Malaysian Candidates Required to Have Blogs

Pioneer Woman writes "Abdul Rahman Dahlan, secretary general of the United Malays National Organization party's youth wing, said all those vying for national youth posts must have blogs to introduce themselves and their programs ahead of party elections in December. The decision appeared aimed at countering heavy losses that the ruling National Front coalition suffered in last month's general elections. In a country where mainstream media is tightly controlled by the government they underestimated the power of online campaigning. In the past, party politicians have said bloggers spread lies and rumors but now even youth deputy Khairy Jamaluddin — who once compared bloggers to monkeys living by the law of the jungle — has a blog."

only a blog ?

They forgot hi5 and myspace, all full and loaded!!

Youth Deputy Troy McClure

You've finally made a monkey,
(Yes, we've finally made a monkey,)
Yes, you've finally made a monkey
Out of meeeee!

Bloggers are leaders.

From the article:

"All candidates must have blogs," Abdul Rahman told The Associated Press. "If not, they are not qualified to be leaders."
...
"He said help will be available for party members who do not know how to create a blog."

I was almost able to read that with a straight face.

This is like saying that everyone that wants a driver's license must have a cell phone. If not, they are not qualified to drive a vehicle.

I understand that the party believes the internet to be a key factor in their elections, but what does one have to do with the other?

George Bush doesn't have a bl . . . oh wait.

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I suppose the idea is to increase openness, but really I'd expect this to simply turn into another PR outlet, regurgitating the same things as the media does anyways. But who knows? Maybe they'll have political podcasts for each candidate too (politicasts?

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Perhaps the youth don't pay attention to the other PR outlets and one needs a blog if one is to reach them. One who can not reach the youth is not qualified to lead a country.

Re:Bloggers are leaders.

If that is the case (which I seriously doubt it is), then the youth need to expand their horizons.

The world doesn't bow to "you." You need to research and dig into the issues yourself and if one medium isn't providing the information you need, use multiple sources.

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You've never dealt with children before, have you? I'm sure, if you have kids, you raise them to think and learn, and find things out for themselves, but that just makes them remarkable. But, even so, that's not really the issue. Generally speaking the o

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If that is the case (which I seriously doubt it is), then the youth need to expand their horizons.

In Malaysia they don't have many alternatives.

All the TV stations are controlled by BN (the majority party). Likewise every English and Malay-language newsp

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One who can not reach the youth is not qualified to lead a country.

The people affected by this aren't running to lead Malaysia (and eventually be assaulted by Derek Zoolander). It's roughly equivalent to the Young Republicans or College Democrats adopting

Re:Bloggers are leaders.

From the second article:

"Malaysia's mainstream media is tightly controlled by the government. Opposition leaders complain they did not get equal access to air time, in advance of the elections this month, while the ruling coalition of Prime Minster Abdullah Badawi spent millions of dollars on campaign ads."

His party still lost their majority, and they believe it's because they didn't utilize the internet. I don't think it has anything to do with openness - it has to do with those in power wanting to stay in power.

I just don't see why having a blog suddenly qualifies you as a leader - to make such a logical leap IMHO calls into question his own leadership abilities.

Re:Bloggers are leaders.

A correction: His party did not lose their majority. As of now, they lost their 2/3 majority which they have held for a very long time. The party still form government with simple majority, elects the Prime Minister, and can pass any law they wishes if voting enbloc.

Why is the 2/3 so significant, considering in most matured democracy getting 60% itself is considered a landslide? There are a few reasons:

- The ruling party is very dominant and had always held on to power since independence by large margins,

- The ruling party affliated companies owns most mainstream media and controls it tightly, so even with rampant corruption and abuse of power, all these are surpressed and the opposition made to look like weak and ineffectual,

- The last time the 2/3 majority was lost in 1969 - racial riots ensued, lots of people were killed, emergency rule was declared, and the government made a deal with an opposition splinter to join the coalition when parliament reconvened a few years later thus regaining the 2/3. So the government use this event (called the May 13 1969 riots) to scare and warn the populace: that to deny the ruling party 2/3 majority is to invite racial bloodshed again,

- With 2/3 majority the government have made more than 160 amendments to the constitution as they liked and wish. A recent one was to extend the Election Commissioner's tenure even when he was supposed to step down (some allerge that this is so that he can be trusted to skew the results in the government's favour).

