To read is to know ....

I find it funny that the new Minister Of Information is proposing to meet Internet bloggers. Is this an admission that finally the authorities are recognising the fact that bloggers have a huge influence on how people voted in the last general election which saw the ruling party BN losing its two-third majority in Parliament and 5 states in Malaysia when, before the election, the authorities were quick to condemn whatever written in the blogs as nothing but lies and rumours. I doubt Ahmad Shabery Cheek, the new Minister, can achieve anything when and if he discusses with THE bloggers.

[And by the way, what kind of a name is Ahmad Shabery Cheek. Is it Ahmad bin Shabery Cheek or Ahmad Shabery bin Cheek ? Either way, Shabery Cheek doesn't sound Malay to me while Sabri Chik or Shabri Chik/Cik sound okey. Should I pronounce shabery as shaberay and cheek as a stretched chik. The other popular name that is more English than Malay is Tengku Razaleigh, when it should be Tengku Razali. The Tengku's father must have been influenced by the Rayleigh bicycle of yesteryears when naming his son.]

After going through several blogsites in the past few years, my feeling is that there's never any intention by the bloggers to influence their readers to go against the goverment. What the bloggers write is about injustice, corruption, rising crime rate, and many ills in the country. The bloggers have no intention of toppling the government or of criticising its policies, especially the NEP policy. What they can't stand is the abuse perpetrated by the people in power. The bloggers write about certain bigwigs of making use of their position to enrich themselves, of certain departments failure to enforce the laws and so on. Most of the criticisms by the bloggers are directed at individuals or groups of individuals, never at policies. Some blogs such as Malaysia-Today dare name names and support its criticisms with evidence.

What the Minister should do is to read the blogs first. Then set up a blog or several blogs to counter the bloggers' criticisms, preferably by a show of statistics and evidence. By all means, condemn the blogger if he makes wild allegations in his blog and then show  him the truth or what really goes in. In this way, neutrals like me will believe what the Minister says, not what the blogger says. By the same token, if the blogger really exposes the truth, then the Minister should admit any wrongs and promise to investigate. Remember, for every one blogger, there are thousands of readers, if not millions. Just after the elections, some websites were so inundated with millions of readers that the websites crashed.

Death of a scientist ...

Today, I read about the death of Arthur C. Clarke at the age of 90. Clarke is a scientist but is better known as a science-fiction writer. It was he who proposed the use of satellites in global communication way back in 1947. He believed that by putting 3 satellites in geostationary orbits located some 22,000 miles above the earth and at 120 degrees  apart communication can cover the whole earth. This brilliant idea was not taken up by any government since at that time rocket science, let alone orbital science, was in the trial-and-error stage. Whatever knowhow on rocket science available was from the German rocket scientists captured by the Americans and Russians in World War II.

Clarke did not patent the idea because he did not expect rocket science to advance at such an astonishing pace and he reckoned that putting satellites in space could not be  achieved in his lifetime. Had he been business minded as say, Bill Gates, he would now be a billionaire earning incomes from royalty. Instead, like Captain Nemo of Jules Verne, he chose to live as a recluse in Sri Lanka, writing sciece-fictions. His friend and fellow science-fiction writer, Isaac Asimov, died of AIDS sometime in the mid 80's at the age of 72.

Now they know ...

In this blog, I usually don't write anything about local politics. But the events in Malaysia from 9th March 2008, the day when the Malaysian general election results were out, can't help me but make comments on the political situation of the country. The Barisan National (BN) coalition of 3 major parties and a few smaller ones, did not get their two-third majority for the first time in several decades. To the BN people, not getting the two third was a "defeat" though they won overwhelmingly short of 8 Parliamentary seats for the two-third majority. The opposition believed that they were "victorious" by winning slightly more than the one-third number of P seats. The opposition felt victorious because they garnered 81 P seats when they expected only to improve over the last election in 2004, and to top all that, they have won 5 states in the states election. This was a "victory" beyond their wildest dreams.

The BN people "lost" because they were unable to read the people's mood. The millions of neutrals that supported neither the BN nor the opposition simply got fed up of the antics of the BN ministers and representatives - arrogance, lacking transparency (everything was a secret and confidential when asked), acquiring riches by illegal means, inability to curb crimes, corruption and many, many moral crimes - that they voted for any candidate as long as its not a BN candidate. There is a guy I know that he would that time vote for a monkey if it stood for an opposition. Such was the mood of most neutrals prior to the election.

