COMMENT | There will be good news
COMMENT | The government is planning to reactivate Jasa (Special Affairs Department), the propaganda unit that was dissolved when Pakatan Harapan took power.
Jasa in Malay it just means “service”. An innocuous word that avoids the more often used word to describe its function – “propaganda”.
“Propaganda” a volatile word burdened with emotions, suggesting manipulation of thought and fudging the facts or telling outright lies… for the good of all, of course, always.
A musty word from the Cold War of the 50s and 60s, when Western nations and the Soviet Union shouted attractions and abuse at each other over the Iron Curtain, radio broadcasts on one side displaying the wealth of life in capitalist countries and reporting the bad news in the Soviet Union, the Russians heralding rising production figures from farm and factory, sending the first dog and man into space, and sending dissidents, who challenged the official picture of a happy society, to labour in Siberia.
Let’s make the terms current – the staff of Jasa are not propagandists but political influencers.
They will be media super-heroes, countering the bad news and inflating the good...
COMMENT | The government is planning to reactivate Jasa (Special Affairs Department), the propaganda unit that was dissolved when Pakatan Harapan took power.
Jasa in Malay it just means “service”. An innocuous word that avoids the more often used word to describe its function – “propaganda”.
“Propaganda” a volatile word burdened with emotions, suggesting manipulation of thought and fudging the facts or telling outright lies… for the good of all, of course, always.
A musty word from the Cold War of the 50s and 60s, when Western nations and the Soviet Union shouted attractions and abuse at each other over the Iron Curtain, radio broadcasts on one side displaying the wealth of life in capitalist countries and reporting the bad news in the Soviet Union, the Russians heralding rising production figures from farm and factory, sending the first dog and man into space, and sending dissidents, who challenged the official picture of a happy society, to labour in Siberia.
Let’s make the terms current – the staff of Jasa are not propagandists but political influencers.
They will be media super-heroes, countering the bad news and inflating the good, establishing a presence in social media and, hopefully, in our minds that all is well under the stewardship of the government.
Another hopeless attempt to govern our minds. Haven’t they learned anything from looking at the rubble of former media leaders like the NST Group and Utusan, their previous thought-control bureaus?
How about the recent sheepish retreat from the fuss over Finas’ licensing overlordship over all filmed media? Pandora’s Box is open, and the multiple lines of communication in the webbed world cannot be put back in nor snipped off.
Haven’t they learned that Malaysians are not stupid and can figure out things for themselves? (Okay, sometimes we can be stupid, like in the last elections when we gullibly believed the honeyed words of a lot of politicians.)
You can trumpet the official “truth” of things, but when people compare words with reality and they don’t match, Jasa’s efforts will just be peeing into the wind.
The only useful service I can see Jasa doing is provide re-employment for as many as 500 ex-Jasa staff-members, with the possibility of more because Deputy Communications and Multimedia Minister Zahidi Zainul Abidin (photo) says there is demand from former National Civics Bureau (BTN) officers too.
Putting a positive slant on it, there will be a few hundred taken off the total of the unemployed, one of the compassionate government’s many initiatives to help Malaysians survive the economic toll of the virus.
It is said that the unit is ready to roll out the good news but for the lack of allocations. I can’t imagine that’s a problem. The government has never seen anything wrong in spending first, then applying for a supplementary budget the next year.
Just last week, the government tabled a supplementary supply bill for RM7 billion to cover last year's expenditure. With just a swipe of the Super-Parliamentary credit card, the spending is paid.
Anyway, there’s no rush if part of their responsibilities is casting a bad light on the opposition. They are doing fine on their own, no need for reinforcement – the interminable Malay, non-Malay, not liked by the Malays, who were supposed to lead when, how about so-and-so instead, he can, but…
The Malay language has a lovely short retort for such convoluted trivia: Sudah lah! (The literal English translation of ‘Enough!’ doesn’t have the emotional dismissal of the Malay phrase.)
Talking of the much-maligned BTN, which will be resuscitated too, I am fortunate to be of an age well before this so-called mind-control scheme came about.
I don’t know anything about racial/political influencing in the BTN, but an ex-student I had tutored in English for her O-levels, recounted a lecture on Malaysian Music Heritage, that for her, and dozens of other kids, involved sitting in a hall at night, slapping at mosquitoes and barely paying attention to a man at the front of the hall, softly droning an introduction to the various instruments of the gamelan orchestra, with a desultory thwack here, a slap on the drum skin there, a hammer at the big brass gong.
Was there a performance? No. Did some of the kids get to try out the instruments? No. After the lecture, it was off to bed or mischief after lights out.
What educational target was reached? Many of the kids may have seen the instruments for the first time. That’s it. The cache of memory of the lesson probably cleared in their minds soon after for more pressing, personal matters.
I am optimistic about the futility of whatever new BTN programme will be announced with great fanfare by whatever minister.
I am optimistic because having taught hundreds of students, I am confident the majority of the youth enlisted into the BTN, will be like my ex-student – bored by boring, droning old farts and badly thought out programmes, dealing with things that have nothing to do with their lives, just one of many adult tests of their patience to be endured.
Again, on the positive side, more hundreds will be re-employed to man the scheme, more names taken off the unemployment roll, more thanks for another initiative of the saviour government.
Can we take or afford any more of this sort of good news?
THOR KAH HOONG is a veteran journalist.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.
