From the Democracies Online-Asia list
----- Original Message -----
From: Bala Pillai <bala@apic.net>
To: <do-asia@yahoogroups.com>
> Dear DOers,
>
> The inner machinations of intra-party politics that spills into stifling
> Online Democracy and strategic moves towards greater common sense.
>
> cheers../bala
> Bala Pillai
> http://www.ryze.com/go/bala
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: [sangkancil] [MGG] The Malaysiakini Affair: Winning enemies and
> angering friends
> Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2003 08:41:39 +0800 (MYT)
> From: M G G Pillai <pillai@mgg.pc.my>
>
> NO ONE IS SURPRISED ABOUT the Malaysiakini affair. It was a
> matter of time before someone in government lost his head,
> ordered a crackdown, as it did on 20 January 2003, and without
> considering its impact elsewhere. The Non-Aligned Summit is due
> next month, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference summit at
> year end. The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, is in
> Egypt and Lebanon on an official visit. Malaysia's stock
> overseas, despite the belief of the Malaysian cabinet that it
> could not be better, is at an all time low, and worsens because
> there is no attempt to mend fences. Burning the house down to
> catch a mouse is standard practice. The raid on Malaysiakini
> offices only affirms it. But it is only the latest in a series
> of officially-inspired mishaps.
>
> What it did not expect was the worldwide condemnation and
> anger at this ill-thought out attempt to shut down the Internet
> newspaper not for what it contains -- much of what it carries is
> what a newspaper should carry as a matter of course, but they do
> not, but it does, and therefore one to be targetted -- for its
> refusal to conform. It looks at the news neutrally, and takes a
> position, which because it is not as the government wants it, is
> made the target. But the hamfisted attempt to shut it down by
> force on political pressure backfired. The government is faced
> with more than mud on its face when it can least afford it. But
> this is what happens when a government believes only it has the
> answers, would not allow another to have an alternate view, and
> is frightened when some one has. To the problems it acquired in
> mishandling the Anwar Ibrahim affair must be added the
> mishandling of the Malaysiakini affair.
>
> Police raided the Malaysiakini offices in Kuala Lumpur,
> seized its computers and servers, harrassed its staff and
> reporters, effectively shutting it down, as it acted promptly on
> an UMNO youth report to it of a letter in the Internet newspaper
> which compared the fate of the Orang Asli (aborigines) with the
> Red Indian in the United States. This is sedition, UMNO Youth
> declared, and the police acted unaccustomedly fast. Whether it
> is sedition or not is for the Attorney-General to decide, not the
> police, and it exceeded its brief when it seized the computers to
> find out who Petrof is who wrote the offending letter. Since the
> editors would not give it, seized the computers to find out for
> themselves. There was no need for that. But it did, for it was
> as important to make it impossible for Malaysiakini to survive as
> it was to find out who Petrof is.
>
> There is more. The raid could not have been possible
> without the consent of the deputy prime minister and home
> minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. Dr Mahathir, one
> must assume, was informed. But the two men work at cross
> purposes that one cannot be sure. Dr Mahathir would not take
> steps as stupid as this if only for not wanting to create
> problems for his reputation before he leaves this year. But one
> cannot remove the suspicion that the prime minister-to-be
> acquiesced to this plan to shut down an irritant, without
> realising the larger implications of the action. In this, even
> the question of whether Malaysiakini survives or not is
> irrelevant.
>
> For Malaysiakini has become yet another pawn in this battle
> for the Malay heartland and UMNO. It is important for whoever is
> in power not to have even a mild questioning of its actions.
> Dato' Seri Abdullah is not only insecure in his perch, for he can
> be challenged for the UMNO presidency, but he also does not have
> the political credentials to hold the fort as firmly as Dr
> Mahathir can and could. What makes its so worrisome is that all
> this is done without a clear plan but is done piece-meal, with
> each of the individual parts not in consonance with the whole.
> It is this that is more dangerous for all of us than the
> infractions to Malaysia's promised intent not to censor the
> Internet. The Multimedia Super Corridor, whatever its promise
> under the Mahathir years, is one casualty, not for the
> Malaysiakini affair or attempts to rein in Internet publications,
> but because of an official disinterest in its development, in the
> post-Mahathir epoch, now that its promoter is about to retire.
>
> It is real politik more than any conscious desire to censor
> the Internet that led to this. It backfired. More than that, it
> is a warning that the new prime minister is not wedded to such
> concepts, as freedom of the press, or the right of the citizen to
> take a stand that is not the government's. That UMNO Youth
> should have lodged a police report when it could as well replied
> to the letter and started a debate about it is proof yet of
> UMNO's desire to stifle all dissent. Then, on the other hand,
> UMNO Youth could have been subborned to do what it did, and did,
> for it does not believe in a free debate of issues either. And,
> in the context of Malaysian politics, what it did was only to be
> expected. But, it is also marginalised, in the larger Malay
> debate. And tries to return to the centre by dangerous and
> ill-advised agent provacateur actions as this.
>
> But it also opened a can of worms. The worldwide reaction
> of horror and anger is, in part, the belief that Malaysia, for
> all its commitment to President Bush's war on terror, is
> nevertheless a superficial democratic state that hides an
> autocratic, even racial, state within. This attack on
> Malaysiakini, done for a narrow political vendetta, and others
> like it, in various degrees, merely shows how undemocratic the
> government can be and is. When the government accuses one of
> anti-national leanings, one is forbidden now, in law, to move the
> courts for redress. If the government says one is communist,
> then one is, even if one is not. It is in this context of the
> gradual erosion of liberties and democratic space of the citizen,
> that the Malaysiakini affair should be viewed. It would require
> more than assurances that the government means well when it
> cracked down on Malaysiakini. Especially when this idea of
> engaging its critics, local and foreign, is alien and anathema to
> its beliefs.
>
> [This is my column in Seruan Keadilan, the official organ of the
> Parti Keadilan Nasional, and appeared in its latest edition, out
> today, 28 January 2003]
>
> M.G.G. Pillai
> pillai@mgg.pc.my
>
>