Intellectual Underpinnings

The Internet is in many ways a child of the 60s. It evolved in a bottom-up and almost

haphazard manner. Initially, the online world belonged to a few American scientists and

engineers, and was funded by the United States Department of Defense Advanced Research

Projects Agency, an institution founded after the launch of Sputnik in an effort to gain a

technological edge on the Soviet Union. Although the U.S. government undoubtedly

benefited from the technology that developed, it did little of the actual work. In true capitalist

fashion, it contracted out. Most of the technology that grew into the Internet we know today

came as a result of research funded by the government but done at American universities,

especially MIT, Stanford, and UCLA, and private companies like IBM. In its earliest

incarnations, the network that would grow into the modern Internet came from simple

attempts to share information among labs. It was constructed as a series of interacting

networks by Woodstock-era American academics and engineers, who deliberately designed it

to be non-bureaucratic and easy to access, a reflection of the political and economic

liberalism of their time. They created an open infrastructure with as few restrictions as

possible, designed to permit any network to connect with any other without going through

any sort of central hub1. One network of computers simply connects to another. (the root of

the term “inter-net”). When a person visits the New York Times site, his computer connects to

the New York Times’ computer and exchanges information with it. If he visits Google next,

his computer closes the connection with the New York Times’ computer and begins

exchanging information with Google’s computer. There is no central Internet “out there”,

only a series of computers interacting.

Information technology first became easily accessible to the masses in the 1980s and

early 90s, when computers first became small and cheap enough for individuals and
1
Cukier, Kenneth. “Who Will Control the Internet?” Foreign Affairs, November/December 2005.
universities to afford. The Internet first became widely accessible to nonscientists in 1993,

when Tim Berners-Lee invented HTML, the hypertext markup language familiar to anyone

who has ever seen a link inviting them to click here for more information. HTML, and the

ensuing development of Mosaic, the first Web browser, made it possible for lay people to

browse among Web pages without knowing any specific computer commands, and, with a

little training, create Web pages of their own. The new HTML language also offered a

particular advantage to countries with large English speaking populations, like Malaysia and

Singapore, because HTML code is based almost entirely on the English language. Tim

Berners-Lee is British, and when he began inventing HTML code, he didn’t start by creating

a new spoken language and a new alphabet. HTML code, as well as nearly every other

computer language used online, is based on English words typed on a Roman keyboard.

HTML is mostly English words, or parts of English words, typed inside brackets. For

example, the code for blinking text is the word <blink>. The code for bold text is the word

<bold>, often shortened to <b>.

The early 90s, when affordable computing technology and easily networked

computers, became known as the “Big Bang” era. The Internet was viewed as the most

evocative symbol of this era, almost to the point of being synonymous with it.

Governance of the new Internet was very informal, and governments came very late

to the table. Until the late 1990s, seemingly political decisions, such as such as which entity

would get to operate country domain names (the .uk in, for example, www.bbc.co.uk) were

made by one Jon Postel, a computer science professor in California. In the early days of the

Web, Postel often gave national domain names to private individuals instead of government

bodies. In many cases, the Internet was so new and strange that there was no appropriate

national entity to hand the domain names to.

 The openness and lack of official control has allowed cheap expression, low cost

access, and innovation. Most innovation on the Internet has come from the private sector; any

government involvement has come fairly recently. In keeping with the prevailing liberal idea

of laissez-faire and free exchange of ideas, many of the Internet’s pioneers made their

discoveries available for free, without restrictions or royalties. Many of the online world’s

early proponents viewed the online world as a libertarian place where traditional rules did not

apply. In 1996, American activist John Barlow wrote a declaration of independence for

cyberspace, declaring that “legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and

context do not apply…They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.”2

The appearance of a diffuse and easily accessible medium did not escape political

notice. Western leaders were quick to seize upon the Internet’s potential to bring free speech

to nations that had not enjoyed it before. Ronald Reagan gave a speech in 1989 in which he

predicted that “Technology will make it increasingly difficult for the state to control the

information that people receive…the Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the

David of the microchip.”3 Reagan’s optimism was typical of liberal Western views on free

information, which hold that free speech acts both as a “disinfectant”, exposing official

corruption and abuses, and as a facilitator of discussion, allowing the electorate to be

informed about the issues of the day and to hear debate about how to deal with those issues

from different sides of the political spectrum. By this logic, a widespread and diffuse medium

like the Internet represents a strong threat to authoritarian governments because it effectively

hoists one of the most effective checks on government power on them. This check could be

expected to wear down authoritarian regimes, paving the way for democracy.

2
Barlow, John. “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” Feb 6, 1996.
http://homes.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html . Accessed 30 April, 2008.
3
Kalathil, Shanthi and Boas, Taylor. Open Networks, Closed Regimes. Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace. Washington, D.C.:2003 p.1
 Despite widespread discussion of the Internet and an increase in political openness,

there has been relatively little academic research done to see if one actually leads to the other.

Singapore and Malaysia provide and excellent opportunity to investigate this point because

they have widely different experiences with online speech, despite having major similarities –

they are located in the same part of the world, populated by the same ethnic groups, both are

comparatively wealthy compared to their neighbors, both are former British colonies and thus

well positioned to take advantage of the domination of English online, and both have

widespread Internet use. (According to the CIA World Factbook, Singapore had over 3

million Internet users in 2007, representing 67% of the population. Malaysia had over

15,000,000 users, or 62% of the population. By comparison, Internet users in Japan

represented 69% of the population, in United States, 73% of the population was online.) In

Malaysia, opposition figures have been able to use the Web to disseminate their views, and

online newspapers frequently publish articles and editorials critical of the government. In

Singapore, the opposite has occurred. Although Internet use is widespread in the country, the

government has implemented policies that make it very difficult for people to use the Web to

discuss politics or criticize the regime. Opposition groups have difficulty even in maintaining

a Web page. If anything, the Internet has made the regime more popular, as Singapore’s

eCitizen program, which conveniently streamlines government services through a single Web

portal, has become a model for the rest of the world. This thesis hopes to determine which

factors created this discrepancy.

Literature review

The available literature offers a decidedly mixed picture on the Internet’s impact on

authoritarian rule. In the book Open Networks, Closed Regimes, Shanthi Kalathil and Taylor

Boas review how Internet usage has affected eight authoritarian regimes. They find that while
Internet may present a threat to a repressive government, it does not necessarily do so. It is

also possible for such governments to use the Internet in ways that both benefit the

population and serve state interests. For example, “e-government” is the streamlining of

government procedures such as official permits and licenses online. These may well serve to

reduce local corruption and increase transparency, as well as making dealing with the

government a much easier proposition. This, in turn, increases public happiness with the

regime. Similarly, the Internet may provide opportunities for economic development, but this

may also increase public happiness with the regime. It is worth noting, however, that many

theorists believe that economic prosperity and a rising middle class will present long term

threats to authoritarian systems. Kalathil and Boas acknowledge that transnational advocacy

networks have taken advantage of the Internet to spread their message, and point to the

effectiveness of the recent Free Burma campaign, which spread its message largely online.

They also recognize its importance to Diaspora communities, which tend to be wealthier and

better educated with more uncensored access to the Internet than those in the countries they

left behind.

In general, Kalathil and Boas find, a country’s policy towards the Internet mirrors its

global economic policy. Countries that try to be full participants in the international economic

system, such as Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, are under increased pressure to

adhere to norms set by industrialized countries, and consequently allow more private sector

investment and market development in their information technology center. This can lead to a

decline in state involvement in this sector, and by extension, less control over what goes on in

it.. By this logic, we should expect both Malaysia and Singapore, both of which allow private

ISPs and both of which try to be robust participants in the global economy, to have at least

some weaknesses in state ability to control online speech. To some extent, this is the case in
Malaysia, but it is not at all the case in Singapore, which has paradoxically managed to be

very engaged in the Web and in international trade without having a correspondingly liberal

government.4

In a Geographical Review article from 1997 called “Counterhegemonic Discourses

and the Internet”, Barney Warf and John Grimes agree that the Internet is neither inherently

oppressive nor emancipatory. They point out that many of the major entities online can be

viewed as part of the present hegemonic power structure. This includes government sites, but

can extend to sites belonging to large retailers and major media companies. Amazon.com, for

example, is unlikely to benefit from an overthrow of the global order. In particular, it allows

disenfranchised groups such as Mexican mequiladora workers access to sympathetic

audiences at home and abroad, as well as access to experts they may not otherwise have had

the opportunity to contact. Even at the time the article was written, dozens of “countrynets”

provided information about events taking place within countries like Burma and China that

was often unavailable in the mainstream media.5

Warf and Grimes also point to the fact that Internet users are disproportionately

young, middle class, and educated as a check against the inherent democratizing power of the

medium. Perhaps it is, in most cases, but in a 2002 study in called “Primary Causes of Asian

Democratization: Dispelling Conventional Myths”. Junhat Lee found that street protests

against authoritarian regimes which lead to democratizing change in Asia generally followed

a particular pattern: they began as student-lead demonstrations in major cities that soon

spread to other areas. They had widespread support from the middle class, and opposition

leaders orchestrated protests involving students and middle class people. The protests

4
Kalathil, Shanthi and Boas, Taylor. Open Networks, Closed Regimes. Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace. Washington, D.C.:2003

5
Warf, Barney and Grimes, John "Counterhegemonic Discourses and the Internet" Geographical Review,
Vol. 87, No. 2, Cyberspace and Geographical Space (Apr., 1997), pp. 259-274
snowballed until pro-democracy demands were met. Although Lee does not mention the

Internet specifically, he does mention middle class Thai protesters using mobile phones to

warn one another about trouble movements. (Lee 2002) A new technology, used principally

by the educated middle class, would seem to have the most potential to fan the flames of

Asian democracy. It has arguably done so for Malaysia, but has done little for Singapore.6

Of particular concern in a study of the Internet’s contribution to democratization is

just how much good free speech is likely to do. Certainly, there is a limit to how much merely

spreading awareness about an abuse will do as the recent Onion article “Everyone in Entire

World Now Aware of Darfur” makes clear. The ability to spread information can in and of

itself create leverage in challenging a powerful structure. In a 2000 article in Contemporary

Sociology entitled “Fighting Marginalization with Transnational Networks: Counter-

Hegemonic Globalization”, Peter Evans argues that global networks are currently being

constructed in the interests of transnational corporations, which are not only dominant in their

control of material affairs but also ideologically dominant, in the sense that they are able to

portray their visions of free trade as being beneficial for all, and brand their opponents as

either out of touch or biased. However, Evans argues, groups concerned with issues like the

environment and the rights of women or factory workers have been able to use growing

international norms about human dignity and respect for the environment to gain leverage.

One key role of transnational networks is spreading information, and in particular, spreading

information about abuses. In addition to embarrassing the perpetrators of abuse, this also

serves to mitigate victims’ sense of isolation and helplessness and empower them to see view

themselves as part of a larger, global network. The spread of information also brings

disadvantaged groups new power; Evans points to the example of Nike, which suffered a

6
Lee, Junhan "Primary Causes of Asian Democratization: Dispelling Conventional Myths"
Source: Asian Survey, Vol. 42, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 2002), pp. 821-837 Published by: University of
California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3038862 Accessed: Dec 16, 2008
decline in sales and a major public relations problem after news of poor working conditions

in its factories was disseminated in developed countries. He goes on to detail ways in which

efforts to hold governments and corporations to international minimum standards of conduct

is proving to be a crucial tool of rights groups. The Internet, despite its limitations, is ideally

situated for mass and cheap dissemination of information.7

In an article entitled “The Cyberspace "War of Ink and Internet" in Chiapas, Mexico”

in the April 1997 issue of Geographic Review, Oliver Froehling details efforts by Zapatista

rebels in a small Mexican state to use the Internet in their dispute with the Mexican

government. The rebels initially took over the state’s capital for several days in 1994 and

anticipated a broader military conflict; however, the Mexican government responded merely

by chasing the rebels out of the city and then unilaterally declaring a ceasefire. The rebels

wanted to call further attention to their issues, which included redressing severe inequalities

between indigenous people and urban elites and opposition to liberal economic agreements

such as NAFTA. After the military conflict ended, the rebels were able to use the Internet to

coordinate with people abroad sympathetic to their cause, including foreign media,

academics, and human rights groups. These efforts soon took on a life of their own, with the

establishment of Chiapas listservs and Web sites in the United States and Europe. There were

also leaks of classified information online. For example, a memo from Chase Manhattan

Bank urging the Mexican government to deal preemptively with the Zapatistas was widely

circulated on the Internet, to the great embarrassment of both. Their efforts resulted in mass

protests outside Mexican consulates in the United States and Europe, as well as a conference

on their cause attended by a former first lady of France and Hollywood director Oliver Stone.

7
Evans, Peter "Fighting Marginalization with Transnational Networks: Counter-Hegemonic Globalization"
Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 29, No. 1, Utopian Visions: Engaged Sociologies for the 21st Century (Jan.,
2000), pp. 230-241
However, they did not actually result in changes on the ground in Chiapas, and some argue

that the group’s original mission was displaced by its Internet sensation. In short, the group

was able to embarrass the Mexican government, but not to take real political power from it.8

David Bollier writes in“People / Networks / Power: Communications Technologies

and the New International Politics” that a free Internet could nonetheless be regarded as

challenging the dominant power structure if mass media is regarded as a “market” for loyalty.

Historically, he says, states jealously controlled their mass media to bolster their political

legitimacy and encourage a sense of national cohesion. There was usually an agreement

among the “producers” of loyalty (the government, media, MNCs) how the market would be

divided. Now, he says, the international “market” for loyalty is much more volatile, and this

disrupts domestic political order. The chaos allows ethnic minorities, human rights

organizations, and others to promote their own moral vision in a way not possible before. It

also favors the soft power of reputation, credibility, and values as never before. This theory

has significant resonance to the Malaysian case, in which newspapers and television stations

tend to report “official” versions of the news because they depend on the government for

licenses to exist, while Web sites are much more free to question government policy and

hence “compete” for loyalty.9

In a similar article from the March 2008 Atlantic Monthly called “The Connection

Has Been Reset”, James Fallows details China’s attempts to police the Internet. Because the

online connections come into China from only three major connections, the government has

an unusual ability to establish chokeholds. However, Fallows reports that creative users can
8
Froehling, Oliver "The Cyberspace "War of Ink and Internet" in Chiapas, Mexico Geographical Review,
Vol. 87, No. 2, Cyberspace and Geographical Space (Apr., 1997), pp. 291-307

9
Bollier, David. “People / Networks / Power: Communications Technologies and the
New International Politics”, A Report of the Twelfth Annual Aspen Institute Roundtable on Information
Technology, August 2003. http://www.aspeninstitute.org/atf/cf/%7BDEB6F227-659B-4EC8-8F84-
8DF23CA704F5%7D/1336%20INFOTECH%20TEXT.PDF Accessed Nov 3, 2008.
often get around filters that the government sets up. Businesses often buy a special Virtual

Private Network (VPN) client, which send encrypted messages that bypass the government’s

filters. These are both legal and openly advertised, but they’re expensive by Chinese

standards – about $40. Rather than trying to control the flow of information it considers

sensitive, Fallows argues, the Chinese government instead simply tries to make it difficult

enough to find that most people won’t bother. This, he says, encourages self censorship on

the part of Chinese Internet users. Bloggers, for example, know that their content must be

kept within acceptable limits because if it is blacklisted by government filters, most of their

readers will not want to jump through the necessary hoops to access it.10

A regime’s ability to control access to information technology may be limited by

another factor – who is paying for that technology. In a 2007 article called 'Aiding the

Internet in Central Asia' in the journal Democratization, Eric Mcglinchey finds that although

Central Asian states are equally repressive of free speech in their traditional media, they

follow widely diverging paths with their regulation free speech online. He finds that this

directly correlates with their ability to pay for information technology. States with the ability

to pay for Internet connection themselves, such as Kazakhstan, continue their official

censorship online, while countries that are dependent on foreign donors such as the UN

Development Program and USAID for information technology are much more permissive

about what they allow to be said online, largely because these foreign donors are able to

make demands on autocratic governments. In addition to offering a new angle on the

Internet’s potential to contribute to free speech, this idea presents a strange argument to the

idea that economic development leads to more free speech. McGlinchey also argues that,

once given access to free speech online, the public will vigorously defend that right when the

10
Fallows, James “The Connection Has Been Reset” The Atlantic Monthly, March 2008
government tries to take it away. This may in part explain the case of Malaysia; the

government tried to renege on its promise of an uncensored Internet and found it could not.11

However, that “soft power” can also be manipulated by regimes. In a March/April

2003 article in Foreign Policy called “Dot.Com for Dictators”, Shanthi Kalathil argues that

the proliferation of online technology has created a game of one-upsmanship between

reformers and autocratic rulers, as one strives to use the Web to post exposes and criticisms

and the other works to shut down criticism and control access to the Net. It also allows

authoritarian regimes to spread their message more directly; for example, in many

authoritarian countries, the state newspaper is the first to get online. With snazzy graphics

and often an English language version, the papers provide an official take on the news that

does not necessarily arouse suspicion from readers.12

Another issue in discussing whether the Internet is likely to contribute to

democratization is the question of how much the government is able to censor the Web. In

some cases, governments have found online voices that challenge the party line to be difficult

to control. In a February 2001 article in Third World Quarterly called

“Democracy@Internet.Asia? The Challenges to the Emancipatory Potential of the Net:

Lessons from China and Malaysia”, Jason P. Abbott argues that although the Internet may

provide a new forum for reformers, the ability to use it varies widely. Using the contrasting

examples of China and Malaysia, Abbott points out that reformers in China learned after

Tianamen Square that they could find sympathetic audiences abroad, the counterargument is

that by loudly prosecuting a few online dissidents, the government creates a chilling affect

that leads in many cases to self-censorship. The situation was more unique in Malaysia,

11
Mcglinchey, Eric and Johnson, Erica , (2007) 'Aiding the Internet in Central Asia', Democratization,
14:2, 273 – 288 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13510340701245785 Accessed Nov 3, 2008.

12
Kalathil, Shanthi. "Dot.Com for Dictators" Foreign Policy, No. 135 (Mar. - Apr., 2003), pp. 42-49
which had a mostly free Internet in 1998, when thousands of Netizens turned out to protest

the Malaysian government’s actions against former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.

Anwar was jailed on highly suspect morals charges, and major television, radio and print

publications, which depended on government licenses to operate, published the government’s

condemnations of him and paid little attention to Anwar’s protestations of innocence. His

political hopes might have been dashed, except for the plethora of pro-Anwar sites that

sprung up on the Internet. These sites published Anwar’s letters from jail and his response to

the charges against him. They became a primary source of news for many Malays, so much

so that Web users printed out them out for the benefit of those who did not have access to the

Internet. It became clear that the central government was not able (or perhaps willing) to do

much about the Internet response. The online response kept Anwar’s hopes alive, and after

the scandal was over, some of the sites involved in the scandal stayed open as alternative

sources of information. News Web sites that arose during the scandal continue to be able to

publish much more freely than traditional media in Malaysia. The most well known is

Malaysiakini (http://www.Malaysiakini.com/),A recent check of Malaysiakini.com turned up

front page stories entitled “Malaysia's poor human rights record highlighted in report” and an

op-ed that stated “The tendency towards the dictatorship of the PM continues unabated, and

so [recently proposed reform] bills can hardly qualify as "reformist”.” The site is very

popular and fully accessible in Malaysia. Despite repeated applications, Malaysiakini has

been unable to obtain a license to publish a print edition.13

In contrast, Singapore has had more success at controlling the Web. In a Spring 1998

article in Political Science Quarterly entitled “The Internet and Political Control in

Singapore”, Garry Rodan reports that the Singaporean government has shown a remarkable

13
Abbott, Jason P. “Democracy@Internet.Asia? The Challenges to the Emancipatory Potential of the Net:
Lessons from China and Malaysia” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Feb., 2001), pp. 99-114
ability to both embrace the Internet and IT industry and still subject its population to strict

content controls. Because Singapore is ideally situated, with an educated population and

plenty of capital, foreign media companies have generally collaborated with its authoritarian

government rather than challenge it. Most Singaporean Internet communication is steered

through official lines, which the government can monitor. At the time the article was written,

the government had recently conducted a search of all image files on its servers and publicly

announced that 5 out of 80,000 of them were pornographic. Many believed the government

was merely advertising it had the capacity to conduct such a search, and this contributed to a

widespread belief among Singaporean citizens that the government was monitoring their

online activities.14

A few sites offering independent news and public forums did spring up in Singapore

in the late 1990s, and for a time they provided Singaporeans with a chance to read and

express criticism of the government. However, successive government regulations made it all

but impossible for them to continue operating. There are presently few options available for

independent news or free political discussion in Singapore.

Asian values

These ideas of the media as a necessary check on the government had little resonance

to the leaders of Singapore and Malaysia, both of which traditionally maintained that

government controls on the media were necessary to maintain harmony in multiethnic and

newly independent societies. The media’s role was to inform the public about government

policies and educate people about national values, not to question authority. A medium that

allowed individuals to widely disseminate their views would be particularly undesirable, both

as a violation of “Asian values”, which placed individual needs below the needs of the

14
Rodan, Garry "The Internet and Political Control in Singapore" Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 113,
No. 1 (Spring, 1998), pp. 63-89
community, and as a potential threat to national cohesion in multi ethnic societies. It is a

concept promoted both by Lee Kuan Yew, Singaporean prime minister from 1959 to 1990

and “minister mentor” thereafter, and Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia’s prime minister from

1981 to 2003; both used it to counter criticisms from the West that their regimes were

undemocratic.

One well-known advocate of Asian values is Singapore’s Kishore Mahbuni, who

argued in a paper at a conference on human rights and freedom of the press that argued that

Western societies have chosen to favor civil liberties of the individual over law and order,

while Asian societies have chosen law and order over individual rights. Neither is superior to

the other, they simply represent different choices. Ultimately, the only liberating force is

economic development. Therefore, he said, they have little awareness of human rights

concepts, and are instead concerned with the immediate challenges of poverty. Asians are not
15
afraid of “soft” authoritarian rule, but rather of chaos and anarchy.

Perhaps the most well known articulation of Asian values came in 1991, with the

“White paper on shared values” presented to the Singaporean Parliament. Given the

multicultural nature of the city, the paper aimed to contribute and strengthen a sense of

national identity based on five “key values”, ostensibly derived from the prevailing living

cultures in Singapore, the Chinese, Malay, and Indian traditions. These were: “Nation before

community and society above self; Family as the basic unit of society; Regard and

community support for the individual; Consensus instead of contention; Racial and religious

harmony.” 16 Nation before community implies that no ethnic group is entitled to preferential

treatment, but rather, all communities are subordinated to the nation as a whole. The

individual is perceived to be educated in the family, but the family exists in a broader context

15
Chew, Melanie. “Human Rights in Singapore: Perceptions and Problems”
16
Rebele, Urike “Freedom of expression and Asian Values in Singapore” AsiaRights Journal, Issue 5, 2005.
a community of religion and culture. Communities are expected to provide assistance for

members who need help catching up with the free market system. Racial and religious

harmony, necessary for social stability, can only exist along with social tolerance and

constant search for consensus. 17

In other words, the goals of economic prosperity and social harmony must be

regarded as superior to the right of free expression as it is experienced in the West. The

governments do not regard the media as a key actor, informing the public and providing a

check on government power. Rather, the media’s role is to be non-partisan on political issues

and supportive of the state’s nation-building efforts. From this perspective, the media’s task is

to inform the public on government policies and help promote national values, in order to

promote harmony among various groups in the country.

Narrow Tailoring and Controls of Traditional Media

The idea of the media as a social harmonizer holds particular appeal to Singapore and

Malaysia, given the chaos of their recent past. Both came into independence in as ethnically

fractured states, thanks to “divide and conquer” colonial immigration policies. British

colonial administrators had put Malay aristocrats into the state bureaucracy, while confining

ordinary Malays to farming. Chinese merchants controlled domestic business, while Chinese

workers were channeled into mining and urban professions such as watchmaking. Migrants

from India, mostly Tamil-speaking, were put to work on rubber plantations. The policies

resulted in a diverse ethnic mix – in 2009, Malaysia was 50% Malay, 23% Chinese, 7%

Indian, and 7% other, while Singapore was 75% Chinese, 13% Malay, 7% Indian, and 1.4%

other. There was little sense of national identity among these groups after independence, and

the post-colonial period was marred by a fierce communist insurgency and rampant ethnic

17
Rebele 2005.
riots that were strongly put down through various emergency measures taken by the

government.

