Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Rais Yatim on Bashing In Blogs

Mr. Rais Yatim today said that bashing the government in blogs is not a healthy culture.

Quote from the pro-government Bernama:
He said although government bashing in the blogsites was among the challenges faced by the Barisan Nasional (BN) in facing the general election, it was not the nature of BN leaders to resort to using blogsites to attack others in their campaigns to win the elections.

"They (bloggers) condemn the prime minister, ministers and other members of the administration but not themselves. As the Malay adage goes, it's pointing the forefinger to the front and thumb to your chest.
I presume that this represents their side of the story. But the thing is that the government has not look deeply enough into the reasons of the so called blog-bashing. Never forget that the reason of criticizing is not to show hatred to the government but to make things better. Malaysia is now riddled with corruption, consumerism displeasure and of course high crime rates that has yet to be solved. To the latter, I cannot understand the mentality and reasoning of the police to stop looking for the missing Sharlinie for the sake of security for the upcoming general elections.

Now back to Rais' statement: the problem right now is that mostly high-ranking officials with the government are refusing to sit down and talk with an average public citizen who wishes to voice out the problems they had. Even if a person files a police report of misconduct and evidence of crimes and corruption against a high-ranking official, chance are, from recent experiences that the investigation never goes off the ground likely due to police being fearful of reprimanding and potentially interference by the corrupt.

It would be a good idea if there is a intermediary entity in existence which is called the People's Bench. The idea of having a bench is to bridge the gap of relationship between public and government. The BN government today perceives bashing and the recent rallies as going against them. The bench's purpose is to offer help and assistance, not bashing governments. They are able to provide better insight from the public perspective that will serve as a valuable input for government decision-making.

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