opinion Earlier this year, online Malaysian website devoted to current events, malaysiakini, was paid an unannounced visit by TV journalists and cameramen requesting an interview.

Properly suspicious, and alerted by prior experience, the malaysiakini news team denied the intrusion, and requested that the journalists to fax their questions instead.

Subsequent events showed those with vested interests had planned a series of annoyances, designed to interfere with the operations of the online newspaper. The brief glimpses taken of the malaysiakini staff and its office were repeatedly shown on local news broadcasts.

The obvious intent was to place the website in a bad light. The results were not what the organisers of the event anticipated - the number of daily hits to the website skyrocketed.

The news in Malaysia is filtered and cleansed to prevent any truth or exposure of the machinations by which the party-in-power perpetuates itself in what many now view as entertainment.

The news is a parody of public participation in patriotic programmes. The country is controlled by the aging prime minister, who is supported only by a narrow circle of cronies.

International recognition

After the last malaysiakini bashing episode was over, what was a relatively unknown website received twice the daily visits as before, and the editors have received international recognition for their devotion to the principles of a free press under difficult and trying conditions.

The party-in-power, fresh from raking the flesh of local university students, has renewed its attack, this time attempting to pin the tail of the donkey on the wind blown epistles of anonymous contributors, who often express a point of view antithetical to the propaganda generated by the government's penmen of pusillanimity.

In previous periods of spurting popularity, the servers have gone up in glorious and hilarious smoke of excessive activity, and new and more powerful technologies have been put in place to streamline the flow.

The new servers have greater speed and capacity, supporting many more hits simultaneously. Both speed and reliability have been improved by the demands of increased circulation. This may be another instance where war stimulates technological advance.

Egoistical aspirations

The unwitting pawns have gratuitously done it again, drawing yet more attention to the website that dares to tell the bare facts, and allows the public an opportunity to record their reaction to the latest public policy announcements and protracted public spending programmes.

If the new attack, accompanied by university dons and a police report, has the same effect, a new wave of popularity is to be expected; another instance of firing directly ahead and being struck with indignity in the rear. One wonders why the party-in-power bothers.

The obvious answer is the new technology bewilders, and egoistical aspirations of grandeur among the giants of the Internet age are sadly misplaced, much as the boy who stood watching the coal-fired train chugging by, dreams of becoming an engineer.

But when the day of opportunity arrived, alas, the smoke trailing over the locomotive had dissipated, replaced by vapour trails high above, signaling the presence of higher ideals, higher aspirations in the age of jet travel.

In Malaysia, the trains still slide regularly off the rails, which rest on rotted roadbeds, and the planes overhead find profitable flying a flight of fancy. One hears now and again a bar of the old refrain, 'Vision 2020,' but the tempo is tepid, the tone is tiresome, and the colors of the graphics gone stale. The words seem weak, worn and wearisome.

Propagandistic poison

What is required is a final resignation and recognition that the old rhetorical style is refutable in the New Age. Since Guttenburg's invention popularised the press for any man, it has been possible to put out propagandistic poison.

Its acceptance was first measured by sales and circulation, but now reviewers prepare a precis for the potential public. There has always been a delay between arrival at the newsstand/bookstore and reader reaction.

Pressures for correction and recantation were (and are) insufficient to overcome the initial impression. That was then.

Now the rebuttal is immediate, with persuasive evidence available supported by graphics. A greater devotion to truth and honesty is demanded and the deceits and deceptions commonplace and buried by past control of the printed press and TV media are now quickly exposed as insidious attempts to delay discovery of fraudulent practice.

The party-in-power in Malaysia fails to meet the challenge of the new technology, and the fault is in the failure to follow acceptable norms of honesty and truth. The consequent decay has de-moralised an entire generation, who have been daunted by fear of imprisonment and loss of professional preferment. Even the brave have learned to be prudent.

Incarcerated visions

The young, a substantial portion of the Malaysian population, has been nursed on the Net, and watches with considerable interest as the Age of Mahathir comes unceremoniously to a close. They wait for the next burning of a university student at the upraised stake.

Striking out at web sites is today's version of burning banned books.

Malaysia has again joined forces with the repressive governments of the world in choosing the authoritarian approach over an enlightened one. The latest moves means the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) of Malaysia has officially become, more or less, a graveyard of both local and foreign Internet investment.

The young consider actions taken against Internet freedom to be ill-conceived. The present policy can only increase ill-will. Perhaps it is not just stupidity. It may be indifference.

HARUN RASHID is a scientist avidly interested in the application of Islamic principles in international affairs. The promotion of goodwill through civilisational dialogue motivates his writing. His Worldview column is a personal analysis of Malaysian affairs from a global perspective.