NO HOLDS BARRED
Raja Petra Kamarudin
Bernama has declared the Internet as Malaysia's political battlefield (you can read the article below). Finally, the government has awoken to this reality. It has taken the government sixteen years to realise what I had pointed out way back in 1995.
My first website in 1995 was called ‘Raja Petra’s Homepage’. In this website I published my articles, many of them uncomplimentary to the government and Anwar Ibrahim -- who was then the Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia.
One article that was published in both Harakah and on my website was about the possibility of Anwar Ibrahim being killed off by Dr Mahathir Mohamad. And I wrote this a couple of years before it actually happened in 1998.
I gave my reasons as to why I said that. Basically, it was because of the people surrounding him (hmm...come to think of it, this has not changed much). I explained that the people surrounding Anwar were getting impatient and they wanted him to take over as Prime Minister immediately.
The problem with this, though, is that Dr Mahathir was still Prime Minister and to do that Anwar would have to oust the old man.
Knowing Dr Mahathir, if you go for his jugular he would turn the hunter into the hunted and hang you upside down by your balls. And, true enough, a couple of years later when Anwar made his move, Dr Mahathir finished him off.
That, amongst the many articles I wrote, was what I said 15 years or so ago back in the days when Anwar was still part of the system and touted as Dr Mahathir’s anointed successor.
Two weeks after I launched Malaysia Today in 2004, the BBC interviewed me about my future plans -- seeing that Anwar is now free from jail and he would no longer need a Director of the Free Anwar Campaign. This was on 2nd September 2004, the day Anwar was released from jail.
I told the BCC that it took six long years to free Anwar from jail. And in the fight to free Anwar we launched the Free Anwar Campaign and a website called www.freeanwar.com to conduct an Internet campaign. Now that Anwar is free, I told the BBC, we are launching a Free Malaysia Campaign, which may take longer than six years to see results.
And that is what Malaysia Today is all about, a Free Malaysia Campaign.
“What is the Free Malaysia Campaign?” the BBC asked. My response to that was the Free Malaysia Campaign is a campaign to teach Malaysians how to think, teach Malaysians not to accept just any crap from the government, teach Malaysians to oppose, teach Malaysians to dissent, teach Malaysians to question, and much more.
And we will use Malaysia Today as the platform to teach Malaysians all this, I told the BBC.
In 2007, the government said that the Internet is not a threat. People use the Internet for entertainment and to purchase cheap airline tickets, said the Minister of Information.
After the 2008 general election, the government admitted that they had underestimated the power of the Internet. They also announced that anyone who wants to contest the next election must first have their own website or Blog. If you are not Internet-savvy you will not get selected to contest the elections.
Just to digress a bit, Pakatan Rakyat has been the state government for more than three years and the next general election will soon be upon us. However, Selangor is yet to complete its state-wide free wireless Internet project.
Penang has made better progress although there are still some parts of the state where the free wireless Internet is still unavailable. But at least Penang is far ahead of Selangor. In view of the pervasive influence of the Internet, why is the Selangor government yet to show results in its state-wide free wireless Internet project? Are there moles from within who are deliberately sabotaging the project so that the state can go back to UMNO?
I am worried that Pakatan Rakyat Selangor may face a tough election so we need every little bit of help we can get. And the Internet would be the best and most powerful weapon we can use. Even Umno admits this. So why are we still sleeping?
Let’s be clear about one thing. Selangor is the jewel in the crown. And if Selangor falls into Umno’s hands you are NEVER going to get it back again. NEVER! So you better protect Selangor. And one way would be to exploit the Internet to the fullest.
Anyway, I must admit that there are some good pro-government or pro-Umno sites. Some of those postings are even published here in Malaysia Today. But the majority of pro-government or pro-Umno sites are pure crap. All they do is spit and curse (ludah dan maki-hamun).
I myself am the target of much of this spitting and cursing. They don’t know how to respond to what we say so they respond by cursing. That is the best and only thing they can do.
That is the problem the government faces. While we in the opposition are doing this for the love of the cause, those government-employed ‘Bloggers’ are doing it for money. They are being paid to counter what the opposition Bloggers are saying.
Many opposition Bloggers are very intelligent, highly educated, well-read, articulate, and so on. The government-paid Bloggers, however, are mostly unemployed people.
