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(The Asian Pacific Post) - Ignored by government-linked mainstream media, Malaysia’s opposition waged an aggressive online election campaign using blogs and news websites.
For example, 67-year-old opposition Democratic Action Party chairman Lim Kit Siang ran three blogs, which were meticulously updated with multiple posts every day. Like many other opposition leaders, he was able to reach out to young urban and educated people, many who were voting for the first time. Lim won a parliamentary seat in Ipoh Timor.
Last week Malaysia’s Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, whose position has been considerably weakened after his coalition’s drubbing at the polls, admitted that his ruling coalition made a blunder by underestimating the power of the Internet.
“We made the biggest mistake in thinking that it was not important,” he said. The coalition suffered its worst results ever in March 8 polls that left five states and a third of parliamentary seats in opposition hands.
“We certainly lost the Internet war, the cyber war,” Abdullah said in a speech to an investment conference. “It was a serious misjudgement. We thought that the newspapers, the print media and the television were supposed to be important, but the young people were looking at SMSes and blogs.”
His comments constitute a major about-face for the government, which had vilified bloggers, calling them liars and threatening them with detention without trial under draconian internal security laws.
Even as he spoke, his critics in the United Malays National Organisation (Umno), his power base, were moving to force him out of office. To make matters worse, Umno’s 3.2 million members have also received a poison-pen letter listing his faults. It is not known if he was aware of these moves when he was making his speech.
The poison-pen letter, which hopes to ignite hatred against Abdullah, talks about the manipulations of the government by his son-in-law Khairy Jamaluddin and his associates, the PM’s alleged willingness to appease Singapore and his inability to fight rising crime in the country.
But in his speech, Abdullah said that in line with reform promises after the humiliating election results, the government would “respond effectively” and move to empower young Malaysians. “It was painful . . . but it came at the right time, not too late,” he said. The PM admitted that it was also his inability to push through reforms that earned voters’ ire.
The government, he said, had been given one last chance to prove itself and is ready to change to address the people’s concerns. He promised to implement bold agendas to restore public and investor confidence.
The impact of young voters on the electoral results was particularly underscored in Selangor, which fell to the opposition. The state has about 143,000 new voters out of a total electorate of more than 1.5 million.
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