About 10,000 people gathered at the PAS headquarters for two nights in a row last week as a fallout from the general election that saw the governing Barisan Nasional (BN) returned to office with its best result since 1955.

The euphoria ignored the more serious hurt in the Malay hinterland that something is amiss, the general election flawed, the Malay divide all but irreversible. The parliamentary constituencies are delineated after every second general election. In practice the Election Commission's (EC) role in it is to swing votes towards the governing coalition.

The opposition parties accept this for no other reason than that they can do little about it. But when the advantage is supplemented with other questionable practices, and the Malay ground realises with a shock all is not well, hell would break loose, as now.

Possession is nine-tenths of the law. So the newly anointed prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, ignores how he came to power. He has refused to be drawn into this controversy, insisting he has better things to do. But can he walk away from it since his legitimacy as Malaysia's leader would in the end depend on it? He thinks he can.