Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi today called on Malaysians to stop rumour-mongering through SMS text messages and lambasted people for abusing the technology.

The government was last week forced to deny a rumour, spread rapidly by SMS, that Abdullah's wife, Endon Mahmood, who is undergoing treatment for breast cancer in the United States, had died.

There have also been reports of vicious gossip being spread during campaigning for internal leadership elections within parties which are part of the country's ruling coalition.

"I am not saying it because it had anything to do with the SMS concerning my wife recently," Abdullah said according to the official Bernama news agency. "Even before that I had seen many negative things (being spread)".

He said his own party, the ruling Umno, had suffered its share of rumour-mongering through SMS texts during party elections.

The stories "were created by certain people, pitting one against another, to cause frustrations to others, to make people angry. There is nothing good about it at all," he said.

Bad intentions

Sending slanderous messages "is an act committed by those who purposely want to create trouble, they probably want to take advantage of the situation, or probably they just do it out of mischief, they want to create chaos," he said.

"Whatever the intention or purpose is, it is bad," he added.

The prime minister also warned that in an effort to curb SMS abuses, the government could consider registering mobile subscribers who use pre-paid services in order to track them.

"If there are too many people who do not know how to use it and did not show a responsible attitude, we probably have to think of the pros and cons of registering the users," he said.

Rumour-mongering is a routine practice in the cut and thrust of Malaysian politics, with the fashion at one time being "poison pen" letters making anonymous allegations against targets.

However the most recent round of SMS rumours, especially those about Endon, provoked an outcry in the media and amongst Malaysians, who criticised the messages as brutal and unfeeling.