"The internet is the ultimate neutral platform," Nathaniel Tan said. There is no inherent reason why this medium should take one side of the electoral divide. It also has very low barriers for entry, giving the individual a voice, whereas more organised media, such as newspapers, tend to reflect the views of the powerful.

Yet, in Malaysia's recent general election (see the article Any lessons from the Malaysian general election for us?) , the internet was mostly used by those supporting the opposition parties. It was the same in Singapore's 2006 election. This is obviously due to the way the mainstream media in both countries had become government-controlled, thus denying alternative opinions expression through them. Naturally, in response, they gravitated to the internet.

But did the internet really play such a big part in the electoral gains won by Malaysia's Democratic Action Party (DAP), Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) and Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS), won from the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN)?

Steven Gan speaking. To his right is Nathaniel Tan (yellow shirt). I'm in the background.

Speaking at the forum "Cyber Activism – the Malaysian Experience", neither Nathaniel Tan [1], the one responsible for PKR's web strategy, nor Steven Gan, the founder of online newspaper Malaysiakini [2], thought so. "We shouldn't overlook [cellphone] SMS or the humble DVD," the latter said.

Separately, Jeremy Au Yong of the Straits Times, in his interview with Gan, reported him saying that, "To say that new media brought down the BN is to take a lot away from the people who were demonstrating in the streets, the people who went to jail, and those who were campaigning all over the country." [2]

I will come back to this particular point later.

Indeed, it appears that the election result there was the product of many trends that had been going on for years, highlighted through various civil society and political campaigns. It is difficult to measure the effect of the internet in isolation, as the speakers pointed out.

Even during the election campaign, what they described at the forum was a multi-platform communication effort. Internet penetration in Malaysia is not that high, especially in the smaller towns, but the internet had a catalytic effect. The viewpoints expressed in cyberspace were often spread further by cellphone messages and word of mouth to family and friends.

Posters were made available on websites for downloading. Video clips were burned into DVDs and even VCDs for distribution, said Gan. It's amazing, he noted, that even in the poorest villages, people had VCD players. Malaysiakini's newsclips showing government clampdowns on unlicensed Hindu temples were compiled into DVDs and VCDs and passed around, and these had an electric effect on audiences wherever they were shown.

Prior to Gan mentioning this, I had asked Malaysian bloggers at another event whether they could think of any example that would demonstrate that the internet was capable of framing the question for the voters, or "setting the agenda". Blogger Ahirudin Attan ("Rocky's Bru") said one example would be the picture of Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawai asleep. It was never carried by the mainstream media, but just about every Malaysian would know about the photo in question. (If any reader can point me to a link to the photo, please help me out).

All the Singaporeans in the audience were well aware that what they heard about the Malaysian experience could not be replicated here without breaking the law.

The infamous Section 33 of our Films Act criminalises the use of film and video for political ends. Section 78A of the Parliamentary Elections Act makes it an offence to flout the minister's bylaws pertaining to "election advertising... [on] the Internet by political parties, candidates or their election agents and relevant persons" with the government reserving the right to slap anybody as a "relevant person". And if you downloaded a poster from the internet, printed it out and pinned it somewhere like the Malaysians did, you'd be violating Section 78 of the same Act, which gives the minister the power to "make regulations to regulate the display of posters and banners in respect of an election."

As for SMS, if I'm not wrong, I recall that soon after the last elections, some minister or other mused about the need to put in place new laws to ban the use of SMS for electoral purposes before the next elections. Fortunately, no law has been passed to this end yet.

"Are there any laws specific to the internet in Malaysia?" I asked Nathaniel Tan. 

None, he said. The Malaysian government had given a guarantee in the 1990s when they were trying to promote their Multi-media Super Corridor project that the internet would be uncensored. The only laws applicable would be such laws against defamation, etc, that applied equally both offline and online.

This is as it should be. The internet is just one platform among many, and there is no justifiable case to regulate it more tightly than any other. In fact, given the nature of its technology, what case there is should be for it to be freer than the rest.

