which provided enough details for independent verification.

The Twitter account of the South China Sea Probing Initiative shared a pair of screenshots revealing an RC-135W taking off from Kadena Air Base, a US Air Force base on the island of Okinawa. The plane flew south-west, following the Ryukyu islands chain past Taiwan, and loitered off the coast of Hainan.

Conveniently, none of the US and international media picked up on this news, which attests to the US and its allies being more adept at managing the media.

The Chinese are now seen as the bad guys and the only reason Hollywood hasn’t lumped them together with the Russians, Albanians, Arabs and Afghans, is that Tinsel Town knows it can’t afford to paint the Chinese as the enemy if it still wants to rake it in at the Chinese box office. The Western media knows how to use major languages such as English, French and Spanish in a more polished and subtle manner in conveying their messages. However, China, epitomised by its hawkish “Wolf Warrior” diplomats, has been using words that seem out of place in the modern world. So the republic continues sounding crude, assertive and leaves a pungent taste, especially when translated into English.

“Spy vs. Spy” isn’t just about planting booby traps but also about winning the hearts and minds of the international community, especially the young.

The Chinese, even with their wealth, don’t have think tanks such as those in the US, which have funded many groups in the name of promoting democracy and human rights, even if in truth, it is essentially to serve the interest of the US. At least, these think tanks are not known to those in the English-speaking world.

China’s Foreign Ministry hasn’t set up fellowships for young opinion shapers to take sabbaticals and study at their prestigious universities. Certainly, the country can’t rely on Global Times and Xinhua because their nationalistic tone won’t draw much international attraction. At least China Daily and the China Global Television Network have much greater appeal, where both have also hired foreign staff. Likewise, the Falun Gong-backed Epoch Times is just as bad as the pro-China nationalistic media.

But US spy involvement in China has existed for decades, even as far back as in the 1950s, during the time of the late Chiang Kai Shek under the Kuomintang.

There are plenty of declassified US documents, books and reports of CIA involvement in China, and this information is easily found online.

Hong Kong is an example where US involvement is suspected. There are many pictures of Westerners conducting training or openly taking part in its street protests.

None of them have been arrested or charged in courts, so it remains unclear and unproven.

It would be odd if there are no CIA agents based in Hong Kong because they will be safer there than in mainland China.

Last month, the South China Morning Post reported that for over five years, Kong Tsung-gan was a name that turned up regularly as a Hong Kong protest activist and writer quoted frequently by foreign media.

“Now, the revelation that ‘Kong’ is in fact a pen name of possibly an American named Brian Kern has ignited debate over the legitimacy of using a pseudonym in Hong Kong’s highly charged political environment.

“The controversy was sparked recently by an American alternative news website that accused Kern of adopting a fictitious identity as an ethnic Chinese grassroots activist as a ‘deceptive ploy’ to ‘disseminate anti-China propaganda’.”

“Kong” later responded to the article by admitting he had been using a pen name all along, though he didn’t confirm his true identity. His defenders claim he had to operate incognito for his own safety. He had 32,000 followers on Twitter, with a photograph of a Chinese man accompanying his anti-government tweets. “Kong Tsung-gan” has appeared in reports on Hong Kong by CNN, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Agence France-Presse and The Guardian, among others.

In the run-up to the US presidential elections, the world can expect to read more of such Chinese espionage. But upping the ante negatively is how ethnic Chinese of other nationalities will also invariably get dragged through the mud.

It may not even end after the polls because US-China rivalry will continue, and even with a change in president, the stance will remain.

This time, the US has drawn in its Western allies and Asian partners to be on its side. The last thing the world needs is for China to start lining up its allies.

One thing’s for sure, China needs to be more persuasive in its narrative.

No one wants to take sides in this conflict, which began as a trade dispute but is now in danger of becoming a Cold War, which is a term used to describe a state of hostility, propaganda and threats. Does the world need another?