The governments that emerged during that era are the same governments in power in

Malaysia and Singapore today. Although theoretically each has a system of competing

political parties, each has been ruled by one party since independence, PAP in Singapore and

the UMNO coalition in Malaysia. They have had surprisingly few chief executives – one

prime minister may serve for decades, and leaves office after designating a successor from

the same party.

William Case describes Malaysia's government as a “semi-democracy” - one that

tolerates the existence of opposition parties and interest groups even as it closes off electoral

routes and lobbying channels for them.18 For example, the Malaysian Home Ministry has

generally permitted opposition parties, occupational associations, and cause-oriented groups,

which have been able to raise grievances to which the central government has sometimes had

to respond. At the same time, the government has attempted to weaken these groups using

sedition acts, emergency powers, detention, and restriction on assembly and communications.

While opposition candidates are permitted to run for election, they have been systematically

been prevented from gaining enough seats to form a new government, thanks to

gerrymandering, restrictions on campaign speech, snap elections, and, as will be discussed,

state controls on the media.

This electoral approach is downright liberal compared to the semi-democracy

practiced in Singapore. In the early years of its rule, the PAP government used the ISA to

simply detain its political opponents; for example, in 1963, the PAP government detained 111

opposition leaders without trial during something called Operation Coldstone, and left some

18
Case, William. “Semi-Democracy in Malaysia: Withstanding the Pressures for Regime Change” Pacific
Affairs, Vol 66 No 2, Summer 1993. p. 183-205.
of them in jail for more 20 years.19 During the operation, the PAP government arrested the

country's popular opposition leader, Lim Chin Siong, and then did away with him by

imprisoning him for seven years in solitary confinement until he broke under torture and

mistreatment, at which point he was sent directly from Changi Prison to England "reduced to

a vegetable".20 Since those early days, the PAP government has softened its tactics

considerably; political opponents in modern times are simply sued, barred from campaigning,

and/or threatened with a loss of income. Rather than existing independently, civil society

groups such as women's organizations and professional groups are co-opted by the PAP party.

For example, Lee found it difficult to deal with independent trade unions in the early days of

his rule, his government crippled them through intrusive security sweeps and legal curtails on

their activities, while at the same time promoting a government-sponsored alternative, the

National Trades Union Congress (NTUC). Today, only NTUC survives. The government

maintains strict controls on all media, and campaigning by the opposition and opposition

groups are seldom able to win more than two or three seats in parliament. Its “Societies Act”,

which bans all political action by bodies not specifically designated for this purpose, has

proved an effective tool in curtailing political activities by civil societies groups.

Although both countries have experienced strong growth in the decades since their

independence (in 1963 and 1957, respectively), neither has forgotten its shaky beginning.

When Malaysian and Singaporean officials cracked down on press freedoms, they often did

so in the same of promoting harmony in a multiethnic society. Even today, they often present

the constraints of authoritarian rule as a necessary part of the economic prosperity their

nations enjoy. During a 2008 court case against a political dissident who accused him of

stifling opposition and independent thought, Lee Kuan Yew stated that the final test of his

19
Tremewan, Chris. The Political Economy of Social Control in Singapore
Palgrave Macmillan, 1996 p. 28
20
Ibid
rule was really financial – at the beginning of his rule, Singapore had $100 million in the

bank, and today it has $300 billion.21 Mahathir has maintained that restrictions on the press

are necessary to promote domestic harmony, and to counter false impressions about the

country created by the foreign media. 22

Officials from the PAP government come and go from Singaporean media companies

with a frequency that would alarm most Westerners, but this is not considered to be

remarkable in Singapore. In a speech before Singapore Press Holdings, the company's leader,

S.R. Nathan, related a story of his start as the head of the Singapore Straits Times. He came

directly from the civil service, and had never worked in a newsroom before. Lee Kwan Yew

took him aside and said "I'm giving you the Straits Times...You break it, I can piece it

together again, but it will never be the same."23 Nathan felt no need to hide the fact that he

had no media experience, or that he was “given” the country’s leading newspaper by its

prime minister. The idea of the media as nation builder rather than a check on government

power has enough salience in Singapore that the maker of a documentary critical of Lee

Kwan Yew felt the need to outline in detail why a free press is a good idea.24 (The filmmaker

was probably overly ambitious anyway – when an opposition party attempted to screen it,

censors from the country’s Film Board arrived and confiscated it before it could be seen25.)

Cherian George refers to Malaysian and Singaporean efforts to control the media as a

sort of inverse example of “narrow tailoring”, a term he borrows from the American First

Amendment discourse, in which courts require the government to show that any restriction

21
Mydans, Seth. "Power and Tenacity Collide in a Singapore Courtroom" May 30, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/world/asia/30singapore.html?_r=1 Accessed Feb 27,2009.
22
“Attacks on the Press 2000 Malaysia” Committee to Protect Journalists http://cpj.org/2001/03/attacks-on-
the-press-2000-malaysia.php Accessed March 5, 2009
23
S.R. Nathan "SPH Has Become an Important Part of Singapore's Nation-Building". Speech at Singapore
Press Holdings 25th anniversary celebrations and launch of its new logo, 30 March 2009, SPH News
Centre. Published on Journalism.sg . Accessed April 9, 2009.
24
“One Nation Under Lee”, available at http://one-nation-under-lee.org/ . Accessed April 9, 2009.
25
Reuters, “Singapore probes political film on Lee Kuan Yew” May 21, 2008.
http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-33686020080521 Accessed April 9, 2009.
on protected speech is necessary for achieving a compelling state interest, and that this

restriction is “narrowly tailored” to achieve that goal while impacting free speech as little as

possible. George conceives of Malaysian and Singaporean governments as trying to do a sort

of inverse of this, trying to obtain the economic and social benefits from political media

while “narrowly tailoring” their impact so that the media have as little impact in challenging

political status quo as possible. 26

According to this theory, narrowly tailoring political controls can take one of several

forms. The first is licensing of communications technologies themselves. Those that serve

mostly private, business interests can be given more freedom than those that serve mass

media purposes. For example, Malaysia’s press law requires owners of printing presses to

obtain a government license, but machines that are not capable of producing at least 1,000

impressions an hour, such as photocopiers, are not required to be licensed.27 In addition,

media organizations can be selectively licensed based on ownership, national origin, or track

record, thus allowing authorities to block publishers with suspect motives. Both countries

restrict television broadcasting to companies with close ties to the government. The mere

existence of a limited licensing system creates powerful economic incentive to cooperate

with the government because licenses, and therefore the ability to print, are scarce. As long as

a media organization holds a license and would-be competitors are denied them, a license is a

key to monopoly-like profits.

Further control can be gained by revoking or threatening existing licenses. Malaysia

has a history of revoking or restricting press licenses from print media organizations whose

publications anger the government. For example, in 2000, the government added additional

restrictions to the license it granted the newspaper Harakah, published by the opposition Pan-

26
George, Cherian. Contentious Journalism and the Internet: Towards Democratic Discourse in Malaysia
and Singapore . University of Washington Press, 2006. p. 56-7
27
George 2006.
Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS). Under the terms of the new license, Harakah, which had

previously been allowed to publish twice a week, was restricted to publishing twice a month.

Its distribution was limited to PAS members, a move that effectively barred it from being

displayed or sold on public newsstands. Many viewed the new restrictions as a response to

Harakah’s surge in popularity in the run up to the country’s 1999 elections, when its

readership began to rival that of government-linked mainstream publications. 28 In another

case, the Malaysian human rights organization Aliran was unable to find a printer willing to

print its report about Operation Lallang, a 1987 crack down on opposition leaders and social

activists.29

During the same year, two other magazines and one weekly tabloid had their licenses

revoked, and none had resumed publishing a year later. Mahathir has sometimes intervened

personally in media organizations when it is politically expedient – the previous year, in July

1998, before ousting Anwar Ibrahim, his popular deputy, Mahathir engineered the

replacement of the editors-in-chief of two of Malaysia’s leading newspapers, as well the

director of operations of one of Malaysia’s top television stations. All had reportedly been

close to Anwar, and Mahathir replaced them with others who would be loyal to Mahathir. 30

Dan Slater says the Malaysian press can best be viewed as “a propaganda apparatus for the

UMNO party-state, or as a semi-privatized appendage of the information ministry.” All the

mainstream papers are owned by corporate proxies for UMNO or its coalition partners, and

the country’s Printing and Publications Act allows the home minister to ban or curtail

independent media outlets. 31 Because Mahathir kept the portfolio of home minister as well as

28
"Malaysia: Opposition party newspaper harassed" May 2, 2000. http://cpj.org/2000/03/malaysia-
opposition-party-newspaper-harassed.php Accessed March 5 2009.
29
William, Regina. “Analyzing Aliran” Sun2Surf, www.sun2surf.com/article.cfm?id=11281 March 27,
2009.
30
Slater, Dan “Iron Cage in an Iron Fist: Authoritarian Institutions and the Personalization of Power in
Malaysia”. Comparative Politics, Vol. 36 No.1, October 2003.
31
Slater 2003.
the title of prime minister, he effectively had the power to interfere with news organizations

throughout his tenure. As a result, mainstream media outlets in Malaysia often practice self-

censorship, and do little to agitate for greater freedom. The National Union of Journalists, for

example, did not protest any of the closures or other restrictions placed on alternative

publications in 2000, despite many actions against them by Mahathir’s government. 32

While Malaysian independently and opposition-owned print publications face

restrictions and even closings, the situation is even more severe in Singapore, where the

mainstream media scene in that country is effectively duopolized by two government

controlled media companies, Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), which owns all national

newspapers in the country, and the Media Corporation of Singapore (MCS). Under the

Printing Press Ordinance of 1974, media companies are required to be Singapore public

entities and must issue both ordinary and management shares. Management shares can only

be held by Singaporean citizens or corporations, and must be approved by the government.

All television stations are also owned by the Media Corporation of Singapore, except for

cable channels and one station owned by SPH. MCS also owns a huge portion of radio

stations in the country.33

A similar, if more complex, monopoly over television content exists in Malaysia,

which first allowed commercial television to compete with its national broadcaster in 1983.

Its first competitor, TV3, gained a reputation for being entertainment-driven and risqué, and

its decision to import racy foreign shows like Miami Vice was controversial. However, its

political priorities were evident in the fact that it did not even bother to set up a news division

before it launched. After TV3, the Malaysian government granted additional licenses, but

only to similarly political neutral broadcasters.

32
Committee to Protect Journalists 2000.
33
Rebele 2005
 A third element of narrow tailoring involves restrictions on audiences, based on their

perceived levels of trustworthiness or vulnerability. For example, Singapore has a policy of

allowing approved financial institutions, but not the general public, to own satellite dishes.

Malaysia’s press law allows the government to specify which language a publication is

allowed to publish in, a move that allows it to steer information towards or away from certain

audiences.

The final element of narrow tailoring involves restrictions on media content. Many

laws that affect the work of the media are extremely broad and open-ended, making it

extremely difficult to defend oneself against government charges. Concerns about content

can often lead media outlets to self-censor, out of fear of legal consequences under content

regulations. Perhaps the most feared piece of legislation in both countries is each country’s

Internal Security Act (ISA), which allows the government to arrest individuals with a warrant

and detain them without trial. Originally introduced to deal with a Communist insurgency

after independence, and more recently used against Islamic militants, there have been a

number of cases in which the governments appear to have used ISA to crush dissent in the

absence of any real national security threat. During massive protests that followed Anwar’s

arrest in Malaysia, the government often used ISA to make arrests, although there were no

cases of the law being used against journalists. Since the late 1980s, Singapore has limited its

use of the ISA to espionage and terrorism cases, but not political opposition. Despite relative

infrequency of its use, the law continues to have a chilling effect on speech in the countries.34

Another common (and feared) law is the Sedition Act, which outlaws any speech or

action that brings the government into hatred or contempt, or otherwise excites discontent

against it. The Malaysian version of the law, amended after race riots in 1969, also bans the

promotion of ill will or hostility among races or classes. It also criminalizes any questioning
34
George 2006.
of ethnic Malays’ Constitutional privileges, affirmative action-like privileges designed to help

historically impoverished Malays. Zulkifli Sulong, the editor of Harakah, a major opposition

paper in Malaysia, was convicted under the Sedition Act in 1984, although he got off with a

fine. Zulkifli was arrested again for Sedition in 2000, after his paper published an article

criticizing Mahathir’s handling of the Anwar scandal.

Press law in Malaysia also prohibits “maliciously publishing false news”, with the

government given broad leeway to interpret what this means. Both countries also have an

Official Secrets Act, which makes it a crime to receive or publish government information

without official authorization. Malaysia’s New Straits Times newspaper was prosecuted under

the Act in 1995 for publishing an article about military aircraft contracts, and Singapore’s

Business Times got in trouble for printing a small economic growth figure. 35

In addition, the judiciary plays a significant role in silencing criticisms of the state. A

favorite tactic for silencing criticism in both countries is for ruling party members to sue their

critics for libel. There have been almost no cases, in either of Malaysia or Singapore, of the

judiciary siding with a media outlet or opposition politician in a libel suit brought by a

member of the ruling the ruling party.36 Singapore’s long serving Prime Minister Lee Kuan

Yew is probably the most successful defamation litigant in history, having earned more than

US $3.6 million by 1999 in damages against newspapers and political opponents he says

have defamed him, not counting hundreds of thousands of dollars Lee has received from out

of court settlements. 37 The practice is continued by his son and the country’s current prime

minister, Lee Hsein Loong, who in September 2008 won a judgment against the Far Eastern

Economic Review after it printed an article called "Singapore's 'Martyr'", which describes the

struggle of Chee Soon Juan, secretary general of the opposition Singapore Democratic Party,

35
George 2006
36
George 2006.
37
Hass, Michael. The Singapore Puzzle Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999 p.34
in his battles against the ruling People's Action Party. The judge found the article to mean that

the new Prime Minister Lee "is unfit for office because he is corrupt and he too has set out to

sue and suppress those who question him to cover up his corruption".38 Chee was also named

in the judgment, but this unlikely to impact his financial status much as he is already

bankrupt from failing to pay 500,000 Singapore dollars in libel damages to Mr. Lee and

former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong for remarks he made while running against them in

the 2001 election. Chee also lost a libel judgment in 2006, for an article he wrote implying

government corruption in a party newsletter in 2006. 39 In addition, Chee has been

imprisoned for speaking in public without a permit and is ineligible to run for parliament

because of his personal bankruptcy. He holds a doctorate in neuropsychology but lost his post

at the National University of Singapore, an entity with strong links to the government, in the

early 1990s after getting elected to parliament, ostensibly for using its mail facilities for a

private letter.40

Foreign publications that wish to speculate about the role nepotism may have played

in Lee Hsein Loong’s succeeding his father as the country’s ruler only eleven years after the

elder’s retirement should probably avoid doing so in Singapore – The Economist was fined

S$390,000 in 2004 for doing exactly that.41 In 2008, after the Far Eastern Economic Review

told the regime it had no employees in Singapore, and any libel writs would therefore have to

be served to it at its offices in Hong Kong and tried by Hong Kong courts, the regime

instituted requirements that the FEER, the International Herald Tribune, the Financial Times,

Newsweek and Time, post a security deposit of S$200,000 and to appoint a local agent

38
BBC News "Editor 'defamed' Singapore leader" Sept 4, 2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-
pacific/7632830.stm . Accessed Feb 27, 2009.
39
Mydans, Seth. "Power and Tenacity Collide in a Singapore Courtroom" May 30, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/world/asia/30singapore.html?_r=1 Accessed Feb 27,2009.
40
McDonald, Hamish "Libel case shows Singapore's limits"Sydney Morning Herald, May 24, 2008.
41
George 2006.
authorized to accept service of legal writs in the event that the government decided to sue.42

Singapore also retains the right to ban any foreign publication it believes seek to “engage” in

its domestic politics. In Malaysia, foreign as well as domestic publications have been targeted

by the laws seeking to regulate press content. In addition, Mahathir often charges the Western

media with promoting colonial or other nefarious intentions. During the Asian financial

crisis, he accused the Western media of “relentless...attacks on East Asian with reports that

are negative, damaging, and destructive.” 43

Why the Web?

Given such differing perspectives on the role of the media, it seems surprising that

Singapore and Malaysia would both rush to embrace the Internet. The reason is neither

country viewed the new technology as a means of mass communication. Rather, they saw it

as a productivity-enhancing application of computer science, one that enabled quick and

cheap communication and commerce across borders at unprecedented levels. In Malaysia, for

example, the lead agency in setting up the Internet was not the Information Ministry, which

handled propaganda and censorship, but the Ministry of Science, Technology and the

Environment. Despite subsequent events that showed the communications power of the Web,

Malaysian government policy has consistently characterized the Internet as technological and

economic force, not a communications one. As late as 2006, the country’s Minister of

Communication declined to be interviewed for a BBC article on the Malaysian tech sector

because, he said, the Internet was not his responsibility.44 The Singaporean strategy initially

also focused on Internet also a technological and economic opportunity, one its relatively

wealthy and well-educated population was well positioned to take advantage of. Its

42
"Singapore Justice: a Moving Target" Asia Sentinel, August 25, 2008.
43
Hilley 2001.
44
Kent, Jonathon. “Reviving Malaysia's hi-tech dreams” BBC News, June 8 2006.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5053330.stm Accessed Feb. 2, 2009
government actively promoted the development on information technology, and efforts in the

1980s focused on technical matters, such as integrating the country’s hardware manufacturing

with its telecommunication and software services. For the first few years, at least, Singapore

had little regulation regarding Web content.

It may be that Malaysian and Singaporean policymakers were influenced by another

factor – fear of falling behind in what Manuel Castells called the “informational mode of

development”.45 Castells argued that being within a network meant growing exponentially

along with it, while shutting oneself off from a network meant that resources would

increasingly pass it by. Essentially, Castells is referencing the theory of network externality,

which states that the benefit a user derives from having a good varies based on how many

other users also have that good. The classic example of this is the telephone – the more

people have telephones, the more valuable an individual telephone becomes. At a certain

point, it because very difficult to do business without a telephone. Policy makers throughout

Europe, Asia, and North America shared a continual fear of being passed over by the

information revolution, and lead to significant investments in the field in many nations.

Leaders were eager to dominate the snowballing information industry.

Malaysia’s embrace of the Internet

Economic development was a central theme for Malaysia’s long-serving Prime

Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who was in office from 1981 to 2003. Inheriting an economy

based on palm, rubber, and tin, Mahathir was eager to deliver the country from its existence

as an impoverished supplier of raw materials; he aggressively promoted the development of a

modern economy, and was particularly aggressive in his promotion of information

technology.

45
George 2006
 In 1988, Mahathir’s government began formulating specific technology policies

aimed at encouraging the manufacture of IT products and the increasing use of IT in

government. Some of its policies were aimed at the private sector, like tariff reductions on IT

hardware and software, but others involved actions by the government itself. Various

governmental ministries began using computers more and more themselves, and in 1987 the

country privatized its state-owned telecommunication company. In 1985, the government

formed the National Committee on Data Processing (NCDP), which was charged with

formulating a national computer policy, establishing guidelines for computing in the private

sector, promoting Malaysia computer industries, promoting research in computing, and

advising the government on computing. In 1987, it formed a similar organization, the

National Consultative Committee on Information Technology (NCCIT), to forge links with

the private sector. During the 1980s, a majority of the Malaysian government’s actions in the

1980s were directed at building capacity for the production of information technology, as

well as the promotion of its use. Although the private sector would eventually play a larger

role in technological development in Malaysia, much of the early investment in computing

was done by the government. 46

Mahathir also worked to make his country a center of high-tech manufacturing,

seeking out investment from Western and Japanese electronics companies, turning the nation

into one of the largest producers of disk drives and other electronic components by the 1990s.
47
He had a taste for large-scale, ambitious projects (for example, the construction of the

world’s largest building in Kuala Lumpur.)

46
Harris, Roger W. “Malaysia's Multimedia Super Corridor: An IFIP WG 9.4 Position Paper” Paper
presented at the International Federation For Information Processing 9.4 Business Meeting in Bangkok,
19th February 1998. http://is2.lse.ac.uk/ifipwg94/pdfs/malaymsc.pdf Accessed Feb 2, 3008.
47
Clifford, Mark. “Amid the Rubber Trees, a Multimedia Super Corridor?” Business Week, August 25,
1997. http://www.businessweek.com/1997/34/b354190.htm Accessed Feb 2, 2008.
 Perhaps the best articulation of his ambitions for the country came in his 1991

announcement of Vision 2020, a plan to turn Malaysia into a fully developed country by the

year 2020. Vision 2020 involved far-reaching goals, including racial equality, national unity,

the promotion of “community-oriented Malaysian democracy”, robust economic growth, and,

critically, a flourishing information sector.48

Mahathir’s enthusiasm for information technology is difficult to overstate. In his

speech announcing Vision 2020, Mahathir proclaimed that

“In the information age that we are living in, the Malaysian society must be

information-rich. It can be no accident that there is today no wealthy,

developed country that is information-poor and no information rich country

that is poor and undeveloped…. There was a time when land was the most

fundamental basis of prosperity and wealth…Now, increasingly, knowledge

will not only be the basis of power but also prosperity. Again we must keep

up. Already Malaysians are among the biggest users of computers in the

region. Computer literacy is a must if we want to progress and develop. No

effort must be spared in the creation of an information-rich Malaysian

society.”49

Malaysian economic efforts have traditionally been organized in five-year plans, and

Mahathir made information technology development a central theme in the Sixth Malaysia

Plan, which ran from 1991 to 1996. During this time, a number of computer training centers

established themselves throughout the country, including a supercomputer research center

and a National Institute of Information Technology. In the wake of research suggesting

English language proficiency is necessary for success in computing, the government began to

48
Mohamad, Mahathir. “Malaysian : The Way Forward (Vision2020)” Feb 28, 1991
http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/apcity/unpan003223.pdf Accessed Feb 2, 2008.
49
Ibid
increase its emphasis on English language training and the use of the language in business, a

move that reversed post-independence efforts to promote the Malay language. Dr. Mahathir

also established a snazzy Web page for himself; a relatively new move for a head of state that

likely made him of one of the first 70-year-olds in the world with a personal homepage.

Perhaps concerns about the potential political ramifications of free flowing

information might have been more pressing, if not for the fantastic changes information

technology brought to the Malaysian economy. From 1988 to 1996, the Malaysian economy

grew an average of 9% a year. Foreign investors contributed huge sums of money to the

economy, and industry and services made up 45% and 41% of the economy, respectively.

Unemployment stood at 2.6%. There was little reason to tinker with a good thing.50

The Seventh Malaysia Plan, which ran from 1996-2000, devoted an entire chapter to

information technology. Mahathir announced that with this plan, “we move into the

information age.” With the same ambitious spirit, the Malaysian government announced

plans for the centerpiece of its IT strategy, the Multimedia Supercorridor (MSC), a Silicon

Valley in Southeast Asia. Malaysia was far from the only country trying to duplicate Silicon

Valley within its borders, but its plan was uniquely wide reaching and, importantly, well

connected. The MSC initiative arose from a proposal made to Prime Minister and National

Information Technology Council by the famous consulting firm McKinsey & Company,

entitled “Making a Malaysian Miracle”. The proposal argued that the nation’s previous

development strategy, focused on manufacturing, would limit its GDP to a level far below

that anticipated in Vision 2020. The consultants suggested that by developing information

technology and leapfrogging into the information age, Malaysia’s growth potential would be

greatly enhanced, enabling it to meet its development targets. They indicated that Malaysia

could achieve world status in multimedia industries within a few years by transforming itself
50
Harris p.6 1998
into a knowledge-based economy, which would harness the power of information for socio-

economic advancement.51

The Multimedia Super Corridor is a physical place, a 50 kilometer corridor of land

stretching southward from the capital, Kuala Lumpur. Its borders are defined by two existing

megaprojects. To the north, the Kuala Lumpur City Center (KLCC), a city within a city

commercial development which included the world’s tallest building, and to the south, the

Kuala Lumpur International Airport, which opened in 1998. Between the two, a 4,581 hectare

government center was being constructed, called Putrajaya, and, more critically, a place

called Cyberjaya, which Mahathir designated as an “intelligent city” for IT companies. The

two were to be connected up to either end of the corridor. 52

In addition to physical planning for the MSC, Mahathir’s government created seven

national initiatives for IT that were intended to fuel development of applications by MSC

companies. Known as “Flagship applications”, these included an Electronic Government

program; a national "Smart Card", which would store driver's license, passport, and health

information for citizens on one card; a Smart Schools program; a "Telemedicine" initiative

similar to the one recently proposed in the United States by President Obama; a Research and

development cluster, including a Multimedia University; World-Wide Manufacturing Webs

(value-added services in support of regional manufacturing operations); and an electronic

commerce center.

