Cyberspace is now the new frontline
by Lee Siew Lian, NST.
ON Saturday night, as he flew over the Indian subcontinent, a Malaysia Airlines pilot asked for the regular update on weather conditions at home. What he received from Malaysian air traffic control included unexpected news — that three states had swung to the opposition.
So great was the demand for news of the results that online news portals such as Malaysiakini and the new Malaysian Insider, were overwhelmed and crashed on Saturday night.
A bit player in the 2004 elections, the Internet in Malaysia came of age with the 12th general election.
While the Barisan Nasional was retained in government, it saw its worst result since 1969.
It failed to retake Kelantan, and lost Kedah, Penang, Perak and Selangor, which fell to a ragtag alliance of opposition parties.
Indeed, retired BN leader Datuk Seri Dr Lim Keng Yaik on Monday acknowledged that BN’s opponents had skilfully exploited the Internet.
"The opposition used the blogs to reach the voters," said the retired Gerakan president and former energy, water and communications minister, referring to web-logs or online journals.
This is what Gerakan, which was almost completely routed, must master to win back the electorate, Lim said.
The power of cyberspace was apparent months ago, even before polling began on Saturday. Secretly filmed clips of former health minister Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek saw hundreds of thousands of hits on the video-sharing website YouTube, for instance.
So did the so-called "Lingam clip" of a man purportedly fixing judicial appointments.
Testament to the reach of this medium is how the best-known phrase from the clip — "correct, correct, correct" — became a refrain among voters who turned up in unprecedented numbers for DAP and Parti Keadilan Rakyat campaign rallies in urban areas.
The Internet has been available in Malaysia since the early 1990s, but penetration remained low for years.
The Internet played a relatively small role in the 2004 election, but Internet penetration has surged since then with the continued roll-out of high-speed broadband facilities.
Last year, there were more than 13.5 million Internet users, or just under one in two Malaysians. This was a third more than in 2005, when there were 10 million users.
The worldwide web has allowed parties like the DAP, PKR and Pas, which have long complained of bias in the traditional media, to reach voters in their offices and homes.
It enabled young, first-time candidates, such as DAP’s Hannah Yeoh and PKR’s Loh Gwo-Burne to draw record crowds of more than 10,000 to their hastily organised ceramah in USJ, Selangor, in the first week of campaigning.
Yeoh won the Subang Jaya state seat, and Loh, who had filmed the infamous Lingam clip, the Kelana Jaya parliamentary seat.
Compared with the opposition’s regularly updated web-logs, BN component parties had hardly any web presence.
Google searches on the DAP, PKR and Pas far outstripped those on BN, Umno and other component parties. Google searches on Pas and PKR in Malay far outnumbered those in English, and were highest in the smaller cities and towns such as Kuantan and Kajang in Selangor.
The English website of MCA’s Chew Mei Fun had two event items — the launch of the site in late February and a meet-the-people session on March 5.
In contrast, her opponent from the DAP, the web-savvy technopreneur Tony Pua, had months before garnered a loyal following through his web-log where he posted campaign updates and video clips of ceramah.
He won the Petaling Jaya Utara parliamentary seat, beating Chew by almost 20,000 votes.
For the party’s e-campaign, the DAP put blogger-turned-politician Jeff Ooi, who won a seat in Penang, in charge.
But it was what happened on Saturday night that underscored how Malaysia has come to rely on cyberspace for information.
Frustrated by the slow release of official results, legions of voters turned away from television broadcasts to news websites. Indeed, TV news anchors themselves eventually began citing unofficial results carried by Internet news websites.
"Television just wasn’t cutting it, so everyone turned to the Internet," said P’ng Hong Kwang, editorial director of Malaysian Insider.
Quietly launched just a month ago, the website saw traffic jump almost immediately. On Friday, the eve of polling, traffic surged 10-fold, which P’ng said was "exceptional".
He had no data for Saturday, and the site remained inaccessible until yesterday.
Unlike its newly fledged counterpart, the popular Malaysiakini news portal, now nearly a decade old, was prepared for the surge of volume.
Its adviser, technopreneur Dinesh Nair, was on hand to set up mirror websites, alternative copies of the Malaysiakini site, as a temporary measure to cope with the sudden increase in traffic.