These people may have gone to school, maybe even to university. But they are not good enough to get a job. No one will employ them even as dogcatchers. So the government employs these unemployed and unemployable people as Umno Cyber Troopers.
And that is why they lack class and quality. You can see from their postings that many of them are Malays. And this makes sense because Malay graduates face a problem of getting employment -- mainly because of the poor quality education they have received.
Talk to some of the PhD graduates and see what I mean. In our days, in the 1960s, a form five or MCE student was of a higher standard than some of today’s PhD graduates. Some of the so-called Doctors and Professors sound so stupid I sometimes wonder whether they got their degree from the back of a Cornflakes box.
And these are the people employed by the government and Umno to fight against us opposition Bloggers. But they are no match for us. It is like taking candy from a baby. It is so easy that I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
If they want to fight us they need to employ people with brains, not unemployed and unemployable Malays. You need to fight brains with brains. You can’t fight against brains by mere spitting and cursing like what the Umno Cyber Troopers are doing.
Let’s face it, we are winning the Cyber War. And the next general election is going to prove this, like it was proven in March 2008 during the last general election.
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Internet, the Malaysian political "battlefield"
(Bernama) -- It has undoubtedly become the Malaysian political “battlefield”. The Internet, of course.
Almost everyone is using the web to disseminate political information. Has the situation gone out of control? Well, some media observers think so.
“There is no way one can censor the flow of information, either on Twitter, Facebook or YouTube,” said MCA central committee member Ti Lian Ker.
Messages can be conveyed to readers around the world at the click of the computer mouse, and there is no control over content, he said.
“This is definitely a cause for worry for most of the regulators and the government as the identity of the users and message senders can be concealed,” he added.
Ti felt that many of the problems associated with the Internet have not been properly handled.
Said Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas) senior lecturer Dr Jeniri Amir: “The move by the government to tighten control over the traditional media has prompted more people to pursue the so-called ‘truth’ online, enabling the minor online media to dominate public opinion.”
He said that even the Barisan Nasional (BN) has appointed some bloggers to balance the one-sided voice on the Internet but added that this has not been as effective as desired because the arguments of the group against the authorities are more appealing.
“Also, the online attackers of the government seem to be a more concerted group that works for the opposition parties, harping on specific issues, truths or untruths aside,” he told Bernama.
This, he said, raised an alarm because the trend was for some of the young Internet users to just blindly accept and believe what they read online, thus making it difficult to put forward a rational and civilised debate.
The “battlefield” has extended even to the Malay voters in the villages who, despite not being Internet-literate, are easily kept informed by their IT-savvy children of what is going on online, including all sorts of rumours, half truths and even made-up stories tarnishing the government’s image.
Jeniri cited the July 9 illegal rally in Kuala Lumpur as a case in point.
“Stories and visuals of ordinary citizens participating in the rally have been spread widely as heroic deeds while mocking video clips have been posted on YouTube. These have proven to be a great challenge for the BN,” he said.
He said that while the Internet can be a tool to disseminate information, the majority of Malaysians still needed to learn how to use the web properly, particularly in relation to conveying political messages as there was a need for rational discussion and balanced viewpoints.
“If some netizens continue to distort the concept of democracy, the authorities will not listen to their abusive remarks while mature voters will also reject them after some time, upon realising that they are already so horrible before they have even come to power,” he said.
The Internet “battlefield” can also lead and mislead, he pointed out, saying that given the vast amount of information, many still opt to simply follow the herd whenever they fail to distinguish right from wrong.
“Like having got lost in an ocean, they can only trail others in the hope that they can eventually reach land or, at least, not feel lonely in their swim to shore. This shows that there is a lack of independent judgment and thinking,” he said, adding that many mistake information for knowledge.
Some politicians argue that many people still blindly accept whatever is put up on the Internet without giving much thought, and they regard it as the truth and share the information with their peers.
As Kota Belud MP Abdul Rahman Dahlan said, the “truth” becomes increasingly intense, and people gradually find it difficult to accommodate other views and approaches and cannot tolerate any grey areas.
“In this age of information, people must train themselves to think and analyse before actually accepting the information presented to them.
“Before we fully believe it, we must raise some doubts, thoroughly identify the nature of the message and, if possible, verify it,” he said.
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