The MSC met with international acclaim almost immediately. Bill Gates praised it as

“a fine blueprint…for how a developing country can use technology to move to the forefront

of modern industry.”53

51
Harris p.3
52
Bunnell, Tim. Malaysia, Modernity, and the Multimedia Super Corridor. RoutledgeCurzon, 2004. p.1
53
Harris 1998 p. 4
 Far from being hindered by the East Asian financial crisis of 1997-8, the MSC may

actually have benefited as Malaysia leaders pinned their recovery hopes on it. In May 1998,

just before negative growth was reported, Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim took pains

to reassure the business community that the government would not cut the budget for the

MSC or telecommunications infrastructure. Many economic stimulus efforts targeted the

information service industry, including a tax rebate for the purchase of a personal computer

by each family and budget appropriations to government agencies to allow them to purchase

computing technology. Mahathir was quoted in the press as saying there was no reason why

work on the MSC should be postponed, and that if anything, it should be accelerated.

Malaysia’s MSC international advisory panel expressed confidence that the MSC would

instigate economic recovery. (One member, a Silicon Valley executive, said that “The MSC

can be the catalyst to pull Malaysia, and possibly the region, out of the economic problems.”
54
) Dr. Mohamed Arif Nun, executive director of the Multimedia Development Corporation,

told the Straits Times that the MSC could be expected to create 25,000 "knowledge based"

jobs, and as such represented "one of our critical ways out of the economic downturn".55

With so much riding on its IT vision and the success of the MSC, Mahathir was loath

to do anything to hinder its growth. In a speech in California in 1997, he promised investors

that the MSC would have the world’s best infrastructure of supporting laws, practices, and

policies. The government issued a Bill of Guarantees, a list of ten commitments by the

Malaysian government “to ensure the success of MSC Malaysia Status companies”. Item #7

on the Bill of Guarantees stated, simply, that the government would “ensure no Internet

censorship.”56 This policy directly contradicted to the country’s consistent policy of control

54
Harris 1998 p. 7
55
Pang Gek Choo, "KL's multimedia hub still on track" The Straits Times. Jaune 5, 1998.
56
Malaysian Government, “MSC Malaysia 10 Point Bill of Guarantees”
http://www.mscmalaysia.my/topic/MSC+Malaysia+Bill+of+Guarantees Accessed February 4, 2009.
and censorship over traditional media. It was a potential Pandora’s Box, but it is unlikely that

Malaysian policymakers regarded it as one at the time. Conventional wisdom in the 1990s

held that the Internet was impossible to censor. Therefore, any government that tried to do so

would be admitting that it did not understand the Internet. This was hardly the message

Mahathir was looking to send to the outside world.

The no-censorship policy was reinforced by the presence of an International Board of

Directors, who carefully supervised the development of the MSC. The directors included

CEOs of major Western technology corporations, including Compaq, Microsoft, Sun

MicroSystems, Cisco Systems, among many others, as well as various internationally

recognized technology experts. In addition to providing valuable business connections, the

MSC board leant powerful prestige and credibility to Malaysia’s efforts to develop its

technology sector. The MSC represented Malaysia’s attempt to base a large portion of its

economy in an area in which it had little international reputation or connections to trade on. It

could hardly afford to upset its patrons in the technology sector, most of who came from

countries with long traditions of free speech.

In addition, the government of Singapore, Malaysia’s rival for IT investment, had

recently put stringent controls on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) Although Mahathir

acknowledged concerns about pornography and political dissidents, he felt an uncensored

Internet would give Malaysia a competitive advantage over Singapore.57 There were other

competitive factors, as well - while Singapore’s role as a producer for “value added” items,

such as information technology was well established, Malaysia was still seeking to counter

visions of itself as a backwater, especially in the eyes of foreign corporations. Dr. Mohamed

Arif Nun, chief of Malaysia’s Multimedia Development Corporation, told an interviewer that

he realized many American companies were “very emotional” about free speech. Malaysian
57
Abbott 2003.
officials were loathe to upset prestigious corporations which had invested in the country, and

Mohamed told an interviewer that he believed that the no-censorship pledge was a key selling

point in attracting foreign investment, and particularly American companies. He added, “I’ve

met many people who are very upset about Singapore’s decision to censor materials on the

Internet.”58

In direct contradiction of the Singaporean approach, he took an extremely open

approach to ISPs. In 1997, the government received five new applications from companies to

be licensed as private ISPs. Applicants included the Binariang, a private satellite

communications company; Mutiara Telecommunications, a private telecommunications

company; Cellular Communications, and Time Telekom, a publicly traded

telecommunications company. With the demand for Internet subscriptions exploding,

Mahathir’s government announced that it would open up ISP licenses to all fixed line

providers and had no plans to restrict the number of licenses offered. 59 Licensing private

ISPs gave private companies an incentive to build the expensive broadband and fiber optic

cable necessary for an "information-rich" country, an effort that would have been extremely

expensive for the government to undertake on its own. Although allowing the public to

access the Internet through private ISPs had the potential to inhibit the government’s role to

control online speech, that concern was apparently secondary to the appeal of using market

forces to improve and spread information technology in Malaysia.

Technically, the Bill of Guarantees applied only to companies granted MSC status by

the Multimedia Development Corporation. However, because the MSC was touted as the first

phase of a national plan and because Mahathir considered the MSC to be “a pilot project for

58
"Interview: A Question of Freedom..." Interview with Dr. Mohamed Arif Nun, New Straits Times, March
16, 1997.
59
Harris 1998
harmonizing our entire country with the global forces shaping the Information Age,”60

Malaysian officials acted as though the spirit of the law applied to the entire country. In order

to create the image of an IT-friendly regime, officials would have to live up to the spirit of the

law, and not simply its literal wording. This sometimes led to seemingly conflicting messages

from different agencies. For example, officials from the information ministry or the home

ministry, which was in charge of security, would periodically announce that if someone

posted seditious or libelous content on the Web, it could be prosecuted under the country’s

existing laws that applied to traditional media. Invariably, officials from the multimedia

ministry would subsequently come out with assurances that the Internet was not to be

censored, and that the government’s policy of openness remained in place. For example,

when the government amended the license of the opposition Harakah print newspaper,

permitting it to be published only twice a month, Deputy Home Minister Chor Chee Heung

suggested that the restrictions might be extended to the print version of the paper as well.

Although the story was reported by the official Malaysian news agency Bernama, the Prime

Minister's office quickly ordered news editors to kill the story and Chor was forced to issue a

new statement claiming that he had been misquoted.61

Those in Malaysia who were curious about the strength of the government’s

commitment would not have to wait long for an answer. Shortly after the MSC was

announced, the country faced one of the most controversial political situations in its history –

Mahathir’s firing and subsequent arrest of Anwar Ibrahim, the popular Deputy Prime

Minister.

Singapore, the intelligent island

60
George, p. 70
61
Abbott, Jason P. “Democracy@Internet.Asia? The Challenges to the Emancipatory Potential of the Net:
Lessons from China and Malaysia” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Feb., 2001), pp. 99-114
 Like Malaysia, Singapore has never been short on ambition. Although there was

some evidence that it functioned as a small kingdom in the first millennium, Singapore was a

backwater fishing village by the time it came under British control in 1819. Its British

governor took advantage of the island’s strategic location at the southern end of the Malacca

Straits, an artery of commercial and naval importance on the spice road. Singapore became a

major trading and military center, one of the strongest military and commercial bases in the

British Empire. Under the British, it became a global crossroads, with traders coming from

around the world and a predominantly Chinese population with Malay, Indian, and European

minorities. With little land and few natural resources, Singapore has always had to live by its

wits. This history has contributed greatly to a Singaporean self-image as a quick-witted

people at the center of commerce. Until the middle of the twentieth century, Singapore’s

mainstay was entrepôt trade; the island functioned as an import and export center, and its

merchants made a living as middlemen. However, it soon became clear that a middleman’s

salary was not enough to support the island’s growing population.

After the country’s independence, the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP), lead by

long serving Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, envisioned an industrial island that would be a

premiere location for the production of low-cost goods. One of PAP’s core political narratives

promoted the idea of Singapore’s development through its’ people’s efforts and talents. The

governing party promoted a sense of collective endeavor for its people and economy, and this

was visible in its economic strategies of the 1960s and 70s. Based on little more than

aspirations, the country built a thriving manufacturing industry specializing the electronics.62

At a time when other developing countries viewed multinational corporations with suspicion,

Singapore welcomed them with open arms. This strategy lead to massive job opportunities

for what was at the time a poorly educated and rapidly growing population. Throughout its
62
Crang, M. (2003). "Singapore as an Informational Hub in a Space of Global Flows." DISP 154(3): 52-57.
development, the government secured popular support in part by a social contract that built a

strong social infrastructure, including subsidized housing, poverty eradication programs,

employment, and education. Singapore became known as an economic miracle. As its

citizens became much more affluent, however, government influence even over private

sectors of the economy increased. Affluence went hand in hand with growing dependence on

the state.

A key component of the manufacturing strategy relied on low wages for workers,

secured initially by strong government ties with organized labor. When relations with

independent trade unions soured, Lee’s government crippled them through intrusive security

sweeps and legal curtails on their activities, while at the same time promoting a government-

sponsored alternative, the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC). The strategy of

crippling independent groups and promoting government-backed alternatives is a hallmark of

PAP rule, even today, and remains one of the key reasons why no opposition party has ever

lead the country.63

By the 1980s, the limits of manufacturing were becoming clear. Singapore’s

neighbors began to undercut its manufacturing with lower cost structures. Government policy

began to focus on value-added areas of the economy. In the beginning, the strategy focused

on finance, but it shifted rapidly to emphasize computers.

The first widespread national plans for an information technology sector came in

1980, with the creation of a ministerial-level committee, called the Committee on National

Computerization (CNC). It was tasked with computerizing government agencies, training of

IT professionals, and encouraging the country’s fledgling software and services industry. It

spread to more savvy members of the public fairly quickly, as Singaporeans with new
63
Rodan, Garry "The Internet and Political Control in Singapore" Political Science
Quarterly, Vol. 113, No. 1 (Spring, 1998), pp. 63-89
personal computers began to use daily dial-up connections to the international FIDOnet

system for file exchanges with other countries. 64 In 1986, the country formulated a national

information technology plan, which recommended the implementation of a project that would

integrate hardware manufacturing and telecommunication and software services. The plan

also included a significant educational component, designed at greatly increasing the number

of programmers, designers, and system managers that the country produces. It involved

collaboration between a number of actors - the National Computer Board, Singapore

Telecom, the Economic Development Board, and the National University of Singapore – but,

as in Malaysia, the project in had little to do with the Information and Communications

Ministry. The National Computer Board was an agency under the Ministry of Finance, and

the National Science and Technology Board existed under the trade and industry ministry.

However, unlike in Malaysia, that disconnect would not continue forever.

At first, the only Internet service available in the country was from Technet, a system

set up in 1991 by the National University and the Technology Board for researchers and

academics. It was expanded to the general public in 1994, when the government-owned

Singapore Telecom launched Singnet, the country’s first commercial Internet service

provider. The service was part of a national strategy put in place in 1992, called IT2000-A

Vision of an Intelligent Island. It rejected the idea that the Internet should be the province of

the elite, and included aggressive plans to expand computing technology to the general

public. The IT2000 report announced that

In our vision, some 15 years from now, Singapore, the Intelligent Island,

will be among the first countries in the world with an advanced nation-wide

64
Kalathil and Boas, 2003.
 information infrastructure. It will interconnect computers in virtually every

home, office, school, and factory.65

The plan called for (and largely accomplished) all 750,000 households on the island

to be connected to a comprehensive computer network by the year 2000. It mandated the

installation of broadband coaxial and optical fiber networks, a relatively easy thing to

accomplish in Singapore then in many other societies because 90% of Singaporeans live in

high-rise public housing. Apartment dwellers pay no additional cost for their television,

phone, and Internet connections, and developers of new housing units are required to make
66
them cable-ready. In addition, all businesses, schools, libraries, and government offices

were to be connected.

The economic rationale behind IT2000 was the realization that Singapore’s

traditional role as a trade broker had to modernize if it wished to continue. One minister said

that because geography would no longer secure the country’s status as a hub, it had to ensure

it created the technological and human infrastructure necessary to remain a cross roads for

people, goods, information, and ideas. If it did not do so, the country could expect to be a

backwater again.67

Ironically, the initial motivation behind wiring all Singaporean houses, businesses,

government offices, and institutions was not the Internet, but rather a system called Teleview,

the world's first interactive video-text system, which received and reacted to instructions

from a user through a phone line and sends back text, graphics, or photographs through the

phone or radio waves. Singapore Telecom commercially launched Teleview in 1990, and at

the time of the initial IT2000 statement in 1992, it had about 10,000 subscribers.68 Teleview

65
Arun, Mahizhnan and Yap, Mui Teng, "Singapore: The Development of an Intelligent Island and Social
Dividends of Information Technology" Urban Studies, Vol. 37, No. 10, 1749–1756, 2000
66
Rodan 1997
67
ibid
68
Rodan, 1997.
was a domestic service, with no international component. When it became clear that the

World Wide Web offered a far superior service, the government upgraded Teleview so that it

also provided access to the Internet. This made business sense, both because it provided

Singaporean companies with the most advanced technology possible and because it protected

the government’s initial investment in Teleview, but it did allow the public to access a

broader Internet, including Web sites of foreign publications as well as forums and message

boards whose content the government had little power to influence. It seemed to present a

challenge to PAP’s traditional control over the media, which until that time had been more or

less total.

The challenge did not go unnoticed. Although mindful of the conventional wisdom at

the time that the Internet could not be completely censored, the Singaporean government

undertook a series of moves that seemed designed to create a chilling effect. Lee Kuan Yew

commented that only 3-5% of the people were psychologically prepared to handle the clash

of ideas available on the Internet. For the bulk of the population, he stated, access to such

material would be profoundly destabilizing.69 As a result of this philosophy, Singapore’s

government was one of the first in the world to formally extend its laws regulating traditional

media to the online world. Parliament enacted a law in 1994, formally extending the

government’s control to electronic communication, although it did not yet spell out specific

rules for online media. In testimony before the Singaporean parliament in 1996, Information

and the Arts Minister George Yeo characterized the opportunities created by the online world

as a doubled edged sword, in which a country hoping to reap the economic benefits of the IT

revolution must guard against destabilizing influences, such as irresponsible speech and

pornography. He characterized the popular newsgroup soc.culture.singapore, on which users

could comment anonymously about matters in Singaporean society and politics, as “like
69
Mahizhnan and Yap, 2000.
reading graffiti on a public toilet”. Yeo emphasized the need to ensure “responsible”

discussion where religion and politics are concerned, so that online conversations did not

undermine Singapore’s political stability, moral values, or religious harmony.70

By 1996, 5-10% of the Singaporean population regularly used the Internet, a figure

close to that of the United States, and ahead of Australia. To encourage the public to become

technologically savvy, the government set up Internet clubs at ten state-run community

centers. In addition to wiring most of the nation’s infrastructure, Singapore’s information

technology policy included a strong education component. The government’s The Masterplan

for IT in Education called for 30% of curriculum time to be spent on computer-based

learning. Information technology was to be prevalent and available in the schools from the

first year of instruction. Every teacher and student was to have an Internet account for

educational purposes. The government also moved quickly to move its own services online,

and experimented in online tax forms, a program called e-Citizen, which streamlined

government services online, and even a Technology Court, which allowed trials to be

conducted without the parties’ physical presence in the court room.71

In the mid-1990s, the government allowed two new Internet Service Providers (ISPs)

to join the market. On an economic level, this would seem to be a normal free market move,

providing a level of competition among providers to create incentives to create better and

cheaper service. Users soon spread out among services; within a few years, 60% had

abandoned Singnet for one of the newer ISPs.72

On a political level, however, allowing competitors to challenge a government-

backed service provider monopoly might have seemed a loosening of controls. In many

70
"IT revolution both good and bad" The Straits Times, March 16, 1996. Accessed February 22, 2009.
71
Ibid
72
Yap, Jimmy “Uunet gets Singapore ISP License” Znet Asia Sept 21, 1999. Accessed February 22, 2009.
http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/hardware/0,39042972,13019566,00.htm
countries, privately owned ISPs have been much more difficult for government censors to

control than a single, government-owned provider. In Singapore, however, this was not the

case. The two new providers it allowed into the marketplace were Pacific Internet, a joint

venture between Sembawang Media, a division of a government-linked conglomerate, and

ST Computer Systems and Services, a unit of the government-owned Singapore Telecom. It

was soon joined by Cyberway, a joint venture between Singapore Press Holdings, the

government-linked corporation that owned every print publication in Singapore, and the

government-owned Singapore Technologies Pte. Ltd. In other words, the two new

competitors were nearly as linked to the government as the state owned ISP. The regime

managed to gain the benefits of free competition among providers while at the same time

allowing only those with heavy government links to compete.

In May 1996, the three kindred ISPs announced an agreement to form a Singapore

Internet Backbone, which was designed to speed Web traffic by allowing communication

from Singaporean network to Singaporean network to be dealt with entirely internally, rather

than routing all traffic through the United States, as had been the case in the past. The move

created faster Internet connections within Singapore, but also enhanced the government’s

ability to monitor internal Internet traffic. In addition, since all telephone lines are owned by

Singapore Telecom, a government-owned company, the government effectively had

centralized control on all information sent out of the country. To further government abilities

to pry, all three ISPs required citizens to produce a numbered government identification card

in order to take out a domestic Internet service account.

Official inquiries into Internet content soon began. Nominally, many of these steps

were taking in the name of saving citizens from the horrors of pornography, but many seemed

to be designed to create a chilling effect on all online speech. In 1994, for example, the
government searched all image files in every account on the Technet. It announced that it had

found 80,000 images, of which it deemed 5 to be pornographic.73 In response, the

government posted a message warning users about “countersocial activity74”. In another

reported case, officials at the National University of Singapore fired an academic after

confronting him with unflattering emails he had written about an administrator that had been

sent over the Internet. 75

The belief that the government was monitoring online conversations became

widespread among Singaporean Internet users. One contributor to soc.culture.singapore had

his or her comments sent via a remailing service in the United States to ensure anonymity.

The person claimed to be a civil servant who had recently posted comments critical of some

government policies, and had reason to believe his/her phone had been bugged and that

authorities had been questioning his/her friends. The commenter wrote, “I know for sure that

all messages on scs [soc.culture.singapore] are closely monitored by MITA [Ministry of

Information and the Arts]. There are information officers whose job is to read messages on

scs and feed the important ones back to the high ups. 76

The feeling of paranoia creeping onto the net in Singapore is reminiscent of an

emerging cultural problem in Singapore known as kiasu, which comes from a Hokkein

dialect term meaning “scared to lose”, which Melanie Chew discusses in her study of human

rights in Singapore. At its root, Kiasu culture characterized by a sense of helplessness and

fear in the face of seemingly insurmountable political and power structure that the average

person cannot hope to understand or participate in. It results in strict conformity to norms and

laws, great fear of giving offense or appearing uncooperative, exaggerated respect for

73
Ibid
74
Philip Shenon, "Two-Edged Sword: Asian Regimes on the Internet," New York Times, 29 May 1995
75
Ibid
76
Rodan 1997.
superiors, and a dread of victimization. Its effect is to install in people a willingness to

conform to, and eventually depend on, government-sanctioned directions and policies in all

areas of life. Kiasu as a concept is still being widely debated in Singapore, but it is

sufficiently prevalent to bring press and even ministerial concern, and the creation of a kiasu
77
form of humor, with comic books and cultural jokes.

Government strategy seemed to include making high profile cases of a few Internet

users involved in objectionable behavior, while at the same time being deliberately vague on

the subject of how and when it monitored the Internet. When a trio of lawyers anonymously

posted a message from an Internet café on soc.culture.singapore that the government found

objectionable, the café’s owners immediately apologized and took steps to distance

themselves from the message. Several Internet cafes reconfigured their newsreaders to keep

customers from posting on newsgroups. In another case, when a Singaporean man was

prosecuted for possession of obscene films, some of which he downloaded from the Internet.

The police acknowledged that they had begun an investigation of the man after receiving a

tip from an Interpol unit concerned with child pornography, but refused to give information

about how they had monitored his online activities after receiving the information. The

climate of concern was reinforced in the Singapore Straits Times, which published numerous

articles detailing the ways in which Internet users are vulnerable to outside surveillance.78

Interestingly, PAP also began a softer campaign for opinion online, by using the

Internet itself. MITA Minister George Yeo told the Straits Times that PAP had a duty to

combat misinformation about itself online, and to do so quickly and “stylishly”, before

opposition parties and “irresponsible users” succeeded in taking over the terrain for

77
Chew 1994
78
Rodan 1997
themselves. Accordingly, Young PAP, the party Youth organization, began commenting

regularly on soc.culture.singapore.

More direct regulation came in 1996, when the Singaporean government transferred

domestic control of the Internet from Telecommunication Authority of Singapore (TAS) to

the Singapore Broadcasting Authority (SBA). The SBA was to “concentrate on areas which

may undermine public morals, political stability or religious harmony in Singapore.”79 The

bureaucratic switch had a huge impact. It signaled that the government did not distinguish

between the Internet and traditional media. While the Telecommunication Authority’s

mission was more technical and bureaucratic, SBA’s mission called for protecting the

stability and security of the government, which one Singapore Straits Times reporter pointed

out is distinct from the nation. “Barring content that "tends to bring the Government into

hatred or contempt, or excites disaffection against it,” she wrote, “grant unchecked-possibly

uncheckable-power to the ruling body to deny any criticism of it on the Internet.”80 SBA

guidelines included bans on “contents which undermine the public confidence in the

administration of justice”, which could be potentially threatening to any whistleblower who

wished to come forward online.

Soon after the Singaporean online world was transferred to its control, the SBA

issued a host of regulations on the Internet. It introduced applied the licensing scheme that

had been so effective in constraining print publications to the online world, requiring Internet

service providers and Internet content to be licensed by the SBA and subject to its conditions.

Furthermore, it required all religious or political sites to register with the SBA. Critics

immediately charged that requiring registration effectively gave the SBA veto power on

whether or not a religious or political site would be allowed to exist. Since the SBA was

79
Ibid
80
Ibid
controlled by the heavily controlled PAP government, it was effectively giving PAP the

power to determine whether its opponents could operate Web sites. More direly, service

providers were required to take action to prevent the availability of “objectionable content”,

defined as content that threatens “public security and national defense, racial and religious

harmony, and public morals.” This includes “contents which tend to bring the Government

into hatred or contempt, or which excite disaffection against the Government” and “contents

which undermine the public confidence in the administration of justice.”81 In addition,

licensees were required to keep detailed personal information about all users involved in their

service, including details on readers, editors, and writers of content, as well as detailed

records on subscribers and their Internet use to assist with investigations. Finally, all

electronic newspapers were required to be registered and subject to local media laws under

the Newspaper and Printing Presses Act.

In addition to the new legal restrictions, there were technical restrictions as well. All

Internet traffic into and out of Singapore was required to be routed through a proxy server, so

that the government could screen out objectionable material.

However, the new regulations did not meet with passive acceptance. An organization

for Singaporean students abroad based at Stanford University protested the measure by

displaying black ribbons on their pages, a riff on American Webmaster’s use of blue ribbons

to protest government attempts to regulate online content. One member of

soc.culture.singapore submitted a petition to the SBA opposing “any attempt to limit or

control political, religious or other debate on the Internet”. 82

Despite the new regulations, not all were yet intimidated. The popular site Sintercom,

started in 1994 by a Singaporean PhD student at Stanford University, had become a hotbed of

81
Ibid
82
Ibid
independent comment on Singaporean issues. Although it included message boards and

opinions and news pieces, it also included a jokes and recipes section, and it was able to

argue successfully that it was a civic organization, rather than a political one.

