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August 29th, 2008 by MM2H
Find Malaysia Today here at http://mt.harapanmalaysia.com to keep on hearing Raja Petra’s voice of the news in Malaysia.
In the west successful democracies thrive on 5 pillars:
- low poverty level
- high education level
- each voice can speak in their own newspaper
- transparency
- politicians, police and lawyers are 3 complete independent bodies
Of course the above 5 pillars are the ideal situation and we all know that ideals are not the same as reality…
Now when it comes to Malaysia, the newspapers are highly under pressure not to upset whoever needs to grant them their yearly license in order to keep in business. This is now and already was in place during the Mahathir reign.
Quite surprisingly, it’s Dr. Mahathir today who is today condemning the government for retracing its long-held promise not to censor the Internet, in this case Raja Petra’s ‘controversial’ blog. Surprisingly when it comes to freedom of press, not surprisingly as Dr. Mahathir was the architect of freedom of speech on the Internet.
One does wonder: why on the Internet and why not in the newspaper? Or is there a link between the Internet have’s and have not’s and their level of education and income in the democratic ideals we stated above?
So what’s so funny about all this?
As if a blogger who is raising his voice so loud and controversial as Raja Petra won’t have a backup to put online in less than 24 hours fully operational as if nothing happened.
I mean: if police breaks into his house and is ordered to confiscate Raja Petra’s scanner, then it is clear that whoever is ordering these IT repercussions is not fully aware of the velocity of countering an IT and especially an Internet attack.
Raja Petra does say things on his blog that are controversial, but for these sayings he already has some law-suits pending, so was it really needed to again let the police confiscate his computer and for somebody ordering ISP’s to block his website?
What’s not at all funny is that when you let people not voice their thoughts, one day there will be a voice screaming thoughts so loud like what is happening on Raja Petra’s blog.
It’s going to take much more effort to silence the extremely loud voice of Malaysia Today…
Posted in Malaysia Newspaper |