The other interesting thing we might do well to note is how despite the racially polarised political system in Malaysia, in the end voters voted across the racial divide. Chinese voters in constituencies with Islamic PAS candidates voted for them, Malay voters in constituencies with Chinese-identified DAP candidates voted for them too.

Nathaniel Tan spoke at some length about this, but it was also confirmed by a poll conducted by Merdeka Centre and reported in the Straits Times last week:

A survey by the independent Merdeka Centre confirms as much. The results published yesterday showed that two in three voters believe the Barisan Nasional (BN) component parties should merge. They want a multiracial model.

Just as significantly, half the Malays did not consider it a betrayal to vote for the opposition Democratic Action Party (DAP), which they traditionally regarded as too Chinese.

[snip]

... even non-Malays were flying the flag of the conservative Islamist Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) and voting for it.

-- Straits Times, 9 April 2008, Poll: BN should
give up race-based politics.

In contrast, the Singapore government keeps harping on the risk that free speech on the internet might exacerbate racial and religious tensions with dire social consequences, using this scare tactic to justify heavy-handed control over digital speech. If there is anything that the Malaysian election experience showed, this is bullshit. People will be as rational and skeptical with respect to the stuff they get from the internet as they would towards any other medium.

 
Malaysia is politically alive, Singapore half dead

Another aspect of Malaysian politics worth noting is how more vibrant their political parties and civil society are. They speak up regularly and they have no fear about co-operating with each other when their issues overlap.

As Steven Gan pointed out, much political awareness in Malaysia is the work of tireless organising and campaigning, even demonstrating in the streets from time to time, and risking jail for it.

In Singapore, the Workers' Party, our main opposition party -- if 2 seats in Parliament is "main" enough to describe it so -- is trapped by both its almost supercilious adherence to the rules of the political game as set by the ruling People's Action Party (PAP), and the conditioned fear of the electorate of any hard-hitting political speech and activity. That fear can often be seen in the way citizens run as far away as they can from the Singapore Democratic Party's methods (though my friend Russell Heng may disagree with me: he detects an insipient change in political culture among the younger Singaporeans). Reading the way Singaporeans have become afraid of controversial statements, the Workers' Party makes itself overly careful.

Civil society here is no better. They are too often preoccupied with not antagonising the government, and at every opportunity will proclaim that they are "non-political". They seem almost allergic to contact with, let alone working in co-operation with opposition parties.

For example, in Malaysia, if someone is detained by the authorities, lawyers will rush forward to help. In Singapore, you'd have an interesting time even finding a lawyer to represent you in court, should your case be seen as politically sensitive in any way. For two decades now, our Law Society has not had anything to say about the way our civil and political rights have been stripped away over the years.

BERSIH - the Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections - organised a march, 10 Nov 2007, in Kuala Lumpur. Many prominent Malaysian lawyers were behind the campaign.

 
In Singapore "human rights" is treated as a dirty word. Most people know that to demand your rights is to run afoul of the government.

Contrast this: Malaysia has a Human Rights Commission (Suhakam) [4] set up by law. The Human Rights Commission of Malaysia Act was enacted in 1999 and a clause in this law even imports as applicable to Malaysia the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF MALAYSIA ACT 1999 Section 4(4)

(4) For the purpose of this Act, regard shall be had to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 to the extent that it is not inconsistent with the Federal Constitution.

Singapore's ministers have from time to time asserted that "human rights" is a Western notion incompatible with "Asian values". We have consistently refused to sign up to most international conventions dealing with this subject. The worst part is that our own people have, alas, imbibed this argument that "rights" are dangerous things to want.

Politically, Singapore is half dead. This has important consequences on survivability, for it is political engagement that gives people a sense of ownership and belonging. The way the PAP throttles any kind of political expression not to their liking, the way the average Singapore is dissuaded from participating freely in what should be their political and civic space, in the end only serves to sever the link between a people and a country.

At the rate things are going here, I kind of know how the Singapore story will end. When things go wrong -- and like all countries, things will go wrong one day -- Singapore will be abandoned, not saved. There won't be enough people left who care enough to save it, because for too long, we've been conditioned to think that it's too risky to care.

© Yawning Bread