Foreign press coverage of the move was very negative, portraying the move as

another example of Singapore’s draconian rule. Authorities responded that they were merely

seeking to protect the morals of the country, and said the proxy server barrier was intended

only for pornography and not for political sites. To emphasize the point, the government

blocked 100 “high impact” pornography sites, and nothing else. It also appointed a National

Internet Advisory Committee, headed by a scientist. As a result of the Committee’s

recommendations, the country’s Media Development Authority (MDA) revised its Internet

Code of Practice to explain the responsibilities of licensees in less dire terms. A revised code

placed emphasis on pornography and material likely to be harmful to racial and religious

harmony, and pledged to take a “light touch” approach to the Internet. Its Web site listed

“facts and myths” about its regulations (i.e. “Myth: MDA is stifling religious and political

discussion…Fact: MDA does not stop religious and political bodies from putting up web

sites. We ask that they register with us as content providers to emphasize the need to be

responsible.83”)

Despite the light touch rhetoric, the MDA sporadically removed its gloves. A writer

on the Singaporeans for Democracy site has arrested for an article that alleged the prime

minister had committed a minor breach of election law, and urged Singaporeans to break the

same law. He was charged with inciting disobedience to the law, which carries a three-year

prison sentence. Authorities later dropped the charges, saying the man was mentally ill.

Shortly thereafter, authorities threatened to charge the editor of Fateha.com, a Muslim site,

with criminal defamation for articles about senior establishment figures. This selective
83
Geroge 2006 p. 73
regulation, along with the clear message that MDA was watching speech online, lead many

observers to conclude that the government was using a “soft touch” approach to promote self-

censorship.

Reformasi and Unrest in Malaysia

In summer and fall 1998, several things happened in Malaysia. The country was in

the throes of the East Asian Financial Crisis, and Mahathir and his Deputy Prime Minister

and Finance Minister, Anwar Ibrahim, had strong and public differences over how to deal

with the crisis. Malaysia’s currency had fallen to half its former value, the Kuala Lumpur

Stock Exchange had plunged, property values were in decline, and public confidence in the

government was wavering. At the time, government bailouts of some sectors of the economy

but not others and slow federal restructuring of the economy lead to charges of cronyism and

ineptitude. Mahathir viewed appealing to the IMF as an unacceptable abnegation of

Malaysian sovereignty, supported independent policies to stabilize the currency and cushion

the economy, rather than the liberal corrections advocated by the IMF. Anwar preferred free

market oriented corrective measures, and publicly disagreed with many of Mahathir's

methods. In addition to economic crisis, public missteps by the UMNO government added to

a sense of discontent. In August 1998, an opposition parliamentarian named Lim Guan Eng

was sentenced to 18 months in prison for sedition and publishing false news after publishing

a statement on behalf of a Malay woman who charged her granddaughter had been the victim

of statutory rape by the chief minister of Melaka, a Mahathir stalwart. The charges against

Rahim were eventually dropped, and the girl was sent off to a reform institution. The

apparent nepotism, as well as the idea of a Chinese politician putting himself on the line for a

Malay, a rare occurrence in racially divided Malaysia, brought Lim widespread sympathy

from both Chinese and Malays. Rahim's case was one of several instances of alleged bad
conduct among UMNO politicians; another involved another UMNO chief minister who was

caught smuggling $768,000 in cash into Australia and got off by blaming his poor English, a

move that earned him derision at home.84 In addition, Mahathir himself was accused of

giving preferential contacts to his children and political cronies, in one instance allegedly

directing the state’s profitable energy company to bail out a floundering shipping company

belonging to one of Mahathir’s sons. He was also accused of ensuring that companies tied to

his children received significant contracts for the development of his megaprojects, such as

the Petronas Towers 85

Anwar publicly presented himself as having crusaded against such corruption and

abuse of power, leading to speculation that he was not willing to wait for Mahathir to retire

before leading the country. Ironically, it had been fears about what Anwar might represent as

a challenger to Mahathir and UMNO that had lead to his inclusion in the party in the first

place. Anwar first rose to prominence in the 1970s has a student activist for Malay-language

education, social justice, and Islam. Although he was detained for two years under the ISA

after supporting a peasant uprising, Anwar's talent was evident, and he was invited to join

UMNO in 1982, where he quickly rose to become Mahathir's heir apparent. He embodied the

concept of orang Melayu baru, or "new Malay" - a devout Muslim who also embraced

economic and social modernization. The decision to take Anwar as a deputy was extremely

practical on Mahathir’s part – Anwar was also being courted by conservative Malaysian

Islamic Party (PAS), which had a history of jostling with UMNO for the loyalties of the

Malay Muslim majority.

84
Weiss, Meredith Leigh Protest and possibilities: civil society and coalitions for political change in
Malaysia Stanford University Press, 2006
85
"The Trial of Anwar Ibrahim" documentary by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, originally aired
October 3, 2000.
 In early September 1998, Mahathir fired Anwar and implemented currency and

capital controls Anwar had opposed. Although the economy improved under Mahathir's

guidance, his strategy of removing Anwar seemed underhanded to many, and Anwar went

down fighting, precipitating a political crisis. Although Mahathir fired Anwar at exactly the

same time he implemented his own fiscal policies, the reason he gave for removing his

finance minister was not policy differences, but sexual immorality. Mahathir accused Anwar

of adultery, sodomy, and concealing evidence, and the charges were repeated as fact in

explicit detail in articles and banner headlines in the government-licensed press. Headlines

included “Anwar Sodomized Me 15 Times!” and

The sexual misconduct charges themselves were not new. In 1997, a poison pen letter

written by the sister of Anwar’s chief political secretary, Ummi Hafilda, accused Anwar of

sexual misconduct with both men and women, a severe charge in conservative Malaysia. The

Secretary later testified in court that when he confronted Ummi, she said she fabricated the

charges after the country’s Senior Home Minister offered her money and contracts to make

the charges. The two were allegedly angry that they had not been awarded certain contracts

by the government. However, at the time, Anwar was still in Mahathir’s good graces. A

police investigation into the allegations, sent to Mahathir himself, found the charges

unproven and likely “purposefully made up”.86 Mahathir accepted the findings of the police

report, and publicly stated his support for Anwar, describing the allegations as “too absurd to

be believed.” The following year, in the midst of a schism with Anwar, Mahathir revived the

sexual allegations, and this time spearheaded Anwar’s prosecution on the same charges.

Former UMNO Party District Chief, Raja Kamaruddin, told the Australian Broadcasting

Corporation that in June 1998, he was called to the office of Uno’s chief political secretary,

Aziz Shamsudin, and told that the prime minister had told him "Anwar is not fit to be the
86
Ibid.
prime minister, and he knows zero about finance. Your [Shamsudin's] duty is to organize a

conspiracy to stop Anwar from being the prime minister."87 Raja then said he was charged

with initiating a propaganda campaign to destroy Anwar's reputation.

Anwar clearly anticipated his fate. Shortly before his arrest, Anwar recorded a video

to be played in the event he was incarcerated in which he described Mahathir as “desperate”

and “too committed to his few cronies and family interests.”88 Anwar’s supporters alleged

that Anwar was being punished for his objections to corruption in Mahathir’s regime, and

Anwar alleged that Mahathir threatened to arrest him on sexual misconduct charges unless he

agreed to resign his office. Many believe Mahathir had always resented his charismatic and

popular deputy, who was able to maintain a (some charge romanticized) image at home and

abroad as a clean and uncorrupt leader in a country increasing plagued by money politics.

Shortly before his sacking, Newsweek magazine named Anwar its 1998 Asian of the year.

Although many party members believed that Anwar was planning to stage a coup at the

UMNO assembly, Mahathir successfully routed him by countering his charges of cronyism

with revelations about how many of Anwar's friends and relatives had benefited from

government largesse. Mahathir also moved against Anwar bureaucratically, checking his

power by giving more and more economic responsibility to Daim Zainuddin, who later

became Anwar's successor as finance minister.

Despite his sudden and unceremonious sacking, Anwar was not immediately

detained. For 18 days, he toured the country, giving well-attended lectures on justice, the

evils of Mahathir's rule, the prevalence of cronyism and corruption, and the need for social

safety nets and reform. While acknowledging differences with Mahathir over fiscal policy,

Anwar argued that fighting cronyism had been a key element of his plan to resolve the

87
Ibid.
88
Ibid.
country’s fiscal crisis, and that Mahathir had been forced to cut him down because the Prime

Minister was so dependent on his cronies for political survival. Anwar maintained that he had

been pressing for change from within, and stressed his role in the creation of low cost

housing and other populist moves while in government. For this, he received a warm

reception from a great cross section of society, including Islamic NGOs and grassroots

organizations, youth and women’s' organizations, and Islamic and secular opposition parties.

They were able to rouse tens of thousands of Malaysians, mostly young and mostly (but not

exclusively) ethnic Malay to join the cause to proclaim their support for Reformasi, or

reform.

Anwar was finally arrested on September 20, 1998, after leading an enormous rally in

Kuala Lumpur. The public first became aware of Anwar’s arrest when one of his supporters

who had witnessed the event sent a vivid description of it to newsgroups and discussion lists

on the Internet.89 After his arrest, Anwar himself was initially held under the ISA until other

charges were filed. Opposition to the ISA became a central issue for the nascent Reformasi

movement. Public fury grew when, nine days after his arrest, Anwar appeared in court with a

black eye and severe head and neck injuries. An inquiry later determined that he had been

beaten in custody by the inspector general of police, and then detained under ISA so that his

injuries could be concealed.

The criminal charges against Anwar were fairly ridiculous on the merits. The abuse of

power allegations were based not on corruption or political overreaching, but from Anwar’s

efforts to get Ummi to renounce the contents of her 1997 poison pen later, which he claimed

were false. The sexual charges were propped up by very questionable testimony. The only

people who admitted to having illicit sex with Anwar did so while being held in solitary

89
Sabri Zain, "How the Internet is molding public opinion in Malaysia" Part of the Reformasi Diary.
August 6, 1999. http://www.sabrizain.org/reformasi/diary/cnet.htm Accessed March 16 2009.
confinement under the ISA, and all later recanted and stated that they had made up the

allegations under physical and psychological abuse by the police. Mahathir could count on

obedience from the police, because his title of Home Minister gave him effective control over

the police force. He could also count on cowed behavior from the judiciary because of his

penchant for “packing” the judiciary with loyalists, and removing judges who did not comply

with his wishes. In 1988, he won a court battle with a rival by securing the removal of six

Supreme Court justices who had sided with the rival. One political analyst commented that

although the country once had a good judiciary, the judges “all belong to Mahathir now.”90

Thus, the judge at Anwar’s trial let the prosecution change its story several times.

When Anwar was able to provide alibis for the time prosecutors said his trysts took place, the

judge permitted them to alter the dates on the indictment. When Anwar’s lawyers pointed out

that the building in which Anwar allegedly had his trysts had not even been built on the new

date prosecutors claimed the acts took place, the judge permitted the prosecution to alter the

dates on the indictment once again.91 When Anwar’s lawyers produced evidence that the bed

on which the acts allegedly occurred had not been delivered on the date on the new

indictment, but this was apparently ignored.92 During cross examination by Anwar’s lawyers,

the prosecution’s lead witness, Anwar’s former driver, admitted three times that he had never

been sodomized by Anwar. Despite this, the judge deemed the witness’s initial allegations

credible.

Protest Online

With UMNO's control of traditional media almost total, Anwar’s supporters turned to

the online world. Pro-Anwar sites exploded online. One of the most popular, Anwar Online,

was created just a few days after the arrest. It contained letters from Anwar in prison,

90
Slater 2003.
91
Slater 2003.
92
"The Trial of Anwar Ibrahim" 2000.
including a long treatise on societal reform and an open letter to the attorney who prosecuted

him, as well as an invitation for visitors to "participate in the first Malaysian people's meeting

on the Internet. This meeting is to complement the UMNO meeting in Kuala Lumpur."93

Within a few months, over 50 pro-Anwar sites had emerged, circulating his letters from

prison, eyewitness accounts of demonstrations, and foreign news reports of the political

crisis. One site gave its users the option of sending e-cards with messages like “Justice for

Anwar” and “Anwar Ibrahim: Reformasi”.94 Another, which called itself the International

Free Anwar Campaign, tracked foreign and domestic news reports on the case and

encouraged its readers to “be its ears and eyes”, sending in developments.95 The Webmaster

of Anwar Online commented that, "There was no other choice--all the media was against us,

without exception…the Web site's success was enormous ... there weren't a lot of graphics,

but access became slow because of the traffic. I didn't expect so many responses."96

The speed with which Anwar’s supporters set up their online presence stood in stark

contrast to the government’s use of technology. More than three weeks after Anwar’s firing,

Mahathir’s Web page still contained a photo of his smiling former deputy.97 Because only

about half of Malaysians had access to the Internet in 1999, Anwar’s supporters printed out

and photocopied the contents of Web sites and distributed them in remote rural areas. A

British journalist was surprised to find translated copies of an opinion piece he had written,

available on the Internet and being distributed during a demonstration.98

The Verdict and Reformasi

93
Anwar Online, 1999. http://members.tripod.com/~Anwar_Ibrahim/index.htm Accessed March 16, 2009.
94
“A card for Anwar” http://web.archive.org/web/20000511172535/http://cardforanwar.hypermart.net/ .
Accessed March 23, 2009 . Many pro-Anwar sites from 1999 and 2000 are no longer available online, but
can be accessed through the Internet Archive, www.archive.org.
95
Freeanwar.com, now defunct.
http://web.archive.org/web/20001018163534/http://www.freeanwar.com/introduction.htm#WHAT%20YO
U%20CAN%20DO%20TO%20HELP Accessed March 23, 2009.
96
Sabri Zain 1999.
97
Sabri 1999.
98
Ibid
 Despite the vibrancy of the online opposition, it could do little in the face of a legal

situation so stacked in favor of Mahathir. Predictably, Anwar was convicted of abuse of

power, sodomy with his adoptive brother, and other sexual offenses. He was received several

jail sentences that were to run concurrently, for a total of nine years in prison. After the trial,

the attorney who prosecuted the case was rewarded with a seat on the Malaysian Supreme

Court.

The verdict set off four days of protests in the capital, which occasionally turned

violent as riot police and paramilitary troops clashed with demonstrators. The licensed

traditional media portrayed the unrest as evidence that reform groups were fomenting social

unrest. Anwar’s conviction lead to outrage both at home and abroad, and helped fuel a new

rallying cry for the Reformasi movement - "Justice for Anwar". Before his arrest, Anwar had

designated his wife, the ophthalmologist and political neophyte Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, as

his successor as head of the Reformasi movement. Wan Azizah gave enormously popular

speeches calling for an end to constraints of the media and judiciary and an end to korupsi,

kolusi, dan nopotisme (corruption, cronyism, and nepotism). Many people took to the streets

in support of the cause, and these demonstrations were harshly suppressed by the state.

Although large demonstrations had mostly petered out by mid-November, they resumed for

certain key moments, including the announcement and anniversaries of verdicts in Anwar's

cases. They also formed the basis of the first modern political movement to seriously

challenge UMNO's rule.

Barisan Alternatif

In April 1999, Wan Azizah launched a new, non-racial (though Malay-based) political

party called Parti Keadilan Nasional (National Justice Party), also know as Adil (“Just”). She

aligned herself with three established opposition parties – the Chinese dominated and secular
Democratic Action Party (DAP), the Islamic party, PAS, and the small social democratic

party, PRM. Despite diverging ideologies and differing core constituencies, the parties

unveiled a common manifesto on October 23 that promised to abolish the ISA, adopt term

limits for the prime minister, fight corruption, and work for social justice. Notably absent

from the platform were PAS’ traditional call for an Islamic state, reflecting DAP’s objections

and PAS’ determination to broaden its appeal. The coalition called itself the Barisan

Alternatif, or Alternative Front.

To appeal to as broad a constituency as possible, BA rallies often featured both Malay

and non-Malay speakers. Understanding the importance of sending a "one Malaysia"

message, the BA held rallies in multiple languages to reach multiple ethnic groups at once. It

tried to position itself as the party that avoided subterfuge and spoke to all races at once, in

contrast to the BN's strategy of telling one story to Malays and another to the Chinese. BA

rhetoric was focused on justice, democracy, and good governance (transparency, separation

of powers, lack of corruption). BA candidates highlighted freedom of speech, assembly, and

the press, and repeal of the ISA. Their rallies focused on overcoming racial divisions, trying

to convince Muslim supporters of PAS, for example, that it was safe to vote for a Chinese

DAP candidate if he or she was the local BA option.

In addition to the four major political parties, the Reformasi movement also linked a

variety of NGOs and civil society groups that would not appear on the surface to have much

in common with one another. One participant was the Women's Candidacy Initiative (WCI),

an umbrella organization of women’s groups that united to present a candidate for

Parliament, with the goal of increasing female representation and encouraging women to

become more politically aware and involved. Another participant was a group of NGOs

called the People's Manifesto Initiative, which pressed for more democratic space in
Malaysia. Other NGO participants included Suara Rakyat Malaysia (“Voice of the Malaysian

People”), the All Women’s Action Society, the Pusat Komunikasi Masyarakat (“Centre for

Popular Communications”), the Belia Islam Malaysia (“Malaysian Islamic Youth

Movement”), the Pertubuhan Jammah Islah Malaysia (“Malaysian Islamic Reform Society”),

and similar groups.

BA candidates included a number of political neophytes, some of them colorful.

Reformist novelist Shahnon Ahmad ran as a PAS candidate, despite outrage over his 1999

novel, Shit. Several of the first-time candidates came from activist backgrounds, including

Chandra Muzaffar, head of the International Movement for a Just World and Keadilan deputy

president ran on a platform denouncing cronyism and the politics of fear, and Keadilan Vice

President Tian Chua, a human rights activist who campaigned on a platform of justice,

multiracialism, and redistributative policies.

Whatever their ideological differences, all BA candidates espoused a belief in anti

corruption and in Keadilan, or justice.

The Campaign Online

Because the traditional media maintained its pro-government bent, supporters of

Reformasi turned to the Web to promote their cause. Online discussion sites also played an

important role in enabling popular discussion and disseminating information. While some

online listservs that had been active before the Reformasi movement simply began carrying

discussion of the new situation, such as the newsgroup soc.culture.malaysia, many others

sprang up in the wake of movement. They included ADIL-net, and a host of sites printing

Anwar's letters from jail, as well as BA specific sites and other, news-oriented sites that

featured stories from domestic and foreign sites, as well as comments by the sites' owners,

announcements of upcoming events and rallies, and much more. The site “Crony-net” tracked
connections between Mahathir and his top deputies and major corporations, listing

directorships and shareholding for each.99 Debates were generally civil, although some users

were banned for inflammatory comments. The Internet proved particularly crucial in reaching

young people, a group with the readiest access to the Internet.

Opposition parties also went to great lengths to get themselves noticed online. The

DAP maintained a trilingual site, and PAS redesigned its site and invested considerable

resources in its online newspaper, Harakah. Two Chinese activists created an online "People

are the Boss" campaign, which was started by a group of ethnic Chinese journalists. It

advocated a non-communal participation by citizens, and was signed by a number of Malays

and Indians, as well as Chinese citizens. The project's "Declaration on the People's

Awareness" explains that the government is appointed by and empowered by the people, and

therefore the people have the right and responsibility to monitor their "employees". Another

valuable source of information online was the country’s venerable multiethnic human rights

group, Aliran, which began publishing reports online on those arrested for civil disobedience,

as well as calls for the release of those jailed under the ISA100.

The message was essentially the opposite offline. The traditional media carried large

UMNO advertisements, linking the opposition with foreign influence and disorder, while

promising continued economic growth under UMNO rule. Malaysia's best selling print

publication, The Star, refused to run a Barisan Alternatif ad which featured Anwar's black

eye, while at the same time Malaysian print media agreed to run a Barisan Nasional ad

featuring Anwar's wife, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, which the captain "Even she doesn't trust

99
See Crony-net, formerly available on /www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congress/5525/ and now available
through http://web.archive.org/web/20010517004023/www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congress/5525/ .
Accessed March 23, 2009.
100
See, for example, “"Black Eyes for Justice" Aliran online,
http://web.archive.org/web/19990508044817/www.malaysia.net/aliran/ October 1999, and "Latest ISA
detention a mockery of the police's new "people friendly" approach"Latest ISA detention a mockery of the
police's new "people friendly" approach, April 1999. Accessed March 26, 2009.
her husband...If she can't trust him, can we?" Wan Azizah turned to the online newspaper

Malaysiakini.com to refute the advertisement. "I trust my husband absolutely," she said.101

The Rise of Alternative Online News

Wan Azizah’s decision to use an online newspaper to refute allegations printed in a

print newspaper represented an adaptation to Malaysia’s cowed print media but unrestricted

online world. Malaysiakini (“Malaysia Now”) was a recent venture, started by two former

print journalists, Steven Gan and Premesh Chandran, who were fed up with the state’s

censorship of their reporting in traditional media. For Gan, the defining moment came in

1995, when a print newspaper refused to publish a story he broke on the deaths of 59 inmates

at an immigration detention camp. Frustrated, Gan passed the information on to a human

rights activist, who was subsequently charged with spreading false news. Chandran wrote in

Malaysiakini’s business plan. “The Malaysian print and broadcast media has for long failed

to meet international standards. Self censorship and biased reporting is widespread…the

public, while generally supportive of a more independent media, have come to accept local

characteristics and develop their own talent for ‘reading between the lines’”.102 In another

society, the two might have started an independent print paper, but because Malaysia’s

licensing scheme made this impossible, they turned to the online world. Gan later told an

interviewer “I got into the Internet because it was the only avenue I had.”103

Its editors saw Malaysiakini as an independent site whose mission as “highlighting

problems”. Gan said that the site was not anti-government per se, but highlighted problems

with the ruling regime in order to compensate for perspectives not adequately covered by the

licensed press. Gan noted that “We don’t say anything good about the opposition either,”

101
Malaysiakini archives, available online at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Malaysiakini/message/12
Written Nov. 1999, accessed March 16, 2009.
102
Cherian George 2006 p. 160
103
Ibid p. 169
citing outraged phone calls he received from members of the opposition after they objected to

negative coverage in Malaysiakini. 104

Gan and Chandran credit the Internet with allowing them to pursue their professional

ideals. Chandran wote,

“We don’t have the self-censorship mentality because we are not worried

about losing a license. The psychology of our organization is to push. There’s

a feeling of liberation – let’s go do things. In the mainstream, even writes

censor themselves. This kills their energy, their enthusiasm, their idealism…

We want to have an organization that is liberated…we celebrate that. It’s

about liberating the mind.”105

The site financed its initial expenses with grants from the Bangkok-based Southeast

Asian Press Association and the Media Development Loan Fund, two international

foundations supportive of democratic media. They planned to eventually support the site

through ad revenue and classified ads.

Malaysiakini was launched on November 20, 1999, just nine days before the first

elections after Anwar’s sacking. It immediately jumped into the electoral fray. In the

inaugural issue, the site reported on a citizen group’s criticism of Mahathir for his repeated

suggestion that the opposition could “run amok” and lead to riots, as well as an op-ed from

Steven Gan in which he denounced Mahathir for promoting hysteria. It also included a

column from Malaysian economist and activist K.S. Jomo, who described himself as

“shocked and disappointed” by Mahathir’s decision to disqualify 680,000 newly registered

voters from the upcoming election.106

104
Ibid p. 163
105
Ibid
106
Malaysiakini Archives, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Malaysiakini/message/3?var=1 Written Nov.
20,1999, Accessed March 24, 2009.
 Many of Malaysiakini’s early stories involved shining a light on inadequacies in

mainstream media coverage. Within its first week, Malaysiakini had reported that the Chinese

language paper Sin Chew Jit Poh had Photoshopped Anwar out of a photograph of ruling

party politicians and replaced it with a photo of Mahathir’s current deputy, a move it likened

to Communist countries’ practice of expunging out-of-favor leaders from history.107 In

another report in its first week, the Malaysiakini criticized the major print publication The

Star, for an article it ran called “DAP mum on two-term limit”. The story was based on a

report from Transparency International, which had distributed questionnaires to 19 Malaysian

political parties, asking for their views on issues such as economic reform, the independence

of the judiciary and freedom of

information. The Star’s report was focused on the DAP opposition party’s failure to answer a

question about presidential term limits. Malaysiakini slammed the report as biased for its

failure to mention that no party in the ruling coalition had even completed the survey (a move

that lead Transparency to conclude that UMNO parties ‘either have no views on curbing

corruption or are non-committal to the issues raised’) or that two opposition parties, PAS and

Keadilan, received full marks from Transparency International for their responses.108

Authorities did not make the early years easy for Malaysiakini – as “unlicensed”

journalists, Malaysiakini reporters were sometimes denied access to official briefings, and

disgruntled officials denounced the site in the mainstream press – but there were no official

attempts to close the site down. Gan remarked, “We never get threatening phone calls from

the authorities, perhaps because they know the moment they do that, we’ll report it.”109

107
Cherian George 2006 p. 162
108
Malaysiakini.com editorial, Nov 20, 1999.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Malaysiakini/message/2?var=1 Accessed March 24, 2009.
109
Ibid
 The other group to emerge as a major source of alternative news was the PAS

political party, which began posting an online “party mouthpiece”, Harakah Daily. It started

as a small experiment, an attempt by the party to put content online from its biweekly paper,

Harakah (“movement”). As the 1999 elections approached, however, the Party began to see

the value in posting its perspectives online in a fast-moving election campaign. Its permit did

not allow it to publish a print edition more than twice a week, and the party’s message was

being outpaced by the UMNO- controlled print and broadcast media. The online version of

Harakah was originally intended to be purely an election tool, and the site went dormant for

a few months after the election, but later events forced it to take on a much larger role.

