Cahaya's Rants

The government of Malaysia is at it again.  Malaysian Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz, said that the government is going to act on blogs that they consider are belittling Islam or the Yang di-Pertuan Agong.

Raja Petra Kamaruding, who runs the website Malaysia Today was questioned for eight hours yesterday following a report logded against him by the Information chief of the Malay dominated party, UMNO.

Malaysia Today has been on the spotlight recently because of exposés written by Raja Petra about certain high ranking politicians, and also the inflammatory comments posted by  readers of the site.

As a regular reader of the site, I find that Malaysia Today is rare in that it allows unmoderated comments, and regular participants know what regular posters are like.  Everyone is equally offended on the site, and no particular group is more offended than the others.

The comments/opinions/sentiments expressed on the site are genuine, and to pretend otherwise is to ignore the simmering frustrations that are felt by many people.  Even though the government prefers that such sentiments (against corruption, race preferences, limitations of religious liberties etc) are not expressed openly, for the sake of maintaining the appearance of racial and religious harmony, sooner or later something is going to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.  And by then, it could be too late, and God forbid, lead to another May 13 incident.

Malaysia can try to clamp down on bloggers or to shut down any dissenting voices, but with the existence of a  borderless internet, I don’t know how successful the government would be.  Just how many bloggers can they arrest or detain at any one time?  Just think of the image Malaysia will get if ever the government decides to act on their threat. A democratic, moderate Muslim country?  My foot!