The fact that the opposition won 82 seats from 2004 of 20 seats was not due to the opposition powerful influence nor the personalities of their leaders, such as Anwar Ibrahim or Lim Kit Siang, on the neutrals. Their effects were minimal. The big impact on the neutrals change of stance was due to the Internet where news of what actually went on in the country , especially on BN's representative's immoral and illegal behaviours, were reported in the blogs such as Malaysia-Today, MalaysiaKini, and many, many others. The neutrals believed that the mainstream media such as the NST, Star, Utusan Malaysia, were no longer reliable in disseminating factual news. They only reported what's good for the BN government to hear. The BN leadership, like in the fairy tale on the Emperor's new clothes, believed in the newspapers that glorified the leadership which invariably condemned news reported in the blogs as nothing but lies and rumours.

And now they know ...

And now its becoming interesting ! And the latest news is that Tengku Razaleigh, a former Finance Minister of Malaysia, intends to challenge the current PM of Malaysia for the presidency of UMNO and if he wins he would become the next PM of Malaysia. Razaleigh admits that, being 71, he's old but still good for many years in politics. Some 21 years ago, he challenged for the presidency and lost. Since then he has been in limbo in the political history of Malaysia. He feels that now is the time to heal UMNO after the unprecedented "loss" of the Party in the 08/03/08 general election. It would be more interesting if Musa Hitam, an ex-Deputy PM joins in to challenge for the presidency for a 3 - cornered fight. 

I wonder what goes on in Abdullah Badawi's mind at this time. He has lost the confidence of the Rakyat as shown in the latest election results. On forming the new government, he has been given a polite show of support, but is immediately faced with resignations of some party leaders, and is now facing challenges to his party presidency post by a political veteran. He knows he's not as smart a PM as his predecessors. He has been condemned by most bloggers in the Internet as a weakling who can't tackle issues by the horns and a dimwit who relies on his young advisors to make decisions. He has incurred the wrath of his predecessor by not following up with projects previously implemented. He is incapable of making spontaneous and intelligent answers to questions when on TV, unlike his predecessor, Dr. Mahathir. In all, he has made a mess of his term as the PM since 2004. He got the people's mandate when BN won by a record number of seats in 2004 election. He thought by calling an early election when there were still 15 months to go, he could do what John Major (a former PM of Britain) did to his cabinet by the "put up or shut up" stance.

He's now thinking that if he resigns now or in a few months times, his deputy Najib Razak will take over as the PM, which means that Khairy Jamaluddin (the ambitious and smart son-in law of the PM) will never be a PM someday. There's never a love lost between the two. Najib will have his own men in the cabinet and in the party. Najib is intelligent, just as his father was, Abdul Razak, former PM of Malaysia; he speaks well and appears at ease when on TV. So, Pak Lah (as the PM is popularly referred to) is in a state of quandry as to what to do.

So the next best thing for the PM to do is to ride it out during the next few months until the party elections, sometime in August 2008. His challenger needs 58 votes from the division leaders of the party to qualify as a candidate for the presidency. The challenger can easily muster more than this minimum number of votes because  he has the respect of the party, being a veteran and a Prince of Kelantan, and someone who has held some important ministerial posts during the Mahathir, Hussein Onn, and Razak years. The PM knows that he will be defeated in the elections and will retire in good grace. At least he will say that it was democracy in process.

But if the PM remains stubborn and carries on his style of administration the same way he did in the last 4 years, the Anwar factor comes in to make UMNO no longer relevant. Anwar could easily persuade (if they are already not persuaded) those BN Members of Parliament in Sabah and Sarawak to defect to Anwar's PKR party and all he needs is 30 seats to garner a slim majority of one seat. Anwar will form the next government called the Barisan Rakyat, whatever, and be installed as the Prime Minister of Malaysia. BN will break up and UMNO becomes irrelevant. Pak Lah will then be seen as the person who destroys UMNO when he could avoid the destruction.

In order to avoid a probable debacle of BN and especially UMNO, Pak Lah would rather face the election and, if defeated for the presidency, will at least see BN and UMNO preserved for some time and may even become stronger under the new leadership. He will at least retire in Perth and in Kepala Bu.. oops Batas and enjoy travelling with his new wife in his favourite boat.

And at last he knows ....