In addition to PAS’s use of the Web to promote its version of the news online, it has

also showed a remarkable ability to use the medium to reach voters offline, especially poor

rural Malay voters, a major PAS constituency, and one often without access to the Internet. In

order to reach voters in the rural north of the country, Harakah produced daily newsletters

aimed at undecided voters. Reporters in the field wrote stories and emailed them from local

PAS offices to headquarters in Kuala Lumpur for editing and layout. The documents were

then converted to pdf form and emailed to commercial printers in battleground areas, where

they were then printed out and hand-delivered by party workers to voters’ homes. This hybrid

online-offline strategy proved very effective in reaching rural voters. 110

Beyond “traditional” alternative news sites, there were a variety of sites put up by

Reformasi activists, in which they chronicled events in real time. Perhaps the best known of

these was Reformasi Diary, a site by civil engineer turned traditional journalist turned online

citizen journalist named Sabri Zain. Beginning in fall 1998, Sabri chronicled events from

Anwar’s arrest until mid-2000. His articles mixed factual accounts, satire, and editorials.

Sabri’s news coverage included accounts of major rallies and police responses as well as
110
George 2006. p.143
articles about individual Reformasi leaders; his satirical and opinion articles included an op-

ed that compared Anwar’s trial proceedings to Alice in Wonderland’s world through the

looking glass111 and another that slammed UMNO’s election campaign ads as fear mongering

and inaccurate.112The Diary, which could never have been published in the licensed

traditional media, was emblematic of a new movement challenging the hegemony of the

state-controlled media on a large scale. In an interview after the events, Sabri said he felt

compelled to write Reformasi Diary after witnessing censorship as a reporter for the print

newspaper The Star. He took firm and colorful issue with Mahathir’s concept of a pro-

government press as necessary for nation building, saying,

“I prefer ‘society-building’. A nation can have all the biggest,

tallest, longest skyscrapers, factories, shopping malls, and superhighways

in the world – but if its society is a weak, groveling mass of spineless

protoplasm, I wouldn’t want to live there. The paramount role of the press

is to be the eyes, ears, and voice of the people. The press helps shape its

ideals, guards its values, defends its dignity…it [should] propel society

forward. 113

UMNO, for its part, raised the specter of ethnic and religious conflict if it lost the

upcoming 1999 elections. It pledged to uphold the affirmative action system that favored

Malays, in the face of efforts by some Chinese coalitions in the BA to make affirmative

action based on economic status. It also employed a media strategy in the state of Sabah that

heavily implied a vote for the ruling coalition would result in economic benefits for the state,

with well-covered visits by UMNO ministers who promised poverty eradication, road work,
111
Sabri Zain, “Alice in Wonderland: Who Bribed the Tarts?”
http://web.archive.org/web/20010213225509/www.sabrizain.demon.co.uk/diary/alice.htm Dec. 25, 1998,
Accessed March 23, 2009.
112
Sabri “Nazional Front launches new advertising blitzkrieg” 1998.
113
“de Silva, Dayaneetha. “Unmasking Sabri Zain”. Interview on Malaysiakini, Oct. 18,2000. Accessed
January 14, 2009.
and a comprehensive highway system for the state. The ministers stated categorically that

only their party had the money to help Sabah develop, and that the funds would not be

available if the state voted for opposition candidates. On election day, one housewife told the

New Straits Times she voted for an UMNO candidate expecting that the local hospital would

be upgraded.114 UMNO candidates also campaigned on Mahathir’s handling of the fiscal

crisis, which by 1999 was showing clear signs of remission. The BN created an array of

cheerful economic statistics, showing everything from stock market growth to a mid-

campaign announcement that the country’s growth rate was over 8%. UMNO created

advertisements touting its business credentials, as well as advertisements aimed at Chinese

business people warning of economic disaster if the BA came to power. In general, UMNO’s

campaign focused on continued stability and the regime’s economic acumen. BA candidates

had difficulty competing on these issues, because so few BA parties had ever held power

even had the state level.

Outcome

In the end, UMNO won, but its control was shaken. PAS emerged as a serious

challenger for Malay voters; the UMNO had to depend on Chinese and Indian support for the

first time. Although the BA did not win, it made the most significant gains of any opposition

party in the country's history. BA parties received 43% of the vote in Peninsular Malaysia,

and was competitive even in seats that it lost, losing 26 seats by a margin of less than 5% of

the vote, and another 24 seats by less than 10%.115 It might have had an even greater showing

if not for Mahathir’s decision to hold elections early, at the end of 1999. By holding early

elections, the regime was able to claim that it could legitimately keep all 680,000 voters

114
Moten, Adbul Rashid. “The 1999 Sabah State Elections in Malaysia: The Coalition Continues” Asian
Survey, Vol. 39 No.5 Sept-Oct 1999. pp.792-807.
115
Martinez, Patricia "Malaysia in 2000: a Year of Contradictions" Asian Survey, Vol. 41, No. 1, A Survey
of Asia in 2000 (Jan. - Feb., 2001), pp. 189-200
registered in that calendar year off the voter rolls because the Electoral Commission was

unable to process them in time, a tacit recognition that a significant portion of the new voters

would have case their ballots against UMNO if given the opportunity. 116 The BN’s margin of

victory was so slim that the extra 680,000 votes alone could have made a big difference. In

addition, by holding elections before the country’s Aidilfitri holiday, which marks the end of

Ramadan, Mahathir was able to hold elections before young, wired city-dwellers, would have

returned to their families' villages in large numbers. This demographic, which had been

critical to the Reformasi movement, might have influenced the more conservative rural

population against UMNO. UMNO was so concerned about the movement’s influence among

university students that it began requiring a mandatory orientation session for incoming

students in which top government officials warned them against “biting the hand that feeds

you.”117 There were allegations of other irregularities, as well – a judge in one district found

that electoral abuses were so severe that they required a revote. His decision was later

quashed by an electoral commission packed with Mahathir appointees.118 There were also

allegations that UMNO had used "phantom voters", a practice in which thousands of votes

are imported from outside a given constituency.119

Gerrymandering that rendered the votes of Malays more powerful than those of non-

Malays mostly worked in the BN’s favor, meaning that the BN was able to take far more

parliamentary seats that simple math might have indicated that it earned – it won 71% of

seats in Peninsular Malaysia, despite having received 54% of the vote, and 93% of seats in

East Malaysia, despite having received 62% of the vote. (Gerrymandering in favor of Malays

did work in the BA’s advantage in some states, though. It was able to take all parliamentary

116
Slater 2003.
117
Felker 2000.
118
Slater 2003.
119
Martinez 2001.
in Terengganu state and all but one in Kelantan state, areas in which PAS captured the Malay

vote.) 120

Most observers agree that at least some normative shift occurred, leaving patronage

politics and communalism less dominant than in the past. PAS, the conservative Islamic

party, made concessions to the Chinese community in the states in won in the elections,

sanctioning constructions of Buddha and removing barriers to Chinese schools. One notable

BA candidate who won her seat was Betty Chew, the wife of Lim Guan Eng, the Chinese

politician who was jailed for his advocacy on behalf of a Malay girl who said she was raped

by an UMNO politician.

Running under the BA ticket also helped generate support for smaller candidates. For

example, the Women's Agenda for Change candidate, Zaitun Kasim, made a respectable

showing in the election, despite ultimately losing the race. Virtually alone among opposition

candidates, she received regular and largely favorable coverage in the mainstream press,

largely due to the novelty of a woman running. Zaitun ran as a non-politician and women’s

activist, focusing on the environment and development as well as on gender issues, problems

the media coverage allowed her to draw attention to.

In addition, the Reformasi movement energized young voters, a demographic that

was previously largely apathetic to politics. A large number of both Malay and non-Malay

university students worked on opposition campaigns, and some were also involved in NGOs.

In an article in the Human Rights journal Aliran Monthly, Malaysian scholar Patricia

Martinez commented, “Voter apathy has been quite widespread over the years in non-Malays,

because of cynicism about their power and the electoral process.” She explained that with

120
Weiss 2000, p.420-1
many significant seats won or lost by small margins, the fact that many who did not vote

before are now politically conscious could well prove significant.121

Mahathir retained power, but with significant loss of prestige and respect. His violent

crackdowns on peaceful Reformasi demonstrators sparked outrage throughout the country,

and his use of the ISA to detain Anwar’s supporters was so widespread that the Kamunting

Prison that held detainees was nicknamed the “Mahathir Marriott”.122 When country’s human

rights commissioner issued a report critical of the government’s actions against Reformasi

demonstrators, Mahathir fired him and appointed a new human rights commissioner, the

former attorney general who had helped him crack down on the judiciary in 1998.123

Perhaps most significantly, Mahathir kept his pledge not to censor the Internet, even

in the wake of scathing criticism during the Anwar affair and Reformasi movement. “Even

when Mahathir went through the lowest of the low, and there were calls to block the worst

websites, he resisted,” said one official. 124 Mahathir complained bitterly, at one point

remarking that anti-government messages distributed online constituted a threat to national

security by inciting the public to hate and even murder him and other leaders, but he did not

censor online speech. The only Malaysians arrested for online speech in 1998 were four

people who spread false rumors about knife-wielding Indonesians rioting in Kuala Lumpur,

which caused a panic. He may well have paid heavily for his decision – the BN’s majorities

were sharply reduced in major urban areas, the places most likely to have access to the

Internet and hence to the BA’s message.125 It wasn’t that Mahathir had suddenly turned into a

liberal democratic ruler – he continued to curb traditional media he found objectionable. In

February 2000, just after the elections, the Mahathir government amended PAS’s license to

121
Weiss 2000 p. 421
122
Slater 2003.
123
Ibid
124
George 2006. p.70
125
Weiss 2000. p. 419
publish the print edition of Harakah, limiting it to two editions a month, and requiring that it

only be sold to party members.

PAS’ response was several fold. First, pray. When the license was revoked, Harakah

editor Zulkifli announced that he would hold mass prayers to ask God to save the publication.

Secondly, the party relaunched HarakahDaily.net as a daily news site the following month,

complete with web TV. Proving it was not without a sense of humor, Harakah also applied

for a permit to publish a daily print newspaper, which was never granted.

The site was a stunning success. Like its print successor, it was printed in mostly in

Malay, but with significant English content as well. By the middle of the 2000s, it had three

dedicated staff, and drew on the work of about 30 editors, reporters, photographers, and

layout artists who work for both the bimonthly print publication and the Web site. It has gone

through several server upgrades to deal with increases in traffic. Although some ministers

feared readers would stop buying the print edition if they had free access to the online

version, they ultimately decided the party’s goals would be best served by spreading

information as freely as possible. The site began to carry an invitation to other webmasters to

take advantage of its free syndication service.

Harakah’s online presence attracted concern from the authorities. Some ministers

made vague threats about muzzling the publication, but the government immediately clarified

that it would not censor the Web. Zulkifli was not without his troubles – he spent three years

with a sedition charge hanging over his head for printing a statement critical of the judiciary

during the Anwar trial before ultimately being fined – but the Internet allowed Harakah to

maintain a presence it would never have been able to have if limited to traditional media.

Online presence also allowed PAS to prove that it was no Taliban, a charge frequently leveled

against it by UNMO.
 PAS’ political secretary, Hatta Ramli, acknowledged the value of the Web in

circulating ‘correct’ news, responding to attacks, and circulating announcements. Hatta noted

that Harakah Daily was set as the default homepage for party organizers’ browsers. “It’s a

one-stop shop,” he said. 126At the end of 2000, PAS leaders were so convinced of the value of

the new technology that they announced a party IT plan. Among other things, the plan

required party leaders at all levels to have personal email accounts, and provided computers

with Internet access to all PAS offices down to the local level. Tellingly, PAS also sought to

deal with the lack of Internet access in rural areas. A key component of the plan was

partnering with companies to sell computers to members and supporters, with the goal of

weaning them off mainstream media entirely. This is a strategy known as “routing around”,

reaching audiences directly, without going through a gatekeeper, i.e., the UMNO-controlled

media. Clearly, the Web represented a critical opportunity for PAS.

Return of the Status Quo?

With new possibilities online for the opposition, UMNO’s reelection, and the Asian

financial crisis waning, one might have expected early twenty first century to be a heady time

for either the BA or the government. Instead, it proved a shaky point for both of them. PAS

and UMNO tried to out-Islamicize one another, to the great alienation of the non-Muslim

minority. In April 2002, PAS proposed that it would institute shariah in the states it

controlled, a meaningless gesture because such a move would have to be approved by the

UMNO federal government, which UMNO had already announced it would not give. The

move towards conservative Islam cost PAS its alliance with women’s groups and, more

critically, the Chinese-dominated DAP party. DAP pulled out of the Barisan Alternatif

coalition, citing irreconcilable differences with PAS. DAP issued a press release calling for its

former partner to withdraw the shariah bill to demonstrate its commitment to moderate
126
George 2006 p.143
policies, and warning that if it continued to press for shariah, the public would become

convinced that PAS’ polices were incompatible with pluralism, human rights, women’s right,

and the Malaysian Constitution.127

At about the same time, PAS alienated many moderates after the September 11

attacks in the United States, when it called on young Malay men to confront American forces

in Afghanistan. This terrified not only the Chinese, but also middle class Malays, who

realized their newfound prosperity was dependent on doing business with the West.

For his part, Mahathir instituted a requirement that all civil servants, including

university professors, pledge loyalty to the government and the proclamation of Malaysia as a

fundamentalist Islamic state. Unusual for a man credited with the creation of a Malay middle

class, Mahathir told the Straits Times that “Malays are not yet safe.”128 At another time, after

a deadly fight between Malay and Indian squatters in Kuala Lumpur, Mahathir proclaimed

that “Malays must fight as one”, and denounced a group seeking greater Chinese rights as

“worse than the Communists”.129 When a Keadilan candidate won an important by-election in

a heavily Chinese district, Mahathir backpedaled, appointing Chinese “secretaries” to

advance their community’s interests and detaining several Keadilan leaders. Mahathir did not

do everything wrong. He addressed corruption charges by firing his finance minister, freeing

him to get rid of the minister’s cronies in business. Although he could not totally eliminate

corrupt activities like giving special contracts to certain businesses and favors to certain elites

(as one cynic pointed out, “UMNO still has to be funded.130”), he was able to sweep away

corrupt elites with few political influence. He also exacted some retribution against states that

127
Cherian George 2006. p. 155
128
Balasubramaniam, Vejai. “Politics in Times of Crisis” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 37, No. 32,
August 10-16, 2002.
129
Case, William. “New Uncertainties for a Pseudo-Democracy: The Case of Malaysia”. Comparative
Politics, Vol. 37, No.1 October 2004. pp.83-104
130
Ibid
went with the opposition, cutting oil royalties to Terengganu state after it went with PAS in

the 1999 elections.131 These changes let some of the anger about corruption dissipate.

In June 2002, weary from fighting political battles and well into his 70s, Mahathir

announced his desire to step down. He would serve until the end of 2003. He designated his

deputy, Abdullah Badawi, as his successor.

In addition to the usual media controls before the 2004 elections, the UMNO

government took unusual steps to increase its chances, apportioning extra parliamentary seats

to its strongholds, while refusing to increase the seats of the rural Northern states held by

PAS and gerrymandering their districts, lumping “reliable” Chinese voters with poor Malays

likely to vote for PAS. The government also amended the Electoral Offenses Act, requiring

opposition parties to give high electoral deposits and subjecting their activists to severe and

arbitrary penalties.

The results of the election, held March 21, 2004, were heralded as a triumph for

UMNO. The ruling party increased its share of the popular vote from 56% in 1999 to 63.8%

in 2004.

In addition to the electoral restrictions mentioned above, the UMNO government

announced the 2004 elections only 8 days before voting, giving the opposition almost no time

to create a campaign. For good measure, it also banned political rallies. The recovering

Malaysian economy was an excellent selling point, and voters viewed Abdullah as being

removed from the excesses of Mahathir’s rule.

Abdullah himself was a key selling point, taking the wind out of the sails in many of

the opposition’s strong areas. Many of his actions seemed based on countering PAS, which

UMNO viewed as its most significant competition. Under his leadership, the country’s Anti-

Corruption Agency made high level busts of government, political, and corporate officials;
131
Australian Broadcasting Corporation, “News Hour”. Report on Malaysian Elections, April 14, 2008.
Abdullah publicly announced that no one would be shielded from the law. He dealt with

public discontent with law enforcement by establishing a commission to look into the

performance of the Malaysian police, and made impromptu visits to government agencies in

order to increase professionalism in the civil service. He took a personal interest in the poor,

touring flood-stricken areas and giving free tuition to children of poor families.

Perhaps most significantly, Abdullah proved to be an effective weapon against PAS.

He dismissed PAS’ blueprint for establishing an Islamic state, while at the same time

demonstrating that Islamic governance was already being observed in Malaysia, and

expanding upon his Islamic credentials by conducting prayer breakfasts for a host of public

events. UMNO also took significant steps in reviving its popularity with young people,

creating youth groups, many of them aimed at young women. The combination allowed

UMNO to make huge headway, particularly in areas in lost to PAS in 1999. In addition to

PAS, UMNO so successfully routed the Keadilan party that it kept only one seat in

parliament, Wan Azizah’s, and that was only after a recount.

The Reformasi demonstrations, which had been so active in 1999, were nowhere to

be found in 2004. Anwar was still in jail, but protests calling for his release had ended, and

most pro-Anwar sites were dormant. The electoral fight between UMNO and PAS, with its

religious overtones, left civil society groups largely sidelined. Some commentators argued

that they had no place to function in Malaysian politics.

One of the few bright spots for the former BA coalition was the surprising success of

the DAP party, which won 12 parliamentary and 15 state seats, greatly improving upon its

performance in the 1999 elections. DAP effectively positioned itself as the only secular party

in the elections, which gave it support from non-Muslim voters. It campaigned on the slogan
“Say no to 929”, a reference to Sept. 9, 2002, the day Mahathir declared Malaysia an Islamic

state.

Malaysiakini

One of the bastions of independent discourse in Malaysia, Malaysiakini, also

appeared to be headed for hard times in the beginning of the 21st century. The site’s business

model called for it to be independent through advertising revenue, but that was not

forthcoming. Although it had been free, the site decided it would have to start charging

subscription fees. In a way, that was part of a worldwide trend – the advertising-only model

was failing, and online publications like Salon.com were charging subscription fees or

closing entirely. Malaysiakini’s ad revenue was particularly hurt by insinuations from

Mahathir that because it had taken an organization with links to George Soros, it was party to

an international Jewish conspiracy against Malaysia.

Malaysiakini began charging for subscriptions in mid-2002, and a year later had

nowhere near its targeted number of subscribers. Khairy Jamaluddin, Deputy Prime Minister

Abdullah’s son-in-law and special assistant, gloated, “I’m glad we didn’t do anything to close

down the site. The market may do it for us.”132

Circumstances would change in 2003. Malaysiakini published a letter from a reader

identified as “Petrof”, who compared UMNO’s youth organization to the Ku Klux Klan.

UMNO Youth’s angry leaders filed a police report against Petrof, accusing him or her of

sedition. The following Monday, ten police officers arrived at Malaysiakini’s offices,

demanding to know Petrof’s email address. The editors refused. The police said that if

Malaysiakini did not release the email address, they would confiscate all of its computers for

their investigation. Police seized all 19 computers, effectively shutting down the site,

although its technical team was able to get it running on an alternate server with ten hours.
132
George 2006. p. 174
On the same day, the site’s landlord, a computer distributor with links to the government,

served it with an eviction order for breaking the laws of the country.

Malaysiakini, however, was hardly isolated. Before the police had even left the site’s

offices, a producer at an independent radio station had already alerted everyone on his

mailing list. Steve Gan sent an appeal to Charter 2000, an alliance for media reform

Malaysiakini had been involved with. Malaysiakini staff also reached out to KAMI, an

alliance of independent journalists, Amnesty International, the Southeast Asian Press

Organization (SEAPO) and several Malaysian NGOs. Before the end of the day, Amnesty,

Reporters Without Borders, and Aliran had issued press releases condemning the raid. Within

hours, well wishers appeared to donate computers, and 200 people held a candlelight vigil

outside Malaysiakini. The chairman of SEAPO wrote to Mahathir, warning that the country’s

international reputation was at stake, and within a week, Aliran and two other Malaysian

NGOs launched a joint appeal to “all concerned Malaysians to support urgently and

generously the nation’s only independent newspaper in its hour of need.”133The NGOS asked

Malaysians to purchase subscriptions or donate directly to Malaysiakini’s bank account.

Soon after the online protests started, official news services picked up the story.

Outcry was immediate, passionate, and international. It was widely reported in the domestic

media (surprisingly, the New Straits Times called it a ‘debacle’ and criticized UMNO Youth

for its ‘lack of maturity’, and the official news agency Bernama blamed the event on junior

officials too eager to impress senior officials.134) The foreign press also jumped on the story,

with a scathing article in The Economist and briefs in The New York Times and the Wall

Street Journal. The Asian Wall Street Journal lead its article on the raid by questioning

Malaysia’s commitment to an uncensored Web.

133
George 2006 p.174
134
George 2006 p. 171
 In the wake of so much outcry, the police returned Malaysiakini’s computers, and its

landlord backed off from the eviction notice. One theory is that UMNO Youth acted without

Mahathir’s knowledge, as the prime minister was out of the country at the time. A column in

the New Straits Times pointed out that it would have been helpful it UMNO had done some

research before launching the raid; Malaysiakini had been in such dire financial straits that it

was likely do die a natural death. “Now,” the paper pointed out, “It will probably win some

award, apart from getting financial support from those sympathetic to its cause.”135 Indeed,

that’s exactly what happened. Malaysiakini raised RM 35,000 ($9,200) in the donation drive,

as well as awards from the International Press Institute, Reporters Sans Frontiers, Committee

to Protect Journalists, Asiaweek and Businessweek, and today the site is ranked #13 on the

list of 100 most popular sites in Malaysia, ahead of every other publication and just behind

Wikipedia.136 The police raid made all the difference.

In between

2004 proved to be a good year for at least one supporter of the BA coalition – Anwar

Ibrahim. The Malaysian Supreme Court decided to quash Anwar's conviction on the grounds

that the prosecution's chief witness was unreliable and acted as an accomplice to prosecutors.

The court also concluded that Anwar's alleged co-conspirators did not appear to have

confessed voluntarily. The judges concluded that Anwar should have been acquitted, as the

prosecution had not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Some speculated that the

move was an attempt by Abdullah to distance himself from his predecessor, and to show that

he intended to govern with greater openness. He likely also felt secure in his job after his

party's stunning showing in the 2004 elections.

135
George 2006 p.175.
136
Alexa Web Statistics, http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?cc=MY&lang=none&ts_mode=country
Accessed March 31, 2009.
 The years after his 2004 landslide would prove difficult for Abdullah. Slowing

economic growth forced him to get petroleum subsidies, which caused outrage. By the end of

2007, the country's inflation rate had reached a 10 month high, with higher food, alcohol, and

tobacco prices. Cases of rioting, intimidation, and extortion lead to a 13% increase in

criminal prosecutions. In addition, Abdullah faced a barrage of criticism from a familiar

source – the Internet.

