Never has the battle lines being more distinct than this current elections campaign in Malaysia.
Unlike the U.S. presidential elections this year where all candidates have equal access to old media and new media alike, Malaysian politicians are easily recognizable by the media they use.
The ruling party controls old media – newspapers, television stations and radio stations. During an election campaign, journalists’ fairness is conveniently set aside to follow the dictates of the ruling incumbents. Challengers are given scant and mostly negative coverage. If you are a first-time visitor to this country, you probably assume Malaysia is an authoritarian regime.
With hardly any access to the traditional media, the challengers, the People’s Front (Barisan Rakyat), turned to internet and cyberspace. E-mails, YouTube, forums, SMS, blogs are the media of necessity. One of the components of the People’s Front, PAS (Islamic Party), has an internet television channel.
With an internet penetration of just under 20%, these challengers relish on the challenge. Videos, slide-shows, articles, news are downloaded, burned onto VCD’s and DVD’s and subsequently distributed in the old-fashioned way.
Jeff Ooi, a member of the opposition Democratic Action Party, aspires to be the first blogger to be elected to the Malaysian Parliament.
Another newcomer,
Gwo-Burne Loh from the People’s Justice Party, set up his blog site days before campaigning began. Within days, his traffic shot to the thousands when his volunteers filled his site with articles, news, rebuttals, video clips and slide-shows.
Loh is the man responsible for recording the infamous VK Lingam video. Because of his video clip, a Royal Commission of Inquiry was set up to look into allegations of corruption within Malaysia’s judiciary.
“I try to provide materials for Malaysian voters to make an informed choice. These information will never see the light of day in the incumbents-controlled media” said one of Loh’s volunteer.
“Authorities routinely reject our applications to hold political rallies in public places. Incumbents have no such problem – they used public facilities as if these are part of their own backyard” complained another of Loh’s volunteer.The incumbents, flushed with resources, also embraced cyberspace. Though not lacking in technology and money, they were heavily outnumbered and outmaneuvered by the hordes of young volunteers with their fresh ideas and enthusiasm, spurred on by the ideals of bringing change to a divided Malaysia.
The elections results should be out in the early hours of March 9. Incumbents may rue their sluggishness and their failure to heed the warnings from this article of three years ago.
LINKS
PAS - http://www.parti-pas.org
JeffOoi – http://www.jeffooi.com
Gwo-Burne Loh – http://lohgwoburne.blogspot.com
This article of three years ago - http://www.seecrets.biz/main/content/view/26/2/
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