A great reminder to us all.

Several months back, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi admitted that his biggest mistake in losing a third of parliamentary seats to the opposition in the March 8 poll was to ignore the power of the Internet to mount an effective election campaign.

“We certainly lost the Internet war, the cyber-war,” Abdullah said after the administration Barisan Nasional coalition suffered its worst-ever results that left five states and a third of parliamentary seats in opposition hands.

“It was a serious misjudgement. We made the biggest mistake in thinking that it was not important. We thought that the newspapers, the print media, the television was supposed to be important, but the young people were looking at SMS and blogs,” he said.

Was the opposition’s win in the March poll an acknowledgement that the new media is reshaping politics in Malaysia?

According to Arun Mahizhnan, deputy director of the Singapore Institute of Policy Studies, a confluence of factors led to the BN’s unprecedented loss in the March polls, which was helped along by the intense cyber-campaigning of the opposition.

Ahirudin and Jeff Ooi

“It was more because of corruption, disaffection among the population in general particularly because of the way politics is played in Malaysia,” Mahizhnan said during a media conference in Manila.

“Now without the Internet, would the majority coalition have lost so badly in the elections? The answer is no because although they would have lost some of the seats in parliament and some of the states, it would not have been as bad if the people were not so well-informed.”

Mahizhnan said the main opposition party, the Democratic Action Party (DAP), used Web sites and blogs to give a different account of political goings-on in the runup to the March 8 polls, particularly during the 13-day campaign period.

He said these reports were then passed on through word of mouth and text messages to the middle and low-income groups in the rural Malay heartland who are used to getting their news from major dailies controlled by the ruling coalition.

He said the “Internet readiness” of the Malay, English and Mandarin languages also allowed the opposition to reach out to their audience and get more votes.

He said that while Singapore has several laws on proper Internet use, Malaysia does not have a similar law. “Of course, anything that is done in the Internet is not above the existing laws such as the Printing Presses and Publications Act (PPPA), Internal Security Act (ISA) and the Official Secrets Act and Sedition Act,” he said.

He said what is interesting in Malaysia is that mainstream media are almost entirely controlled by the majority while the alternative and new media are being used widely by the opposition.

Dr. Sankaran Ramanathan of Mediaplus Consultancy

According to Dr. Sankaran Ramanathan of Mediaplus Consultancy, traditional media in Malaysia are still in a state of shock over the DAP’s surprising win in the March poll. “The mainstream media seem to be in a state of shock. They don’t know what to do. The government can’t shut down the blogs because the blogs haven’t done anything wrong,” he told abs-cbnNEWS.com.

He said that to counter the DAP’s online campaign, the ruling coalition is also putting up Web sites that are only being ignored.

He said that in the past, alternative media was always ignored because broadband penetration rate in Malaysia was still very low. A 2006 survey by Universal McCann, however, showed an uptick in Internet use by Malaysians. The study showed 18 percent of Malaysian respondents logged on to the Internet for more than six hours a day and 41 percent for between one to three hours daily. The study also showed that blogging, podcasting, gaming and social networking on the Internet were gaining strength as well.

He said Web sites such as Malaysiakini, the only Malaysian online newspaper structured along the lines of traditional newspaper, built up credibility and an audience over the years.

“The alternative media has built up a reputation of credibility especially among the young voters. They are not fools. They are weighing what traditional and alternate media are saying and have discovered that what alternative media are saying is true. Truth is the only measure that matters in media and the alternative media came out tops in terms of truth and objectivity,” he said.

He said the opening of Web sites by the traditional media shows that there is now a paradigm shift happening in the Malaysian media landscape. He said some blogs and online publications are beginning to worry Malaysian authorities enough for them to call for a review of the existing policy of non-regulation of the Internet and impose more controls on the content.

Recently, editor Raja Petra Kamarudin was charged with publishing a seditious article in the news portal Malaysia Today on April 25, 2008. This made Raja, 58, to became the first blogger to be charged under the Sedition Act. Instead of posting bail, Raja labeled the charges as a form of “political persecution” after the BN lost heavily in the election.

Ramanathan said Raja’s case has evoked much interest especially after the Bar Council of Malaysia called on authorities to withdraw the charges against Raja.

He said that despite the recent events, there are encouraging signs that the public sphere in Malaysia is expanding and allowing for greater participatory democracy. He said there is now more open discussion of sensitive issues in both traditional and the new media as newly-elected officials promised more transparency and accountability.

“It is my hope that these developments will usher in a new era in state-media relations, one that results in a more libertarian climate for the existence and operation of media in Malaysia,” he said.

By DAVID DIZON
abs-cbnNEWS.com

Source: http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/storypage.aspx?StoryId=125612