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Candidates contesting some posts in Malaysia's ruling party will be required to set up blogs, an official said Friday (11 Apr) in a surprising turnaround for governing politicians who until recently derided online political writing as lies and rumors.

Abdul Rahman Dahlan, secretary general of the United Malays National Organization party's youth wing, said all those vying for national youth posts must have blogs to introduce themselves and their programs ahead of party elections in December.

"All candidates must have blogs," Abdul Rahman told The Associated Press. "If not, they are not qualified to be leaders."

In the past, party politicians have accused bloggers of spreading lies and rumors. Many of Malaysia's blogs contain critical commentary on the government.

But now, even youth deputy chief Khairy Jamaluddin _ who once compared bloggers to monkeys living by the law of the jungle _ has a blog.

The decision appeared aimed at countering heavy losses that the ruling National Front coalition suffered in last month's general elections, partly because they underestimated the power of online campaigning. The United Malays National Party dominates the coalition.

"The last election showed that we lost the cyberwar. We need to embrace the technology now," Abdul Rahman said.

He said party members will get help if they want to run for a post but do not know how to create a blog.

It was not known if any of the senior leaders of the party will also start blogs to emulate opposition Democratic Action Party leader Lim Kit Siang, who has a popular Web journal. (AP)

Comments (26)

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written by Kcc, April 11, 2008 15:38:24

Ya, right. Set up blogs but don't know how to maintain. In the end, only cobwebs. Dulu tak tau guna blog - kata blog untuk orang yang cakap benda-benda palsu. Sekarang tengok, mungkin dipaksa berblog.

Tengoklah laman-laman web jabatan-jabatan kerajaan persekutuan dan kerajaan negeri. Ada yang tak dikemaskini. Ada yang langsung tak de laman.

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written by Thursday, April 11, 2008 15:39:23

"The last election showed that we lost the cyberwar. We need to embrace the technology now," Abdul Rahman said.
Why dont they just embrace non-racial politics and honesty?

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written by johanssm, April 11, 2008 15:41:35

Once they said "bloggers are monkeys"
Can we say Abdullah is the chief of monkeys now?
Look whose talking now.
Anyway , anyhow scumbags from bn still in denial that it was not the bloggers who captured the 5 states Kuala Lumpur and with the most popular votes.
Bloggers only highlighted what was not available in the Msm

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written by nky4my, April 11, 2008 15:42:25

Salam All,

Rasanya BN masih tak paham. Ada kemungkinan mereka terlalu bebal untuk paham.

Isunya bukan lah blog, tapi maklumat yang disampikan melalui blog. Kalau ada 1000 blog sekali pun kalau bahan nya hanyalah "cut and paste" dan senada dengan media perdana. Ini nasihat saya....jangan buang masa kami.

Noor M

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written by Hope4all, April 11, 2008 15:49:24

How good and effective can a blog be without honesty, transparency and participation of the masses?

Looks like BN will never learn. Even if they do learn, they are far behind from serving the rakyat. Might as well give up and let PR lead the way.

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written by LC Teh, April 11, 2008 15:50:42

Hahahaha... This looks like setting up a blog has become a magic bullet to win an election. Funny.

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written by HL Ooi, April 11, 2008 15:50:43

I do hope to see interesting information from the Barisan Nasional blogs and get to know the personalities of the people behind the blogs through what they write there. After all, the internet is the most democratic medium of all in Malaysia, as we have all learnt recently. The reading audience will learn to tell between the bloggers and the "gobloggers" soon enough.

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written by PaulineL, April 11, 2008 15:52:49

Bwahahahah...Blogging is a mindset. When some of them tried to file a police report against RPK, they couldn't even find the right URL & had to get a journalist to help them. What makes them think that they can run a blog all on their own?

It's not the blog but the content which makes the blog successful. If they don't have anything of substance to say, such blogs will die a natural death. Another hair-brained idea tt will be abandoned. You just can't dictate top-down. People need time to grasp the technology especially some dinosaurs. This dictate shows one thing - that the powers don't fully grasp the concept of IT whereby the power is now transferred to the hands of the people.

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written by HL Ooi, April 11, 2008 15:53:39

Correction! Dear RPK, can you please help remove my previous comment?

I do hope to see interesting information from the Barisan Nasional blogs and get to know the personalities of the people behind the blogs through what they write there. After all, the internet is the most democratic medium of all in Malaysia, as we have all learnt recently. The reading audience will learn to tell between the blogs and the "goblogs" soon enough.

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written by Jivathma, April 11, 2008 15:54:04

Good, instead of discussing good governance they will get carried away with more racist rethorics and slurs hence they will lose more seats or even worse.

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written by qwerty, April 11, 2008 15:57:45

“All bloggers are liars, they cheat people using all kinds of methods. From my understanding, out of 10,000 unemployed bloggers, 8,000 are women.”

Tengku Adnan ~ Former Minister of Tourism
8th March 2007

Tengku Adnan & all others in the same time zone,

A word of advice:

Keep your words sweet & short, for one day you may have to eat it!!!

Pulang paku buah keras!! Sedap??

