Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Is Telling The Inconvenient Truth Something Worth It Now?

In the aftermath of the anti-ISA Rally, The Associate Press, BBC and Al-Jazeera carried news on the on the rally in Kuala Lumpur.

1. Al Jazeera - Malaysia Protest March Broken Up
2. Associate Press - Malaysian Police Break Up Protesters With Tear Gas
3. BBC - Protest At Malaysia Security Law

That, I believe is a starter of the foreign press reporting the major event that was happening in Malaysia as from the third-person view. Neither being a citizen of Malaysia nor a supporter of any wing left or right in Malaysia. The kind of telling a news to the rest of the world has brought up something that is worth to be considered, given of the situation of the current press stand in Malaysia.

In the last few days, Utusan has showed its leanings towards the UMNO party stance, not the 1Malaysia stance by writing its racial view that is violating the image of Malaysia being a multi-racial country. The Star is a perfect example of showing major MCA events being its party newspaper. But the major mainstream dailies have in common is writing stories that portrays the ruling party leaders and what they do as a caring and showing Barisan Nasional as a 'we care to people party'. On the other hand, the papers portray people and those in the opposition position or those who do not agree with the ruling party policies as enemies of the state.

You do not need to read the papers on the daily basis to tell you the picture. And the way the news is shown in papers, it seems that it is biased and there are some truths that people, we the rakyat should know were kept out of the dark, the purpose is to keep us in the dark.

Hartalling the MSM is in my opinion one way, but, again given of the unique scenario, we might consider exposing the inconvenient truth to the international press, given of the unlikeliness of the local press to published revelations.

Sounds a little out of mind isn't it? It could be, but why I would say this is simply because it is one powerful way to get Malaysia to wake up to the reality of the world situation, and to get people to wake up that there some skeletons in the BN closet that they do not know. A lot of blame is pointing to the opposite closet but their own.

When the French paper Liberation exposes of the corruption, Najib-Altantuya connection a few months back, the deputy Speaker Wan Junaidi Jaafar went into finger-pointing mode, accusing others for writing something senseless. However, that piece is something that is true that is exposing the corruption within those associated with UMNO or Najib Razak. What Wan Junaidi remarked on that thing reveals that UMNO-BN is terribly afraid of the truth that has been kept hidden away from public attention to save themselves from embarassment.

Perhaps consider another scenario - let's say if people have concrete, irrefutable proof that politician A or Officer B has committed a number of malpractices or involved in a misconduct, but the press keeps dark out of it, what will you do then? If we do not write or expose it, other people will still be kept out of the dark.

Taking it to the real situation, let's say we have concrete proof of misconduct on politicians like Zahid Hamidi, Azim Zabidi, Nazri Aziz or we have real evidence that Musa Hassan and the police is in collusion with the underworld figures. If you tell the local press, they won't publish it because if they do so, they get phone calls or visits by Home Ministry or the 4th Floor Boys previously. If you're telling this to the international press, opinions will be divided but gagging the press is almost impossible.

I'm not trying to say that we should do this nor to embarass people, but it is to say that we are placed in the tight situation where telling the space of telling real truth to the public and other people who wants to know is very small and tight. If the local dailies will not permit, then where else can we tell apart from the cyber space / blogs? But the end objective is that we need to wake up to reality or get swept by the realities the more we dilly delay. Consider, if we still believe that nothing happens when the 2012 disaster happens, who is to blame in the end? We people or those politicians running the government?

I want to ask you people out there, about in this situation, is it really worth it in the current scenario?

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