Rise of the Bloggers

In June 2003, a group of English language bloggers met in a café in the Kuala

Lumpur suburbs. The result of that meeting was a blog aggregator called the Project Petaling

Street, named after a marketplace street in Kuala Lumpur. Each time a member of the project

updated his or her blog, the entry would be automatically be cross posted the Project

Petaling Street Web site. The site listed new entries from member bloggers in chronological

order, so that a reader could scroll down the page and read entries from a huge variety of

viewpoints. It was a one stop shop for those interested in Malaysian blogging, and it became

an overnight success, with more than a million hits by December 2003. Although many

members of Project Petaling Street wrote about their personal lives, entries on the site also

reflected discussions among bloggers, and between bloggers and their readers, about

‘sensitive’ political issues, like corruption, affirmative action, and the role of the judiciary.137

By 2004, bloggers had begun to congeal into a potent political force for the first time.

They report content ignored by the traditional media, and often draw from each other and

other independent media, citing reports by Malaysiakini, Aliran, and the international press,

and posting video on YouTube. Perhaps more importantly, they rallied around each other

when one was in trouble. When Jeff Ooi, writer of the Screenshots blog, was in legal trouble

137
Tang, Hang Wu “Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom: Digital Speech in Malaysia”. Asian Journal of
Comparative Law Vol 1, Issue 1, 2006
for a comment insulting Islam left by a visitor on his blog, fellow bloggers from all sides of

the political spectrum began posting a “Support Screenshots” button on their blog, started a

cyber petition calling for his release, and many followed the case closely on their own blogs.

The story was picked up by blogs and tech-related sites abroad, and Ooi received offers of

help from Reporters Without Borders as well as Malaysian NGOs and lawyers.

Perhaps the most widely read blog is MalaysiaToday, written by Raja Petra

Kamarudin, creators of one of the major pro-Anwar sites from the Reformasi days. Launched

in August 1994, Raja Petra declared that his mission was to create a free media as the

foundation of a free Malaysia. The site would function as an independent news source, and its

content would be completely uncensored – its columnists could write about whatever they

want, and no one, no matter “how unreasonable or stupid his or her comments may be”

would be barred from posting on the site.138 Although undoubtedly critical of the ruling party,

Raja Petra also criticized some in the opposition for dishing out criticism while being unable

to take it. He announced that his site would go after both pro- and anti-government forces.

Part of the site’s goal would be “testing how far Malaysia under its new Prime Minister can

honour, respect and tolerate free speech”139

Raja Petra wasted no time in finding out. In addition to less controversial news and

opinion, Malaysia Today carried a special report called the Khairy Chronicles, a 33-part

series about the rise and activities of the Khairy Kamaluddin, the Prime Minister’s colorful

son-in-law and the chair of UMNO Youth. Written in the style of a weekly serial, the

Chronicles called Khairy the “most powerful man in Malaysia” and charged that he

influenced Abdullah so much that he was already the defacto prime minister.140 Among other
138
Raja Petra Kamarudin, “Malaysia Today: the Free Malaysia Campaign” Malaysia Today, Dec. 6, 2004.
Retrieved through the Internet Archive, http://web.archive.org/web/20041208020657/www.malaysia-
today.net/MMblues/2004_12_05_MT_MMblues_archive.htm April 1, 2009.
139
Ibid.
140
"The Khairy Chronicles Part 1" Malaysia Today, July 3, 2005. Accessed through the Internet Archive,
http://web.archive.org/web/20051125015719/www.malaysia-today.net/Blog-e/2005/07/khairy-
things, the series charged that Khairy was the gatekeeper for all information coming into and

out of Abdullah’s office, that he passed government contracts onto his cronies, that he

conspired to destroy opponents through the foreign media, and that he distributed bribes in

order to win political battles.141 Occasionally, Chronicles actually came to Khairy’s defense,

in one case repeating rumors about his alleged marital infidelity and then explaining that “the

truth is far less juicy”.

A unique feature of the Malaysian blogosphere is that many of its prominent

members write posts that seem to reflect inside knowledge. Malaysia Today’s Khairy

Chronicles contained reports of back room deals between Khairy his cronies that Kamarudin

would presumably never have been in the room to hear. Ooi’s blog contains information

unavailable to the general public, which he attributes to “little birds”. The anonymity offered

by the Internet allows those with sensitive information to publicize it without revealing their

identity.

The blogosphere became particularly renowned for its coverage of protests. Perhaps the

most famous was on November 10, 2007, the day 40,000 people participated in a

demonstration organized by Bersih, the Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections, an umbrella

group of 64 civil-society groups and five opposition political parties. The protesters wore

yellow, the color of Malaysia’s royalty and also of citizen action and press freedom. They

were trying to deliver a petition calling for change and an end to corruption to Mizan Zainal

Abidin, Sultan of Terengganu and holder of Malaysia's rotating kingship. As hackers attacked

independent Web sites one by one, Malaysia Today posted messages directing readers to

alternative sites with eyewitness accounts of the demonstrations until it too was shut down.

chronicles.htm April 1, 2009.

141
The Khairy Chronicles Archive. Malaysia
Todayhttp://web.archive.org/web/20051125015221/www.malaysia-today.net/Blog-e/2005/08/khairy-
chronicles-archives.htm Accessed April 1, 2009.
The protest showed the power of cell phones and SMS, as protestors called and texted reports

of the demonstrations.

“Another big group is walking toward the palace and two FRU (Field Reserve

Unit) trucks are following them,” one correspondent wrote at 3:23pm. Another

wrote, “We managed to reach the slope opposite the entrance to Istana Negara

(the king’s palace) at around 1pm, the Istana was sealed off! Are they putting our

King under house arrest or protecting His Majesty from what?”" 142

Later, at 3:34, another correspondent wrote that he could see police firing water cannons at

demonstrators. “It is shameful for the government to resort to that,” the person wrote. 143

Popular blogger Jeff Ooi posted a report called “How they Painted it Yellow”, featuring

photos of police with nightsticks yelling at protestors, Youtube video of protestors walking

through tear gas, and a report of diligent efforts by a PAS brigade to avoid any incidents of

violence among the crowd. Ooi noted that a major section of the demonstrators were lead by

another blogger, Tian Chua.144 Participants uploaded photos of the protest to Flickr and other

image sharing sites, which was then easily usable by bloggers.

Malaysia's mainstream newspapers carried nothing on their Web sites about the event,

despite its being the biggest protest in Malaysia since the Reformasi time. Malaysiakini

covered the story, complete with a map of the demonstration route with notations of where

key events took place. The story was also picked up by the Asia Sentinel, al-Jazeera, the

Associated Press, the BBC, AFP, and the International Herald Tribune, some of which drew

142
Inran Imtiaz Shah Yacob, "Malaysian Petitioners Defy Police" Asia Sentinel, Nov 10, 2007.
http://asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=863&Itemid=31 Accessed March
143
Ibid
144
Ooi, Jeff. “November 10: How they painted it yellow”.
http://www.jeffooi.com/2007/11/how_they_painted_it_yellow.php Nov. 11, 2007. Accessed April 1, 2009.
heavily from eye witness accounts posted online. Human Rights Watch issued a statement

commending the protesters.

In another instance, the Malaysian Bar Association sponsored a “Walk for Justice” to

protest ISA detentions and rigging of the judiciary in September 2007. 2,000 lawyers turned

out, intending to drive into Putrajaya and demonstrate on the steps of the judiciary building.

When police blocked their buses from entering the city, the lawyers simply walked to the

building and held their rally anyway. Again, the story was ignored by the traditional media,

but well documented online. As often happens, the government came off as out of touch,

draconian, and slightly silly. (Malaysiakini’s video of the “Walk for Justice” protest was

wryly titled “Police Cause Longer Walk for Lawyers”.)

Cybercampaigning and the 2008 Election

With his popularity eroding, Abdullah dissolved parliament and called for elections in

February 2008. Constitutionally, he was obligated to call for elections every five years; by

holding them after four, he was able to schedule the vote for March 8, a month before

Anwar's ban on running for public office expired. In an interview with Australian TV, Anwar

called the move a “denial of my basic right as a citizen” but noted it did not prevent him from

campaigning on behalf of his Keadilan party145. The elections were held 13 days after they

were announced, allowing for less than two weeks of campaigning.146

The opposition again cooperated. Much of the former BA alliance reunited, with

DAP, PAS, and Keadilan again working together. They planned to run a single candidate

against each BN candidate, to avoid splitting the vote.

145123
Anwar Ibrahim, Interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, March 2007.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2870009982019691643&hl=en Accessed March 28, 2009.
146
Whitely, Angus. “Anway, Malaysian Opposition, Aim to Erode Majority” Bloomberg News Feb 13, 2008.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=aCv93ZkPPcRs&refer=asia Accessed March
28, 2009.
 With UMNO's control of the traditional media as firm as ever, the opposition

campaign focused on new technology. The opposition and its supporters made full use of text

messaging, sending out SMSs a few days before the election with a plea to the receiver to

vote for the opposition, and to forward the message to 10 friends. SMS also proved key in

spreading election results, as reporters stationed at polling sites were able to get firsthand

information about election results, and to report when election personnel were holding back

results. UMNO also attempted to use SMS, by sending SMS blasts to random numbers. One

voter received nine SMSes encouraging him to vote for UMNO, which lead to an irritated

discussion among bloggers about whether these messages constituted official spam. 147 SMS

was a particularly valuable way of reaching rural voters. Although many rural Malaysians do

not have Internet access, mobile phone penetration is reasonably high even in rural areas.

The opposition also made full use of a series of YouTube videos embarrass to

UMNO, including a video that allegedly showed a high profile lawyer trying to fix judicial

appointments with an UMNO parliamentarian. Also widely disseminated were videos of

Information Minister Zainuddin Maidin excitedly defending a police crackdown against

peaceful protesters calling for changes in the electoral process on al Jazeera and a sex video

featuring the country's health minister and a woman who was not his wife.148

Several bloggers achieved rock star status for their coverage; Raja Petra Kamaluddin,

creator of Malaysia Today, became a huge draw for opposition rallies. RPK, as he is known,

also did election related journalism – for example, he revealed voting irregularities in the

town of Ijok - of the 12,000 voters in the district, some 1,700 were phantom voters, with

people as old as 107 still on the rolls. Others listed as voters were as young as eight years

147
Low, Bernice. “Malaysia's Digital Revolution: the death knell for The Star, and the rise of the e-news
portal?” www.asia.cnet.com/blogs/teteatech/post.htm?id=63002611
148
Tarrant, Bill. “Malaysia Opposition win shows power of cyberspace” Reuters. March 9, 2008.
http://ca.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idCAKLR6139420080309 Accessed March 28, 2009.
old.149 Malaysia was hardly hurting for bloggers. A US State Dept report concluded it had

500,000 active bloggers, one of the largest online communities after Indonesia and the EU.

Premesh Chandran of Malaysiakini told Inter Press Service that the traditional media were so

cowed that alternative media was the only source of information for issues like corruption

and independence of the judiciary. 150

Perhaps the country's most colorful candidate was an 89-year-old barely literate

grandmother named Mamin Yusuf, who ran for election in rural Terengganu with no money

and only a bicycle for transportation. Her supporters created an impressive online presence

for her, complete with a Facebook profile and her own blog. They also uploaded Youtube

videos of Mamin discussing political change in Malay.

Democratic expectations were not great going into the elections. A Human Rights

Watch report, published in Malaysiakini151 but ignored by the traditional media, which found

that government gerrymandering, as well as restraints on expression, assembly, and access to

media would deny citizens a fair vote.152 HRW cited Malaysiakini reporting on cowed

behavior by the print media, and also included information on irregularities compiled by

Bersih, the pro-democracy group behind the October 7 rally. Bersih found that large numbers

of voters were suddenly transferred en masse from one district to another, multiple

registrations, and lack of transparency in vote counting.

Fortunately, the Internet was a godsend for NGOs trying to spread information about

such shenanigans. For example, the human rights group, Aliran, was established in 1977, and

149
Stodden, Victoria. "The Internet Drives Election Results in Malaysia" Harvard University Internet and
Democracy Blog. April 4, 2008. http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/idblog/2008/04/04/the-internet-drives-
election-results-in-malaysia/ March 30,2009.
150
“Democracy Around the World: Giving Citizens an eVote” US Dept of State, April 8 2008.
http://www.america.gov/st/democracy-english/2008/April/20080403175441esnamfuak0.1705591.html
Accessed March 28, 2009.
151
Activists warn elections will be 'dirtiest ever' Malaysiakini, March 5,
2008.http://www.Malaysiakini.com/news/79205 Accessed March 30, 2009.
152
Malaysia: Citizens Denied a Fair Vote Human Rights Watch March 3, 2008.
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/03/03/malaysia-citizens-denied-fair-vote Accessed March 30,2009
has been publishing a monthly print report on the state of human rights in Malaysia since

1980. It has repeatedly had trouble with printers; its chief P. Ramakrishnan said his

organization had “walked the streets” in search of printers during key points in the nation’s

history and had at times been unable to find any printer at all willing to publish the reports.

One such case was during the 1987 Operation Lallang, in which the government cracked

down on activists. Ramakirshnan said the organization lost its original printer from that time

because “immediately after Operation Lalling, his license wasn’t renewed. Operation Lallang

was in October, his license was due in November, he didn’t get it until July. When it was

made known they do not have anything to do with the Aliran publication, it was renewed.”153

At other times, printers who had previously agree to publish the report, Aliran Monthly,

suddenly refused to print new copies even though the organization always paid its bill on

time. Printers balked so frequently that Aliran was forced to change printers often, at one

point going through eight printers in a two year span.

With the advent of the Internet, Aliran was able to publish its reports online. Its

reports are frequently cited by Malaysiakini and by Malaysian bloggers, and are sometimes

included in reports by Human Rights Watch, the BBC, and a few New Zealand and

Australian papers. During the 2008 campaign, Aliran maintained a joint election news blog

on the Google-owned site Blogger, together with the country’s Centre for Independent

Journalism and the Writers Alliance for Media Independence, in which it documented

inequities in media coverage of the opposition.154 Although Aliran stories are generally

ignored by mainstream papers, the New Straits Times cited the group's report as evidence of

fair coverage during the 2008 election, in an article called "Fair Coverage of the Opposition".

The article quoted Malaysia Media Monitors Diary as saying "Opposition parties received

153
Williams 2009.
154
http://www.aliran.com/elections/
between 30 per cent and 50 per cent play in newspapers in the week leading to nomination

day on Feb 24,"155 , figures the paper must have arrived at by inverting the group’s actual

figures, which stated that the six major papers it monitored contained “50 and 70 % stories

that portrayed BN in a positive light.” The actual Malaysia Media Monitors story on which

the New Straits Times story was based was called "Early stats show up to 77% pro-BN

coverage in newspapers"156 Fortunately, anyone with a Web browser could log onto blogger

and check the correct figures, making UMNO’s influence on the New Straits Times comically

obvious. Bloggers, who spread the word about this and other discrepancies, often doubled as

leaders of protests calling for transparent and fair elections.

2008 Results

The 2008 Malaysian elections were the greatest setback for UMNO in four decades.

The opposition won control of five states, and won big in urban areas, the place most likely

to have Internet access. Opposition candidates won 10 of 11 seats in Kuala Lumpur. It also

captured improved its showing among ethnic minorities, capturing Penang, the only majority

Chinese state; voters also elected an Indian activist into a state legislature. Although UMNO

won 136 out of 222 seats, enough to maintain control of parliament, it lost the 2/3 majority it

needed to amend the country's Constitution, which it has done more than 40 times since

independence. The opposition quadrupled the number of seats it held in parliament.157

So many Malaysians sought election results from Malaysiakini that its servers

crashed. A rumor circulated on SMS that Malaysiakini had been a victim of DNS poisoning,

a form of hacking in which a site’s web address (such as www.Malaysiakini.com) is hijacked

and pointed to another site. It would not have been the first case of cyber interference.

Although the Malaysian government did not announce it would block the site in its official

155
"Fair Coverage of the Opposition" New Straits Times, March 3, 2008.
156
http://www.aliran.com/elections/archives/2008_02_01_archives.html
157
Fuller, Thomas. “Malaysia's governing coalition suffers a setback” New York Times, March 9, 2008.
capacity, there have been incidents of attacks on independent sites, presumably by

government-allied hackers. On election night 2008, several concerned bloggers investigated

the crash of Malaysiakini themselves, posting screenshots throughout the night of their

investigations, and, later, links to the 6 mirror sites set up that night by Malaysiakini staff.158

Several other sites went down that night, including the sites for several major bloggers and

the DAP party; in many cases, the cause was probably excess traffic.

Impact of the web on election

Abdullah admitted that he made is mistake in ignoring cyber-campaigning. “We

thought that the newspapers, print media, and television were important, but young people

were looking at SMS and blogs,” he said.159 Political analyst James Chin said that the

Malaysian blogosphere had advanced to a point at which it was impossible for UMNO to

control. “It's unclampable right now,” he said. “The Internet has gone far beyond traditional

control methodology.” After the election, blogger RPK credited the Internet with motivating

Malaysia's middle class to the polls. “Alternative media cured the apathy the middle class

has,” he said. “They were no longer saying 'Let's not bother' Suddenly, it was 'Let's go and

give the opposition a chance.'”160

Some of the country's new elected officials were bloggers. Jeff Ooi, a 52-year-old

writer of the Screenshots blog and one of the nation's top bloggers, was elected as an

opposition parliamentarian from Penang. Also elected was Elizabeth Wong, a human rights

activist and political consultant who runs http://elizabethwong.wordpress.com . Another

blogger, Tian Chua, a former prisoner under the ISA, also won. Of the six bloggers running

for office, the only one to lose was Badrul Hisham Shaharin, who lost to Prime Minister
158
Lam, Alex. “Malaysia Votes and We Watch on the Internet!” March 9, 2008.
http://blog.integricity.com/2008/03/09/malaysia-votes-and-we-watch-the-internet/ Accessed March 30,
2009.
159
“Cyberpaper at vanguard of media revolution” Malaysiakini, Jan 27, 2209.
www.Malaysiakini.com/news/97161 Accessed March 28, 2009.
160
US State Dept 2008.
Abdullah's son-in-law, Khairy Jamaluddin, of Khairy Chronicles fame. 161 Sadly, 89-year-old

Mamin Yusuf also lost.

PAS, which had maintained a high online presence throughout the campaign, credited

its investment in IT for its victory. The party said its harakahdaily.net site was receiving

more than a million hits a day during the campaign, and its streaming television channel

maxed out its bandwidth.162 PAS proved particularly adept at creating YouTube and other

online video of its candidates, which were especially useful in reaching illiterate rural

Malays. As in the 1999 election, voters with access to the Internet often printed out

opposition fliers and news articles for the benefit of those without access; in a Web 2.0 twist,

they also downloaded online campaign videos and burned them to DVD or VCD for

dissemination into rural areas. The opposition also made a practice of putting its rallies on

YouTube, so that voters could watch them online. 163 In keeping with its goal of giving its

supporters a complete media experience online, PAS’ current Web site contains an entire

section of alternative information sources, including two “PAS TV” channels of online video,

blogs from 15 of the party’s leaders, and downloadable campaign materials. The site’s

alternative information section also links to non-alternative news providers, including

Malaysiakini and regional Web television channels.164

University Malaya Professor Abu Hassan Hasbullah said his research indicated that

about 70% of the election results were influenced by blogs. 165 He noted that the opposition

had 7,500 blogs in the mid-2000s, compared with only three run by the BN. Abu Hassan

based his figures on a study he conducted with University Malaya’s Zentrum Future Studies

Malaysia in the weeks before the election. A survey of 1,500 respondents between the ages of
161
Seneviratne, Kalinga. “Media-Malaysia: Bloggers on Opposition Benches”. Inter Press Service News
Agency, March 13, 2008. http://ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=41576 Accessed March 28, 2009.
162
Low 2008.
163
Ibid.
164
http://www.parti-pas.org/
165
US State Dept 2008.
21 and 50 found that 64.5% of those 21 to 30 trusted blogs and online media for reliable

information, compared with 23.1% who relied on television, and 12% who trusted

newspapers. Of those 31 to 40, 61.7% favored online media, with 23.5% choosing television

and 12.5% the newspapers. Traditional media was preferred only among respondents over

age 41.166 Voice of American estimated that readership of online media surpassed that of

traditional newspapers.167

Anwar “returned” to parliament in April 2008, as the spouse of Wan Azizah, MP. He

claimed that he had convinced enough Mps from the BN coalitions to defect to his side that

he would be able to form a government, although the Mps have yet to materialize. In August

2008, Anwar won a special by-election in Penang state in a landslide, enabling him to return

to parliament as an MP, almost then years after his sacking and conviction.168

After a humiliating showing in the election, Abdullah announced that he would resign

in 2010, leaving UMNO to his deputy, Najib Razak. Najib has problems of his own – he is

accused of having an affair with and then killing a Mongolian woman in 2006.169 Meanwhile,

fresh sodomy claims were made against Anwar. In February 2009, a UMNO regained control

of Perwak state after four members of Anwar's coalition defected; his supporters alleged they

were bribed.170 The opposition's efforts to eliminate affirmative action programs for Malays

in the states it controls have sparked outrage and street protests.171 At end of March 2009, the

166
“How BN Lost the Media War” New Straits Times, April 2, 2008.
167
Ramirez, Luis. "Malaysian PM Says He Underestimated Power of Blogs Before Suffering Big Election
Losses" March 25, 2008.
http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2008-03/2008-03-25-
voa17.cfm?CFID=155099771&CFTOKEN=81055267&jsessionid=de30f4415c9787e3a1be48686c63631d
7f54 Accessed March 30, 2008.
168
Anwar Ibrahim wins landslide vote August 26, 2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7581446.stm
Accessed March 28,2009
169
“Malaysia's PM 'to quit in 2010'” BBC News, July 10, 2008 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-
pacific/7499783.stm Accessed March 28, 2009.
170
Percy, Karen "Police on alert amid Malaysian protests" ABC News Feb 7, 2009.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/07/2484958.htm Accessed March 28, 2009.
171
Fuller, Thomas. “Privileged Status at Risk, Malays Protest after Election Losses” New York Times March
15, 2008.
UMNO government revoked PAS’ license to publish the print version of Harakah and

Keadilan’s license to publish its publication, the Suara Keadilan, for three months prior to an

important by-election, leaving the online world as the only campaign outlet for the two

parties.172 UMNO also refused to grant Malaysiakini and several other online publications

access to its annual meeting at the end of March 2009, citing their past “unfriendly

reporting”.173 The electoral comedy-drama seems poised to go on for a long time.

Aftermath

But what has changed is the space for discussion. The Internet has facilitated political

discussion in Malaysia on a level that would have been impossible under traditional media.

Blogs are now a standard party of political campaigning, even in remote regions. A by-

election for a parliamentary seat in Batang Ai, in rural Sarawak state, is being waged

preceded by what Malaysiakini called “The Battle of the Dayak Blogopshere”, after the

region’s Dayak ethnic group. Debate is ongoing between dozens of bloggers, including a

Keadilan branch leader and oil palm small holder who is also an activist on native customary

issues and a lawyer who posts well researched articles on social and economic issues.

Meanwhile, pro-UMNO bloggers are actually a significant presence in this election; they

included a person calling himself “Borneo Warrior” and a blogger who enumerates the

UMNO candidate’s contributions to the region. What is interesting is the bloggers are writing

in a region in which some people still live in longhouses. Some writers are no doubt

depending on the hybrid approach of posting content online and relying on readers to print it

out in order to reach these voters.

Perhaps the best known UMNO blogger who has taken advantage of the Internet to

get his message out is Mahathir Mohamad, who was unsatisfied with the press coverage he

172
"Malaysia: End Ban on Opposition Papers" Human Rights Watch, March 25, 2009.
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/03/25/malaysia-end-ban-opposition-papers Accessed March 30, 2009.
173
Ibid.
received after leaving office. Mahathir updates his blog (www.chedet.com) frequently,

ruminating in both English and Malay about the issues of the day. He is often harshly critical

of Abdullah, although he clearly has no love for Anwar either.