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written by LACOBRA, April 11, 2008 16:20:41

The IT definition of BN's bloggers = Copy & Paste extracts or excerpts from MSM. Why would we want to read duplication or plagiarized news?

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written by Daryl, April 11, 2008 16:32:18

Hmmm... Tell me why we voted these BN politicians into power for 55 years. Are we rakyat really 'BODOH' that we will X anything without looking at the substances?

My god look at all these reaction from these BN politicians. Do they even care that they are making a mockery out of themselves? Do they know how to win votes anymore? Do they know how to be a good leaders? DO THEY KNOW how to do basic stuff like why they lost the election? Can they tell lies in front of the camera? Alamak macam mana Malaysia boleh reach developed nation stats with these bunch of incompetent politicians......

From what tey are doing it seems they are so so so clueless.

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written by AsamLaksa, April 11, 2008 16:32:30

Have they not realised it's not about having blogs but having a sound message to spread. You can find all sorts of blogs on the net from the hateful to the most placating but how many do you frequent. For me I am for independent views. As much as I support BR/PR in GE 12, I stay away from their websites and the blogs of their fans. Why? Because it's propaganda. Do I look like I want to read BN propaganda too?

MT may appear to be biased towards PR but thanks to its less moderated way of posting, I can still call crap as crap whether it comes from BN or PR.

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written by DatoSeri, April 11, 2008 16:36:37

"Bloggers are liars and they cheat..."

Well, exactly what the BN/UMNO/MCAMIC bloggers will be! Another channel they discovered as undeniaably essential for them to venture into, employing the publicity in all MSM to neutralise BN non-supporters.

I don't think I will read their blocks, much as I don't watch RTM/TV3 and read Utusan/STAR/NST....etc.

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written by louisL, April 11, 2008 16:50:45

Simplistic thinking.
Still groping in the dark as to why BN lost? Because Opposition had blog sites??
Balderdash! The MSM painted the likes of you in self-glorifying colours whilst the Opposition were demonised as traitors and 'gobloks' (quote from the ex-Minister of (Mis)information).
Taking up blogging does not diminish the stench when you are still covered with the shit of arrogance and corruption.
I might persuade my 86 year-old mother to blog, stand for election and voila! she may even get to be an MP.

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written by power2u, April 11, 2008 16:51:32

ALL U UMNO AND BN MEMBERS,
NO POINT YOU BLOGGING.YOUR NAME ALREADY STINKS...WITH CORRUPTION,CRIME,
DISCRIMINATION,ROBBERY,MUDER,RAPE,RACIAL DIVIDE,INJUSTICE,..

U STILL THINK PEOPLE WILL LISTEN TO U???
WE MALAYSIANS ARE NOT STUPID YOU KNOW.

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written by StevenO, April 11, 2008 17:31:23

Why bother??!!What are they going to talk about??

:-"My neighbour's cat shit on my lawn....kurang ajar."
:-"My garden stinks of cat shit"
:-"Don't like cat, neighbour should get a dog instead!"
:-"Blah...blah...blah...ba.ba.ba..Umno so stoooopid"

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written by nafis, April 11, 2008 17:40:19

of late, there have been a lot of situations where certain individuals were made to 'jilat their own spit/kahak' [eeyuucch]

i try my best to avoid reading/going into these amno politicians' blogs eg [toyo and rustam] because they have nothing to write since the contents are what the msm shoves down our throats more or less *yawn*

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written by WT Seow, April 11, 2008 17:40:58

blog site probably is http://adnan.nin.com.poop/

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written by taufan, April 11, 2008 17:58:44

"KHAIRY THE KERA" ... your lead to KJ's blog.

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written by faisaladlin, April 11, 2008 18:47:22

PA resorted to internet campaign, because they have no other choice!

they are more than willing to gave up their websites in trade of prime time TV adverts & 24x7 pro-PA MSM coverage throughout the whole campaign period! wanna bet?

wake the 'ef' up. now is the age of substance & transparency. the politics of fear is dead. lock a dude in ISA and he'll win a seat in the next election.

p.s. government blogs = "goblogs" = goblok (indonesian for stupid)

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written by chanatak, April 11, 2008 19:16:01

Monkey see monkey do. That's all BN ever learned.

Hello hello! Wakey! Wakey!. It is not the blogs that counts. It is the integrity of information la. You can set up a zillion blogs and continue to dispense brainless propaganda to no avail. Who bothers to visit you anyway? If we the Rakyat are so dumb, we would have believed your mass media, wouldn't we? Do we need to visit your site? Dumb.

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written by mypanida, April 11, 2008 21:13:50

Abdul Rahman Dahlan, secretary general of the United Malays National Organization party's youth wing.......


WHERE IS YOUR BLOG ???

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written by POPEYE, April 11, 2008 23:57:11

HEY BN guys. You do NOT need to have Blogs. You already ARE A FAT USELESS CROOKED FAT BLOB !!!!!!!!!!

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written by uncleleow, April 12, 2008 00:40:54

We Blogs yo also want to Blogs.We vote PR u vote PR or not? U think Blogging is fashion? Why not wait till next GE only luanch Blogs...

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