"Instead of reviving a site when it crashed, we just moved on to a new mirror site," said Nair.
Malaysiakini eventually crashed, too, but it was due to an unrelated attack on the US server hosting its website, he said. Until it crashed, it was receiving up to a million hits an hour.
Cyberspace is now the new frontier for BN.
Within BN, Johor Baru MP Datuk Shahrir Samad, of Umno, has perhaps the most committed online presence. He has faithfully, if irregularly, posted entries and news on his weblogs and kept an online itinerary of events since 2006.
Claiming the honour in 2005 of being the only BN leader to maintain a blog, Shahrir has even updated his online journal with pictures taken at the counting centre on Saturday night.
The BN component parties will need many more people with his kind of savvy if it is to make headway in this new world.
Anybody who had visited and read the opinions posted on many forums before the election would have known that the opposition was gathering a lot of support. Or put it the other way, it was apparent that there was a huge dissatisfaction against the BN. Therefore, for somebody like me it came as no surprise that the opposition won a larger number of seats than predicted by the major media and the BN leaders. In fact, I was actually hoping for an outright majority of the parliamentary seats.
The BN had suppressed the major media. This is why the major media all published glowing praises of the BN and bloated the support that is actually out there. But even as the support for BN disappeared the major media still deceived the BN leaders into thinking that the support is still there. In the end, BN’s suppression of the truth deceived into complacency and ultimately caused them to fall. This is poetic justice and should be a lesson to all future leaders of both sides to allow free flow of information and opinions. That is the only way to see the true sentiment of the people.
Especially going into the future, both sides must perform the wishes of the people. They must repeal the NEP based laws and restore the constitution to its original state of full equality. If they had read the posts on the Internet forums, they’d have known this is the wishes of the people. If they ignore the people’s wishes, then the people will reject them both and vote for some other new opposition in the next election.
Comment by Liang1a — Wednesday, 12-03-2008 @ 14: 24.08
One big reason why the opposition had gone to the Internet is because the major media were forced to deny them equal access. Since the major media are unfair to them, the opposition had no choice than to go to the Internet to publish their views. It is again poetic justice that the machinations of the BN ultimately came back to bite them where it hurts. There may be no God in the world, but there certainly is logic which ultimately punished those who are evil.
Comment by Liang1a — Wednesday, 12-03-2008 @ 14: 27.45
Congratulations to all the voters who dared to stand up be counted on August the 8th, 2008 and said a “VERY BIG NO” to BN and toppled them in FOUR MORE states.
Congratulations to Tun Mahathir who finally admitted his “KEZALIMAN” to Anwar for all the trumped up charges to his own political son just because he listened to the wrong advice that “ORANG MELAYU AKAN LUPA”. Now he knows that the Malays of Penang, Perak, Sealngor and Kedah not only don’t forget Anwar but give him back the VOICE which was brutally taken away from him. I, knowing of the TRAGIC EVENT of the IGP brutally beating up Anwar the night he was arrested rendering him unconscious, told Dato Tajol the very morning in the Corridor of the Parliament, who was Deputy Minister, Home Affairs then to make sure that Anwar got the needed Medical attention. He was also shocked at the news and told me that it should not happen. Anyway I insisted that he “tells the BOSS” and make sure that Anwar is treated by a Physician. I was shocked though to hear what Tun Mahathir said on TV commenting on Anwar’s “BLACK EYE” as “MUNGKIN PUKUL SENDIRI” three days later.
Malaysia would be different to-day if Mahathir just stepped down and handed it down to Anwar, but we would never achieved what we have to-day, BN losing 2/3 Majority and the real possibility of a new Government in the four years’ time. It will good for Malaysia to achieve a mature Democracy.
If Anwar becomes PM from BA in the next general election, then we must also thank Tun Mahathir and Pak Lah that through their blunders Malaysia matures as a truly Democratic nation. Thus it is hoped that PAS, DAP and PKR must govern with humility, courage and wisdom to make the States they won an example to be envied by the rest. Let Sarawak and Sabah continue to be exploited to the fullest because they need money and propaganda to retain power.
Comment by Dr.Patau Rubis — Wednesday, 12-03-2008 @ 17: 32.42