Abdullah, increasingly unpopular and under pressure, has begun to take steps to

censor the Internet for the first time. On Tuesday, August 26, 2008, The Malaysian

Communications and Multimedia Commission ordered the state run ISP to block Malaysia

Today, in total violation of the no censorship pledge it had kept since 1996. The blocking

occurred at 6 pm, coinciding exactly with the time Raja Petra had planned to post the results

of the special parliamentary election Anwar Ibrahim won in a landslide. A group of

Malaysian bloggers, including Raja Petra, had positioned themselves at the elections’ 28

different polling stations to monitor the official counting and results. When asked if the

blocking violated the MSC’s Bill of Guarantees, the COO of the MCMC said they were

“subject to interpretation”174 Later that week, the MCMC ordered all independent ISPs to

block Malaysia Today, as well.

The move was instantly slammed on the blogosphere. Outraged blog posts went up

almost immediately, along with instructions as to how to access the site through mirrors, and

commendations of ISPs that had apparently defied the MCMC’s order to block the site.

Malaysiakini published condemnations from readers, who called it “unbelievable that

pornographic sites, fanatical and chauvinistic religious sites, con-job sites, etc. are all free

from Malaysia's government censure, but RPK's blog is banned.” And an example of

“Gestapo in action”. Another pointed out that “If the information [on the blog] is ‘libelous,

defamatory and slanderous to the other people', there are more than enough avenues under

174
Keong, Lee Min, "M'sia govt breaks promise, censors Net" ZDNet Asia, Friday, Aug 29, 2008.
http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/internet/0,39044908,62045527,00.htm Accessed April 2, 2009
the Malaysia legal framework to settle the wrongs in court.”175 (Indeed, several people were

already suing Raja Petra for defamation.)

Raja Petra found himself with unlikely defenders. Khairy Jamaluddin, star of

Malaysia Today’s Khairy Chronicles wrote on his personal blog that although Raja Petra had

caused him considerable consternation, he condemned the MCMC’s decision as “inconsistent

with the widening of the democratic space”176. The move was also condemned by Former

Prime Minister Mahathir, who wrote on his blog that that government would lose credibility

and respect by reneging on its promises, and argued that the move showed “a degree of

oppressive arrogance worthy of a totalitarian state.” 177 To the consolation of civil libertarians,

the MCMC did a terrible job of blocking Malaysia Today – readers were simply redirected to

a mirror site, which continued to be updated.

In the wake of outrage, the Malaysian Cabinet ordered the MCMC to reinstate access

to Malaysia Today on September 11, 2008, but Raja Petra’s troubles proved far from over.

The next day, he was detained under the ISA as a threat to national security, based on articles

he had posted on his Web page. The alternative media was informed almost immediately,

through an SMS sent by his daughter to blogger and opposition politician Tian Chua a few

minutes after the arrest. Also detained that day were Tan Hoon Cheng, a reporter for Sin

Chew Daily newspaper; and Teresa Kok, an opposition Democratic Action Party

parliamentarian. Raja Petra was alleged to be publishing slanderous content and incited racial

hatred, Tan had written about a racist remarks made by a UMNO politician, and Kok had

allegedly objected to a mosque broadcasting its morning prayers too loudly. What followed

was a campaign not just to free the three prisoners, but to abolish the ISA altogether.
175
"Malaysia Today ban - 'Gestapo in action'" Malaysiakini, http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/88788 Aug
29, 2008. Accessed April 2, 2009.
176
Khairy Jamaluddin, "In Defence of Those Who Despise Me" August 30, 2008
http://www.rembau.net.my Accessed April 2, 2009.
177
Mahathir Mohamad, "Blocking Blogs" August 28, 2008.
http://test.chedet.com/che_det/2008/08/snippets-4.html#more Accessed April 2, 2009.
Bloggers began posting a black ribbon that read “Bloggers Against the ISA”. Volunteers,

including Raja Petra’s wife, continued to update Malaysia Today.

What is unique about the movement it involved a much broader cross section of

society than just opposition supporters. Marina Mahathir, the former prime minister’s

daughter, carried a column on her blog titled “Since When Has RPK Been a Security

Threat?” that included a column from a Muslim scholar denouncing the ISA as Anti-Islamic

and criticizing Abdullah personally for arresting Raja Petra during Ramadan, a move he

compared to Richard Nixon’s Christmas bombing of Hanoi.178 As a feminist, she is perhaps

more liberal than other UMNO members, but her criticisms of the ruling regime have

generally been limited to women’s issues. Civil society groups also began to speak up in

large numbers. A coalition of NGOs came together to form the Abolish the ISA movement

(AIM, often called by its Malay acronym, GMI), which lobbied politicians, issued online

reports, and held anti-ISA protests and candlelight vigils throughout the country. The head of

the Malaysian Bar Association told an Australian network, that his organization did not

believe anyone should be arrested under the ISA, and said his organization would write to the

inspector general of police and demand ISA detainees be given access to lawyers.179 The

Malaysian Indian Business Association denounced the law as bad for business, noting “One

of the most important criteria much sought by investors is how transparent our laws are and if

we match up to international human rights standards.”180 The Catholic Church in Penang

denounced the ISA as contrary to Christian scripture. 181 Aliran, Reporters Without Borders,

the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Human Rights Watch all condemned the arrests and
178
Marina Mahathir, “Since When Has RPK Been a Security Threat?” Sept 28, 2008
http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/search?q=rpk Accessed April 2, 2009.
179
"Malaysia's controversial ISA arrests" Radio Australia, Sept 15, 2008.
http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/programguide/stories/200809/s2365320.htm Accessed April 2, 2009.
180
Sivakumar, P. "ISA Bad for Business" Sept. 15, 2008 http://www.malaysiakini.com/letters/89740
Accessed April 3, 2009.
181
"Penang Cathedral denounces ISA before 800 people" nilnetto, Sept 15,2008.
http://anilnetto.com/christianity/catholic-cathedral-in-penang-denounces-isa/ Accessed April 3, 2009.
the ISA. The Wall Street Journal Asia described the arrest of Raja Petra and the other

detainees as a “body blow” to Malaysian democracy.182

On November 8, 2008, a judge ordered Raja Petra’s release. The court ruled that

posting offensive articles online is not sufficient grounds for detention under the ISA. Raja

Petra’s legal troubles did not disappear - Malaysia Today presently cheerfully lists the dates

of Raja Petra’s upcoming sedition and defamation trials – but his release was a landmark

event. It was the first time an ISA detainee has been freed by a judge since 1989, when the

judiciary was barred from freeing ISA detainees by the home minister.183

In addition, a new respect for free speech seems to be taking hold among the

population, if not among election officials. The backlash against the arrests was so severe that

many pressured Abdullah to quit. Abdullah finally resigned on April 2, 2009, and was

succeeded by his deputy, Najib Abdul Razak. As his first official act as prime minister, Najib

ordered the release of thirteen individuals detained under the ISA, and announced his

government would conduct a “thorough” review of a law. He also lifted the publication ban

on the two opposition print publications, PAS’ Harakah and Keadilan’s Suara Keadilan. 184

These developments do not, of course, represent a fully democratic Malaysia, but

they do represent an increasing open democratic space. Draconian laws like the ISA are

increasingly unpalatable to broader society, including seemly apolitical groups like business

associations and the religious. Politicians are recognizing this. The ease of communication

also means that official misconduct is harder to hide, creating a strong check on government

authority. In the case of Malaysia, at least, the Internet really does live up to some of its own

hype.
182
"Three Arrests in Malaysia" The Wall Street Journal Asia Sept 15, 2008.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122141390310233319.html?mod=googlenews_wsj Accessed April 2, 2009.
183
Hafiz Yatim "Court frees ISA detainee Raja Petra" Malaysiakini, Nov 7, 2008.
http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/92620 Accessed April 3, 2009.
184
"13 ISA freed, ban lifted on party organs" Malaysiakini, April 3, 2009.
http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/101645 Accessed April 3, 2009.
Singapore

Meanwhile, in Singapore, very little happened. The country suffered only two

quarters of recession during the Asian financial crisis. The PAP government continued to rule

without significant challenge from the opposition. The country's three Internet Service

Providers filtered their content through proxy servers, which both allowed the government to

monitor all Internet traffic into and out of the country, and to block sites it found

objectionable. And the country’s decision to transfer control the Internet to the Singapore

Broadcasting Authority proved very effective in shutting down online dissent. Its sweeping

regulations, passed in the late 1990s, essentially took the host of regulations affecting

traditional media and extended them to the online world. Singaporean Web pages were now

subject to vaguely worded restrictions on content that might incite disrespect of government,

ethnic or religious strife, harm public security or public morals, or affect national defense.

The new scheme made Web masters subject to the country’s Defamation Act, a favorite law

used by PAP politicians to take their critics to court. This was a severe measure – those who

were charged with defaming a government official nearly always lost in court, and damages

levied against defendants often left them personally bankrupt. In addition, the SBA extended

the Newspaper and Printing Presses Act to the Web, meaning that not only could an author

and editor be prosecuted for a defamatory comment, but so could a distributer and printer. In

an online context, this meant that a Webmaster would be held legally responsible for all

comments made by visitors to his or her site, even those made without their knowledge. In

combination, these laws were a frightening force. If a Singaporean had a Web site about

flowers and an anonymous user posted a comment on the site criticizing Lee Kwan Yew, the

owner of the flowers site could be personally sued for libel and bankrupted. Many closed

down public comment and discussion areas, knowing they had no way of policing them.
 In addition, special regulations were passed requiring political and religious sites to

register with the SBA. Among other things, registration required editors and publishers to

sign a declaration acknowledging “full responsibility for the contents of [the] website,

including contents of discussion groups carried on it.” 185

Senior Minister of State Balaji Sadasivan explained that "In a free-for-all Internet

environment, where there are no rules, political debate could easily degenerate into an

unhealthy, unreliable and dangerous discourse, flush with rumors and distortions to mislead

and confuse the public."186

Sintercom

At the time the new regulations were passed, one of the most popular sites in the

country was Sintercom, a volunteer-run news and discussion site started by a Singaporean

named Tan Chong Kee when he was a student at Stanford University. The site was initially a

spin off from soc.culture.singapore, which in the early 1990s was a place of lively intellectual

debate, sometimes about contentious issues like political liberty and human rights. Tan

conceived of the site as an impendent forum on Singaporean issues. Initially hosted in the

U.S., but later moved to servers in Singapore, Sintercom’s mission was to be the voice of

ordinary citizens. It featured an email service called SGDaily that distributed articles on

Singapore, including news and opinion, mostly from the foreign press, as well as research

papers by analysts and academics that editors felt provided perspectives not found in the

mainstream media. The site included a section called “NOT The Straits Times Forum”, which

published contributions that had been rejected by or printed in edited form by the country’s

influential government-linked print publication, the Straits Times. The column allowed

readers to see for themselves the amount of censorship the paper engaged in. The forum spun

185
Cherian George, Contentious Journalism and the Internet, 2006. p. 102
186
Rodan, Garry. "Singapore's Founding Myths vs. Freedom" Far Eastern Economic Review, October 2006.
off into a “Not the Straits Times” section, which highlighted cases of questionable journalism.

Tan later told an interviewer that “Here in Singapore, we don't say many things because we

are afraid that someone's listening...But the moment we know it's okay to do so, we speak up.

The Internet gives users that freedom through anonymity.”187

When the new restrictions on political and religious sites passed, Sintercom was

initially about to get around registration. Because it featured a great deal of non political

content, including a jokes and recipes section, Sintercom was initially able to argue that it

was not a political site. However, that victory was short-lived. In July 2001, the SBA wrote

Sintercom and told it it would now be required to register as a political site. The action came

just before Singapore’s general election, a time when the government has traditionally

reigned in the mainstream press.

Tan did register Sintercom. As a compromise with officials, he decided to send all

published material on the site to the SBA for clearance, a move he believed would satisfy the

country’s broadcasting law, which stated that a licensee would be judged to have used its best

efforts to comply with the conditions of the license if it had taken “all reasonable steps in the

circumstances”. This way, Tan told his readers, Sintercom would not pre-censor, but the SBA

could censor Sintercom in any way it liked. The SBA replied two days later, saying that it did

not pre-censor material, and Tan should exercise his own judgment and take responsibility for

Sintercom’s content. SBA also issued a general news release, saying “registration is a simple

administrative procedure” and that there was “no cause for Sintercom to overreact over such

a simple request”.188 Tan emailed the SBA again, asking if its characterization of Sintercom as

overreacting meant that the site’s contents fell well within the SBA’s guidelines. The SBA

again refused to be pinned down, repeating that it was “unnecessary for Sintercom to seek

187
Tan Chong Kee, Interview with Computer Times. August 22, 2001. Reposted on Singapore Window.
Accessed April 9,2009.
188
Ibid p. 116
advice from the SBA on its postings.”189 Frustrated, and afraid of being personally bankrupted

by a libel judgment, Tan shut the site down. Its passing was noted by the Straits Times, Time

magazine, Cnet, and several other publications.

If Sintercom had continued, it might eventually have fulfilled some of the same

functions as Malaysiakini. During the 1997 general election, Sintercom reported rally

speeches and poll results as they were coming in, something that eventually became one of

Malaysiakini's key functions during elections. It was held in such high regard that one of its

early public defenders included a junior officer from the SBA itself, as well as hundreds of

ordinary Singaporeans who used their real names to write letters of protest on its behalf. This

could have lead to a reputable independent news site for Singapore. Instead, Sintercom

closed in August 2001. Visitors to the site found a message saying “This Sintercom site

www.sintercom.org is no longer in operation.” The site eventually resurfaced overseas as “the

new Sintercom”, with anonymous editors, but it never reached its former glory.

“Light touch”

If the SBA’s intention was to shut down Sintercom, its methods were brilliant. By

giving a series of reasonable sounding but vague replies to a Webmaster who desperately

needed concrete answers, the SBA was able to induce him to close his site while coming off

as reasonable and bureaucratic. By refusing to be nailed down as to what was and wasn’t

permissible, the SBA created an environment in which it was free to declare anyone had

violated the law. The move looks all the more brilliant when compared to UMNO Youth’s

botched attempt to shut down Malaysiakini. In the words of one Malaysian journalist who

has also worked in Singapore, “Singaporean civil servants know how to push buttons.

Malaysian civil servants don’t know where the buttons are.”190

189
Ibid.
190
M.G.G. Pillai, Malaysian Journalist, as quoted in Cherian George, Contentious Journalism and the
Internet p.198
 For the most part, the government has been able put “light touch” pressure on

bloggers without appearing heavy handed. For example, in January 2005, a blogger who

called himself “Mr. Brown” published a photo of police officers sleeping in their cars. Two

police officers visited the blogger and politely requested that he remove the photo, and the

blogger complied. When readers expressed concern that Brown may have been coerced, he

reassured them that “nothing Big Brother happened” and playfully suggested that readers

who had missed seeing the photo of the napping policemen should have been checking his

site every day.191

The combination of regulation and control of information flows made Singapore a

model for other authoritarian states in the region. Vietnamese and Chinese delegations visited

the country to learn about its Internet policing policies, and both countries made plans follow

the Singaporean model of steering information flows through controlled channels to enhance

monitoring and censorship.

In addition to its adept censorship of the Web, the Singaporean government undertook

a massive web called eCitizen, “Your Gateway to all Government Services”

(http://www.ecitizen.gov.sg/), which allows citizens to access literary all the country’s

government services through one portal. They can apply for a passport, buy an apartment

from the government, get a library card, access medical information, pay taxes, and even get

a marriage license, all through one site. Interestingly, other authoritarian regimes have sought

to copy this feature as well, as it increases happiness with the regime by making dealing with

the government easier and more transparent.

Political Parties

191
Cherian George, Calibrated Coercion Database. A project at the National University of Singapore.
http://calibratedcoercion.wordpress.com/case-files/ Accessed April 8, 2009.
 The most obvious group affected by restrictions on political speech online were

Singapore's opposition political parties. They were already accustomed to arbitrary

regulations on their campaigning – for example, in the same year Internet regulations were

passed, an opposition party's application to sell a videotape about itself was declined on the

grounds that the medium was sensationalistic and did not allow for effective rebuttal. They

generally viewed the laws as an obvious attempt to stifle political speech, National Solidarity

Party (NSP) Assistant Secretary-General Steve Chia Kiah Hong commented, “We are a

political party. If we are successful in voicing what the PAP has not done, and people begin to

dislike the PAP, is that 'objectional content?'”192 Another opposition candidate pointed out that

since the new Internet restrictions applied only within Singapore, the practical affect was

limiting commentary on Singaporean politics to foreigners and Singaporeans abroad.

Nonetheless, some were hopeful that the Internet as an opportunity to present themselves to

the public at large without being filtered through the PAP-controlled mass media. The NSP

was the first opposition party to set up a site. Nsp-Singapore.com featured detail about the

party, copies of its press releases, and other information on the NSP. It also contained a

political discussion board and guest book for comments. The introduction to the discussion

board included a disclaimer noting that the views expressed on the board were those of the

posters, and not necessarily of the NSP. It appeared to be an attempt avoid responsibility,

although SBA regulations as written did render the NSP responsible for content on the

message board. Later, the opposition Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) followed suit and

set up three web sites. Two were attached to town councils under the jurisdiction of the party,

and one was dedicated to the SDP. Neither site featured strong criticism of the PAP, a strange

move for minority political parties elsewhere in the world but a sensible move in Singapore,

where a favorite tactic of PAP candidates is to sue their opponents for libel for remarks made
192
Rodan 1997
during the campaign. However, after candidate nomination day in January 1997, both the

SDP and NSP sites ran into trouble with the SBA. The SBA instructed the parties to remove

biographical data and posters of their candidates. It alleged that both parties were in violation

of the Parliamentary Elections Act, because the rules pursuant to the act do not provide for

campaigning on the Internet (although it does not forbid it, either).193 An incensed SDP

candidate commented that “We put our biodata on the Internet. This was to inform everyone.

But we were told to remove biodata. They want you to have the impression that we are a

bunch of clowns. Even simple information, they hide from people.”194

The Parliamentary Elections Act was amended several times to keep pace with

improvements in technology. In October 2001, the Workers' Party was ordered to removed a

page on its site asking for political donations. Parliament had passed laws banning political

groups from seeking donations online just that month195. In a further blow to political speech

that month, the same regulations prohibited sites that did not belong to political parties from

"campaigning" for any candidates, a prohibition that included posting profiles of candidates,

publishing opinion articles, or carrying party banners. Although politically parties were

nominally permitted to carry such advertising, the regulations were vague about what exactly

would be permitted. The law specified that the Prime Minister had the power to approve

regulations governing election advertising, including the features that could or could not

appear on the advertising.196 Since the Prime Minister is the head of the ruling party, he

hardly seems an objective judge of the political speech of his opponents. Singaporean

election law is full of such vaguely worded restrictions, giving the government the ability to

claim anyone in violation. The government proved remarkably adept at updating elections

193
Ibid.
194
Ibid.
195
"No political Ads on Web, groups told" The Straits Times, October 21, 2001
196
How, Tan Tarn. "Confusion over Internet political advertising law" Straits Times Sept 1, 2001
law to keep up with new developments in technology, plugging political holes even further.

The sites found to be in violation almost always take down the offending material

immediately because the penalty for violating elections law is stiff – up to a year in jail.

During the 2001 election, for example, the SDP made use of podcasting. Laws passed

before the 2006 elections created a “positive list” of things political parties were allowed to

have on their sites. Podcasting and Web video were not included, and were therefore banned.

During the 2006 campaign, the SDP was ordered to take down an audio file in which its

leader, Chee Soon Juan, called the PAP "hell bent" on crushing the SDP election campaign.197

The party initially removed the hyperlink to the podcast, but did not remove the file from its

server entirely. The SDP removed the link entirely after it was charged with flouting the

regulation. In addition to online regulation, the PAP government continues to take action

against its opponents for comments they made in the traditional media, for example, suing a

dozen members of the SDP and a commercial printer for remarks made in a party newspaper

in 2006.198 Theoretically, the election restrictions apply to PAP, too, but they are almost never

enforced against the ruling party. Its Web site is by far the most ornate of all Singaporean

parties (interestingly, it includes a podcasts section.) Even if PAP complies with online

restrictions entirely, of course, its viewpoint remains dominant thanks to its control of the

traditional media.

In response to the laws, opposition political parties in Singapore have gutted their

sites. The National Solidarity Party's site (http://www.nsp.sg/) contains event announcements,

which mainly consist of accounts of house-to-house visits with voters (a form of outreach

that allows the party to avoid applying for a permit to hold a rally), and acknowledgements of

upcoming holidays. The Workers' Party site contains only the text of parliamentary speeches

197
"Party removes all podcasts from website" The Straits Times, April 26, 2006.
198
Kin, Chong Chee. "Printer of SDP paper says sorry" The Straits Times, April 25, 2006.
made by its members. The Singapore Democrats' site is livelier, with appeals made to voters

concerned about the global recession and reports of non violent actions in other parts of the

world, presumably implying that non violent civil disobedience could work in Singapore, too.

SDP’s site also includes links to a few YouTube videos of speeches by party leaders, in which

they discuss poverty in the country, a possible adaptation to a recent court decision case in

which a banned documentary was placed on Google Video UK, and the government was

unable to take action because it did not know who had posted the documentary. In accordance

with elections law, none feature biographies of the party’s candidates. None feature overt

criticisms of PAP, although the SDP site does criticize the country's electoral commission for

never acting on violations of the Parliamentary Election Act by PAP. By contrast, the site for

the Keadilan party in Malaysia calls the incoming Najib administration a "return to

authoritarian repression" and accuses the UMNO-controlled ministry of defense of

cronyism.199 The DAP site homepage features YouTube video of a "Democracy Tree" that the

party was banned from distributing on DVD, as well as an online donations page, a

multimedia page, and a section on abolishing the ISA.200 In keeping with the Malaysian

opposition's hybrid media approach, both the PAS and Keadilan sites make all their articles

are also available in PDF for easy printing.

The Inefficacy of the Bloggers

Political parties were not the only entities affected by the electoral regulations. The

amended 2006 Parliamentary Elections Law requires bloggers to register with the MDA if

they wished to regularly defend a political viewpoint. During election times, even registered

political bloggers were not permitted to express their opinions on political issues.201

199
http://www.keadilanrakyat.org/index.php/content/blogcategory/29/98/ Accessed April 10, 2009.
200
http://dapmalaysia.org/newenglish/ Accessed April 13, 2009.
201
"Government steps up online censorship in run-up to elections" Reporters Without Borders, April 5,
2006. http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=16935 Accessed April 10, 2009.
 In keeping with the light touch approach, online censorship after 2001 was relatively

sparse, but seemed designed to create a chilling effect. Prosecution for online comments

made on blogs or forums was relatively rare (a study of the government actions against Web

users found in Singapore found 2 prosecutions in 2002, 10 in 2005, and 4 in 2006.).202 In

some cases, users were punished for writing religiously or racially offensive content; other

cases the offenders were political parties, but in some cases, people were punished for using

the Internet to write fairly mundane criticisms of the government. Punishing the purveyors of

racist content is unlikely to draw much ire in Singapore, and limitations on opposition groups

are nothing new, but strong prosecutions of citizens for making complaints other leaders

would not be bothered to look at seems calibrated to promote self-censorship.

Perhaps the best known prosecutions have been the criminal defamation charges filed

against Robert Ho, a retired journalist, and Zulfikar Mohamad Shariff, head of the Malay-

Muslim group Fateha. In October 2001, Ho wrote on the site of the British-based dissident

group Singaporeans for Democracy that the country's Prime Minister and Deputy Prime

Minister had broken election law by visiting polling places without authorization. He urged

Singaporeans to use civil disobedience and break the same law. Police classified Ho's posting

as an attempt to incite violence.203 Ho was arrested and released shortly thereafter, only to be

re-arrested six months later for allegedly posting two articles to soc.culture.singapore, one of

which attributed the rise of Lee Kuan Yew’s son to nepotism, and another that accused a

police inspector of corruption. Ho’s computer was confiscated, and he was taken to a mental

hospital on the grounds that he was a danger to himself or others.204 Police characterized Ho

202
Cherian George, Calibrated Coercion Database. A project at the National University of Singapore.
http://calibratedcoercion.wordpress.com/case-files/ Accessed April 8, 2009.
203
Ellis, Eric. "Singapore locks up dissenting journalist" The Australian, Dec. 6, 2001.
204
Robert Ho, interview with filmmarker Martin See. "Singapore's cyber dissident speaks out"
http://singaporerebel.blogspot.com/2006/12/singapores-cyber-dissident-speaks-out.html January 7, 2007.
Accessed April 13, 2009.
as a “madman”, and withdrew the charges against him on the grounds that he is insane.205 The

Straits Times published several articles quoted a police report characterizing Ho as suffering

from paranoia and needing long term treatment.206 Ho himself eloquently denied that he was

insane in a handwritten letter to opposition leaders, in which he questioned the legal basis for

his detention, and later in an interview with Martin See.207

In the other case, Zulfikar Mohamad Shariff was charged with criminal defamation of

then-Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsein Loong and his wife, as well as the country's Muslim

Affairs Minister, for articles he posted on his organizations which challenged the country's

stance towards Muslims and accused the government of corruption after Lee's wife was

appointed the head of a government owned investment company. Zulflikar had already raised

government ire after he criticized Singapore’s alliance with the United States after the

American invasion of Afghanistan, as well as the government’s detention under the ISA of 15

Muslims it accused of being terrorists. Officials accused Zulfikar of being a bigot and inciting

hatred in numerous articles in the Straits Times208 Zulfikar attempted to file a counterclaim,

alleging officials had defamed him, but police informed him he did not have enough evidence

to back up his charges. Rather than stay in Singapore and face criminal prosecution, Zulfikar

fled with his family to Australia.

The prosecutions spooked the online community, where Web users fearfully

discussed the government's ability to prosecute people who posted online. "They can track us

down one by one. The have all resources under their control," one said. One user even

speculated that police would conduct spotchecks on people with laptops, to make sure they

had not posted objectionable content. Though some of these fears were probably far-fetched,

205
Ahmad Osman, "Second man questioned on Net postings" The Straits Times, July 5, 2002.
206
Ibid, see also Chong, Elena "Inflammatory article' man acquitted" Straits Times, Dec. 15, 2001.
207
Robert Ho, interview with Martin See.
208
See, for example Boo, Krist. "Fateha leader fanning hate" The Straits Times, Jun 20 2002, and Koh Boon
Pin, "All here must condemn terrorism, says NTUC chief" January 20, 2002.
they were not unfounded. In addition to prosecutions of those who posted on Singaporean-

based sites, the government could also monitor all traffic into and out of the country,

theoretically giving it the ability to track comments on foreign based sites, as well.209

Later, officials would sporadically crack down on individuals who made fairly benign

complaints online. In March 2005, a Singaporean student named Chen Jiahao, who was

studying mathematics at the University of Illinois, wrote a blog post in which he criticized a

new policy by A*Star, a government agency that gave scholarships for graduate study abroad.

The Agency recently instituted a requirement that students receiving the scholarship maintain

a 3.8 GPA, and Chen wrote on his blog that this policy would make students take easier

courses, and that this would detract from a balanced education. A month after the posting,

A*Star chairman Philip Yeo emailed Chen and warned of “legal consequences unless

objectionable statements were removed and an acceptable apology published”. It went on to

say that “A*Star recognises the value of a diversity of views and welcomes that in all media,

but the particular public blog had statements which went beyond fair comment.” 210 Chen

immediately removed the posting, and posted an apology for "having hosted or made remarks

which Mr Yeo felt were defamatory to him and the agency that he leads". He promised to

never mention Yeo or A*Star again on his site. However, A* Star deemed this apology

unacceptable, and the agency gave him until the end of the week to retract the defamatory

statements and provide a better apology. Chen responded by posting a preface to his original

apology, stating that the price of maintaining content at that URL had become too high for

him. He included a quote from American Abolitionist Wendell Phillips, "Eternal vigilance is

the price of liberty". He then removed all the content from his blog, except for the apology.

A*Star's spokesman told a press conference in May 2005 Chen had not retracted his initial

209
Tan Tam How, "Probe into Web articles spooks Net community" Straits Times, July 6, 2002.
210
Cherian George, Calibrated Coercion Database. A project at the National University of Singapore.
http://calibratedcoercion.wordpress.com/case-files/ Accessed April 8, 2009.
blog post, and that the agency still found his apology unacceptable. Chen removed the

remark and the quote and issued a revised apology, after which A*Star finally issued a

statement saying it considered the matter closed. In another case, in March 2003, a civil

servant and former PAP Member of Parliament named Mansor Sukaimi was the subject of a

police investigation after he sent an email to a minister and others accusing a ministry of

biased hiring practices. His laptop was seized, but the charges against him were dropped

when he agreed that “the manner in which he had communicated his views through e-mail

was wrong.”211

Hegemony online

The dangers of posting independent content online have meant that the leading

providers of online content in Singapore are AsiaOne (www.asiaone.com.sg), owned by

Singapore Press Holdings, the newspaper publisher, and Channel NewsAsia.com, owned by

MediaCorp News, the broadcaster. Both are among the top visited sites in Singapore.

AsiaOne is an online news portal, featuring 'interactive' versions of the Straits Times, along

with five other major dailies owned by SPH. Channel NewsAsia.com uses the resources of

Channel NewsAsia, Singapore's answer to CNN, with enhanced regional news reports. In

addition to news, both sites offer a range of 'lifestyle' content, including career services,

travel services, and community forums. They do not, of course, criticize official sources.

These sites rank #42 and #45 among the most visited sites in Singapore, enough to qualify as

the most visited news sites in the nation, unless one includes ESPNSportszone, which is

#13.212

A modest proposal

211
Ibid.
212
Alexa Singapore Country Statistics, http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries;0/SG .
 With crackdowns on unadulterated criticisms of the government rampant, the few

sites that have been able to get away with anything like criticism have had to do so in a veiled

and sometimes humorous fashion. Some are able to skirt the line by criticizing the media,

often the Straits Times, rather than the government itself. For example, the gay rights blog

Yawning Bread is able to demonstrate how the Straits Times and Today publish letters dealing

with homosexuality only after heavy censorship. A site called The Void Deck publishes

articles that give what would be considered minor criticisms in other countries, (“Few months

ago, Sg (Singapore) had a massive blackout [due to bad] service, and they have the nerve to

increase the cost of power?”), and Singapore-Window.org publishes news articles that are

likely to be banned or unavailable in Singapore.213 The forum and news site Sammyboy

(www.sammyboyforum.com ) features independent news and forums as well, but it has thus

far been able to avoid being taken seriously by the government because its owner mixes

contentious content with hardcore pornography. While these sites demonstrate that not all

Singaporeans are satisfied with government endorsed content, all are relatively small, none

have full time staff people, and many are updated infrequently. In a further security measure,

many sites are rumored to be run by Singaporeans abroad, and many are hosted abroad.

Sammyboyforum is registered in Auckland, New Zealand, Singapore-wondow.org runs on a

server in Atlanta, the Void Deck is on a server in Delaware, and Yawning Bread runs on a

server in California. 214

Perhaps the most popular alternative site is TalkingCock.com, which brands itself as

“Singapore’s premiere satirical humour website.” The site takes its name from a Singaporean

expression rooted in the English expression “cock and bull”, meaning ‘to spout nonsense’. Its

writer, Colin Goh, a former lawyer and cartoonist, said on the site's mission statement "We

213
Lee, Terence. "Online Media and Civil Society in the 'New'Singapore. Asia Research Centre, Murdoch
University. Sept 2005. http://wwwarc.murdoch.edu.au/wp/wp123.pdf Accessed April 13, 2009.
214
Source: whois domain lookup, http://www.domaintools.com/ April 13, 2009.
write articles which poke fun at local happenings. However it doesn't mean we write just

nonsense...satire is always rooted in reality."215 Its splash page contains a disclaimer similar

to those found on American beer web pages.

“WARNING: By clicking on this, you hereby certify that you are not offended

by strong language, and you warrant that you understand that the purposes of this

site are purely satirical and humorous, and therefore that your opinions of any

persons or situations depicted in this site, whether living, real, fictional or

otherwise, will not be affected in any way whatsoever. SOME IMPORTANT

THINGS TO NOTE: 1. WE MAKE STUFF UP...2. WE ARE NOT A POLITICAL

SITE.”216

The site contains a number of irreverent articles, not all of which are political, including

a pretend column by one of Lee’s sons, who works for the “Ministry of Community

Delusion”, and writes that he doesn't understand why State Times writers agonize over

whether their copy is acceptable to authorities, when he could just get his dad to issue a

press release they could copy wholesale, 217 an ode to the country’s new casino, and a

list of ways to avoid getting fired (“2. Be the only one in the office to know where the

toner is kept. 13. Change your surname to “Lee” and talk very loudly about your

“Uncle Harry”)218 By adding humor, TalkingCock has been able to sidestep censors,

while at the same time delivering real political commentary. It is one of the few

political sites taken seriously by the International media, with positive reviews from

Time and the Economist.

215
Lee 2005.
216
Talkingcock.com , accessed April 13, 2009.
217
http://www.talkingcock.com/html/article.php?sid=1662 Accessed April 13, 2009.
218
http://www.talkingcock.com/html/article.php?sid=2672 Accessed April 13, 2009.
 Another site that has made headway in Singapore is Think Centre, a

multipartisan political forum founded in 1999 by James Gomez, activist and writer

of a book called Self censorship: Singapore’s Shame. It is also an outgrowth of a

political education program called Politics 21, which holds offline events intended

to inform the electorate and highlight key issues. Although putting together political

forums in Singapore is a difficult task, Think Centre has been made remarkable

headway. Much of its content is based on challenging the existing power structure,

often in humorous ways. One of their tactics was to use the Internet to publish all

correspondence with government officials. When it organized public events, it

reported on the maze of permits necessary to hold events, turning them into a

spectacle. When it held a fundraiser to pay off damages on behalf of an opposition

politician who had been convicted of libel, it chronicled its dealings with officials,

which included getting a public entertainment license from the police to hold the

rally, a permit from the Building and Construction Authority to hang banners, and a

license from the Public Health Commissioner to sell books, t shirts, and stickers.

Think Centre was similarly irreverent when it was the subject of official

investigation. When the government sent plain clothed agents to tape and observe

Think Centre’s rallies, as it does with all political events, the group created a section

on its site called “Watching the Watchers”, which posted photos of individuals

believed to be government agents, such as women carrying large handbags that

appeared to contain cameras. The exposed individuals would leave and not return

again, to the great glee of Think Centre organizers. The group also chronicled its

dealings with the police, who would occasionally probe Think Centre’s activities. It
called its dealings “comedy-drama” or “festivities”, and included photos whenever

possible. After one ‘warning’ session, police officers refused to take the groups

picture. They reported:

“Determined to have a group picture to commemorate this session,

the group thus enlisted the help of a gangster-type loitering at the

station. He was very obliging, and helped the group out with a few

photographs.” 219

In this way, Think Centre was able to capitalize on its victim status, and no doubt

irritate government officials at the same time. Still, the innovative means of online

irreverence used by sites such as Talking Cock and Think Centre is a far cry from the

organized challenge to authoritarian rule found in Malaysia. Think Centre does an

exemplary job of stepping up to the line, but it does not cross it. It makes every effort to

avoid running afoul of the Parliamentary Elections Act, in 2001 closing its online forum

and no longer updating its Election Watch column in advance of actual elections. There

may eventually be hope for political discourse online – the Institute for Policy Studies in

Singapore estimated that 50 bloggers and sites defied the ban on political commentary

online and published political and semi-political content online. Since then, political

blogs have also emerged. Particularly daring are bloggers from The Online Citizen (TOC)

and the Wayang Party Club, run by unpaid volunteers. TOC spoke out against mass

transit fare hikes, and released a 20 page report on how to improve the system. The

Wayang Party Club published a report by on an expensive culinary vacation taken by

Permanent Secretary Tan Yong Soon, which also targeted an MP who used to term "lesser

mortals" to refer to the Permanent Secretary's critics. However, with only a few thousand
219
Cherian George 2006 p.128
readers, both sites’ editors said they did not think the majority of Singaporeans were

aware of them.220 For now, however, the government hold on the Singaporean Internet

seems strong.

Why the difference?

Singapore had much more money than Malaysia in the mid-1990s; with a per

capital GDP of $22,900, compared with Malaysia’s $9,800. This gave the city-state much

more freedom to develop its technology infrastructure in any way it saw fit. It was able to

create an Internet Service Provider market with only three government-owned or heavily

government-linked corporations operating on a network it owned and controlled, simply

because it had the resources to do so. In Malaysia, Mahathir did not have the resources to

wire his much bigger and less prosperous nation, and so had to have the market do it for

him. He could not ban private ISPs, because he needed them to invest in infrastructure.

Once a private ISP existed, it had to serve at least two masters: the government and its

customers. In addition to speed and reliability, customers also want privacy, and in a

competitive marketplace with other private providers, they were also in a better position

to demand it. By contrast, Singaporean ISPs routed their traffic through government

servers. Customers know that the government could be monitoring their online

conversation at any moment. The system isn’t foolproof; any person who desperately

wanted to communicate online without Big Brother watching could do so, simply by

dialing up to a Malaysian ISP at a cost of about 21 US cents a minute, but that option is

difficult and expensive enough that most won’t bother.

Economic differences also affected initial regulations of the Web. Singapore had

spent decades building up an international reputation as a business-friendly area, and

220
Oon, Clarissa. "Blogs' reach limited: Study" The Straits Times, March 5, 2009.
could trade on that reputation when it decided to go into IT. Malaysia, on the other hand,

only acquired Western manufacturing in the 1980s, and had almost no reputation for the

sort of “value-added” IT work it wanted to go into. In order to gain credibility, it set up a

Council of Advisors, which included the likes of Bill Gates and the chair of Sun

Microsystems to oversee its IT development. Mr. Gates et al. would presumably have

withdrawn their support (and the credibility they leant to the project) if Mahathir had

begun tormenting bloggers who displeased him. In order to shed its reputation as a third

world backwater, Malaysia had to make more concessions to the sensibilities of foreign

corporations, and this meant free speech online.

In addition, Singaporean officials have always been much better at message

control than Malaysia, and this was another reason the country did not have to fight

negative perceptions of itself when it sought IT investment. This contrast is perhaps best

reflected in this conversation between Mahathir Mohamad and Lee Kwan Yew, at Davos

in 1999. According to the Straits Times,

[Senior Minister] Lee said that Dr. Mahathir had made several errors of

judgment in handling his former protégé’s case. Among these was

arresting the politician under the Internal Security Act shortly after his

dismissal from government in September 1998.

When they met in Davos in January 1999, SM Lee asked Dr.

Mahathir, “Why did you arrest him under the ISA?”

“And he told me he did not know that Anwar was going to be

arrested under the ISA. The police chief acted on his own authority.”
 “It should never have been that way, it should have been a straight-

forward criminal charge.”

The next disaster was the assault on the jailed policeman by former

top police officer Tan Sri Rahim Noor. The Malaysian leader said that he

would not have obtained any benefit from an assault on Anwar.

“I agreed, but these are things that have been done and I am afraid

he has paid very dearly for it. My sympathies are with him.”221

UMNO officials have been criticized by the opposition for giving contracts and

promotions to cronies, a charge frequently repeated by the opposition. On Transparency

International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, Malaysia is ranked 47th, in a five-way tie

with Jordan, Hungary, Costa Rica, and Cape Verde. It routinely receives negative

alternative and international press coverage for contracts awarded to political cronies and

public works projects in the districts of influential politicians. Singapore, by contrast, is

ranked #4 in terms of corruption, ahead of Switzerland, Canada, the UK, Japan, and the

US. The country has a powerful and well-financed anti corruption agency, which has

certainly done much to reduce corruption on most levels. By all accounts, it is extremely

difficult to bribe a police officer in Singapore, while the same is certainly not true in

Malaysia.222 Academic papers and news articles on corruption and Singapore usually

focus on the lack of corruption in the country. Yet high level Singaporean officials engage

in many of the same questionable practices as Malaysian officials, but this news is rarely

reported. For example, in 1996, Lee Kuan Yew and Lee Hsien Loong received substantial

discounts on expensive private condominiums from Hotel Properties Limited (HPL), a

221
Pereira, Brendan. “Some Errors in Judgment were Made” The Straits Times, August 18, 2000.
222
See, for example, Kent, Jonathan. "Malaysia police 'brutal, corrupt'" BBC News, Aug 10 2004.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3550552.stm Accessed April 22, 2009.
publicly traded company headed by the elder Lee's brother. The action violated the rules

of the Singapore Stock Exchange by not supplying information about the discounts to the

Stock Exchange and to the company's shareholders. It was later revealed that the

discounts were extended to other family members, as well. The story received little

mention in foreign or domestic press. An investigation by Goh Chok Tong, who served as

Prime Minister between the two Lees, found no impropriety. When a Hong Kong based

paper published comments by a lawyer questioning the finding, it was forced to pay

$550,000 in defamation damages and apologize to the Lees. 223. In 2002, Ho Ching, the

prime minister's wife, was appointed executive director at a government linked

investment company, Temasek Holdings, despite a background in electrical engineering.

Bloomberg did publish an article speculating Ching’s appointment was due to nepotism,

and had to and settle out of court for $380,000.224 In addition, its high level officials

receive the highest salaries in the world – PM Lee Hsien Loong's annual salary went from

$3.09 million to $3.76 (Us $2.1 million to US $2.5) at the end of 2007, making him the

highest paid chief executive in the world, with a salary six times that of then-president

George Bush. Cabinet ministers receive at least US $1.3 million a year, and the 30 top

paid politicians in the world are all from Singapore.225 This, too has received little

criticism in the press. Although some publications have printed reports critical of the Lees

and other high officials, but the inevitable lawsuits serve as a deterrent powerful enough

that many don’t bother. As a result, reports critical of the Lees are rarely printed, and

Singapore’s international reputation has benefitted. For example, the Corruption

223
Rodan, Garry. "Transparency and authoritarian rule in Southeast Asia: Singapore and Malaysia"
Routledge, 2004. p.35
224
Rodan 2006
225
Lee, Lynn. "Ministers, top civil servants to get 4% to 21% pay rise in Jan" The Straits Times Dec. 13,
2007.
Perceptions Index does not measure corruption itself, but rather perceptions of

corruption, based on interviews with people who have experience in a country, such as

international business people. International business people are presumably influenced by

news reports.

Once differing regulatory regimes were in place, they set the stage for what came

next. Eric Mcglinchey has demonstrated how businesses, NGOs, and individuals active in

the IT sector vigorously defend newly found freedom of speech online, thereby limiting

government options for rescinding it.226 In Singapore, laws extending the country’s

speech restrictions to the online world were passed in 1996, a time when home Internet

penetration was at 9%227. The lack of free discourse online was simply an extension of the

lack of free discourse offline. While Sintercom was mourned by a variety of

Singaporeans, most did not appear ready to take to the streets to challenge the monolith

of regulations. Malaysian officials made no serious attempts to regulate the Web,

remarkably, all the way through the Reformasi period and well into the next decade. By

the time Abdullah attempted to shut down Malaysia Today in 2008, Malaysia had become

accustomed to a free Internet, and alternative news and opinion sites had become a major

source of information for many Malaysians. Abdullah thus received a great deal of

political backlash. Khairy Jamaluddin’s condemnation of Raja Petra’s silencing did not

necessarily mean that Khairy embraced the value of free speech, but at minimum, it

meant Khairy knew which was the wind was blowing.

But regulation is not the only cause of the discrepancy. Cherian George writes that

the Malaysian Internet benefitted significantly from Malaysia’s comparatively lively civil

226
Mcglinchey 2007.
227
IDA Singapore,
http://www.ida.gov.sg/News%20and%20Events/20061124143944.aspx?getPagetype=20
society. Alternative online networks in Malaysia could draw on alternative offline

networks for the mobilization of resources, an option that barely exists in Singapore.

Sintercom relied entirely on a virtual community, spread out across three continents. Its

writers, editors, and readers had almost no face-to-face contact. This was perhaps one of

the reasons it did not survive the regulatory onslaught, at least not in its original form.

When Tan Chong Kee decided to discontinue the site, his readers grumbled but did not

launch a rescue attempt. The anonymous person who launched the New Sintercom

overseas was not a member of its mailing list when discussions about the site’s fate were

taking place. S/he registered astonishment that none of the regular readers had saved the

site:

“I had visited [Sintercom] a couple of times before that, but I was never an active

member of the community. I found it disappointing initially that for all the ‘strength’ of

the Sintercom community, it had to take an ‘outsider’ like myself in order to come and

revive it.”228 New Sintercom still exists, but it never attained anything like its former

glory.

Harakah Daily, by contrast, functions as a news source and virtual community for

PAS members, but its writers’ and readers’ drive and loyalty also come from regular face-

to-face interactions at mosques and meetings, as well as real life participation in political

campaigns. All things being equal, people’s commitment to online communities is not as

high as their commitment to face-to-face ones. The Internet was a tool for disseminating

information for PAS, but these online efforts in turn benefitted from the party’s existing

network and voter base.

228
George 2006 p.186-7.
 Similarly, prior to the Internet, Singapore had less of a tradition of alternative

journalism in any form than Malaysia. It had a few independent publications under the

British, but they withered away under PAP. By contrast, Malaysia had several alternative

publications, printed by political parties, NGOs, and independent journalists. Some of its

most powerful sites did not start from scratch, but rather came as online versions of

existing publications. Malaysia’s online world was then able to draw on existing writers

and editors from the offline world.

One illustrating example is efforts at media reform in both countries. In August

2000, a group of concerned citizens met at the home of Sintercom’s founder to launch a

media reform initiative. A month later, an unrelated group met in Malaysia for a similar

purpose. The Singapore project, called the Media Watch Committee, held a press

conference to announce its plans and registered as a non profit company, but it gave up

the fight in September 2001, after it was unable to raise money from foundations and key

people were no longer available to play leadership roles for the organization.229 By

contrast, its Malaysian counterpart, Charter 2000, took off immediately. By March 2003,

it had been endorsed by 29 organizations, including the Malaysian Trades Union

Congress, the Human Rights Society of Malaysia, Sisters in Islam, and the Independent

Media Activists Group, which includes Malaysiakini and Harakah. It has lobbied from

the repeal of repressive press restrictions, and protested against government intervention.

It also organizes an annual petition calling for greater press freedom, which was signed

by over 900 mainstream and independent journalists in 2002.230 George attributes much

of Charter 2000’s success to involvement by established organizations. The project was

229
George 2006 p. 194-6
230
Ibid.
initiated by the human rights NGO Aliran, which was able to draw on its past experience

lobbying for reform in other areas. Cooperation with like-minded organizations meant

that Charter 2000 could easily make its case to those organizations’ members, while

Media Watch had to go individual by individual. Pundit Chandra Muzaffar commented

that Singapore has a monolithic political structure, with a handful of NGIs, or ‘non-

government individuals’, while Malaysia has a rich variety of organized groups.231

Certainly, Malaysia’s blogosphere was assisted by the considerably broader

Malaysian civil society. In Singapore, nearly all civil society groups are to some extent

tied to the PAP party. Malaysia has truly independent groups, even if they have been kept

from attaining much power in the past. Aliran, for example, has been around since 1977.

Although it had a great deal of trouble publishing reports prior to the Internet, it was at

least existent. A key feature of blogs is they “glom on” to other media. While some blogs

do do original reporting, the majority pull content from other sources and then add

commentary and analysis. The existence of a reputable human rights organization was a

gold mine for political bloggers, because it puts them in touch with a wealth of human

rights information that they can then discuss and publicize. There is no Singaporean

equivalent to Aliran, and so when Singaporean bloggers want to write about human

rights, they have to rely on less frequent and less detailed foreign media reports, or

attempt to rely on unpaid volunteers to do all the research and writing themselves.

The rise of bloggers as a potent political force in Malaysia in their own right

certainly illustrates the power of unrestrained information. Jack M. Balkin argues that

unrestrained digital speech promotes a democratic culture, in which individuals have a

right to participate in and comment on the culture around them. In this sense, online
231
Ibid.
speech is a system – it is participatory and interactive, rather than being a one way

channel of information. 232 Individuals are both readers and writers, producers and

consumers. This interactivity itself is culture changing. For example, if a Malaysian

politician makes a speech and the speech is reported by the mainstream media, a blogger

can pick it up and point out discrepancies and omissions. This information then goes out

into the broader sea of political discourse, where others can critique it and add their own

ideas to it. In essence, the bloggers have created something like a public forum. This can

be a powerful force, especially if no such place exists in the physical world. In this way,

the rules have changed. The change is democratizing.

232
Balkin, Jack M. “Digital Speech and Democratic Culture” NYU Law Review, 2004.