- Internal politics within the ruling party is very intense with multiple 'camps', strong vested interest due to concentration of money and power, and ineffectual whips. Each camp is waiting to pounce to secure the crown of Prime Ministership.

Despite all these, the ruling party still managed to lose the 2/3 majority even with tight control of mainstream media (who denounce the opposition mercilessly before the elections). The explanation most pundits agree is that for once, the younger people have internet access to alternative media exposes of all the many scandals that came to light in the past few years.

This is a typical knee-jerk and panic reaction by the government that is bewildered and shaken that its tight grip on people's ears and eyes are loosening (it even got a Kafkesque Ministry of Information), and instead of cleaning up its act, feel like they must master the PR game that is now shifting to the internet.

To which I say... good luck to them!

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"I just don't see why having a blog suddenly qualifies you as a leader - to make such a logical leap IMHO calls into question his own leadership abilities."

I think it's you who is making the logical leap.

He said: "If not, they are not qualified to be leade

Blog doesn't mean what it used to

I think that this is just a case where the term blog doesn't mean what it used to. In the past, a blog used to be a personal, fairly frequent journal. Now it just means any sort of at least semi-regular postings.

I mean these days a company can take what they used to call their press release archive and call it a blog. Heck, by the current definition of the term, /. is a blog.

So all this Malaysian thing has nothing to do with blogging (in the original sense of the word) gaining any mindshare. All that is is really saying is that Malaysian politicians are required to put their position papers and general propaganda online. Unfortunately, no serious politician, Malaysian or otherwise, is really going to put their unedited musings online.

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Unfortunately, no serious politician, Malaysian or otherwise, is really going to put their unedited musings online.

http://carlbildt.wordpress.com/ [wordpress.com]

It's in Swedish, but in short it's the Swedish foreign minister's blog and it's written from a personal perspective on current foreign issues, international meetings, government meetings, etc.

Of course it's not unedi

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Heck, by the current definition of the term, /. is a blog.

The current definition? The first definition I heard for blog was "um, you know, like Slashdot."

A semi-regularly updated online journal was always called a "diary" since the earliest days of the

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Unfortunately, no serious politician, Malaysian or otherwise, is really going to put their unedited musings online.

Jeff Ooi [jeffooi.com], Penang MP, has blogged regularly for many years and continues to do so. His political career started on his blog.

And Lord, if he

all professionally written, no doubt

While it sounds like a nice, if rather naive idea I seriously doubt if it will amount to anything more than another platform to promote "the message".

Don't think for a minute that any of the candidates will actually ever sign-on and write content themselve

Turncoats

but now even youth deputy Khairy Jamaluddin - who once compared bloggers to monkeys living by the law of the jungle - has a blog

This, sadly, tells you all you need to know about politicians.

Use cron

All the candidates need to do is set up a cron task that will post at the following times:

0800: Woke up and brush teeth
0830: Eat breakfast
1200: Eat lunch
1800: Eat dinner
2200: Sleep

This way, they actually do have a blog entry!!!

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This is Malaysia we are talking about.

0930 Go to work
1000 Wake up
1030 Step out for nasi lemak before the stall shuts
1200 Lunch
1330 Ask for the bill
1430 Go out for teh tarik
1630 Stop working
1830 Boss leaves the office
1831 Stop surfing the web and c

This is actually a big step

This is actually a big step forward for the ruling coalition's big wigs. Until very recently, no one dares to openly criticise the Prime Minister or the high ranking ministers in the mainstream media or even in real life. The mainstream media, even the pri

Re:WHY IS THIS IN POLITICS??!!!

This site is and pretty much has always been a personal blog with a particularly active comments section. There are many stories that are posted in categories they are at best tangentially related to. Who can forget kdawson's past love affair with putting virtually everything in the Enlightenment category, even though that category was intended for news about the Enlightenment window manager?

The Politics section was originally designed to drive page hits by taking advantage of the hot topic of the day, that being the 2004 elections. It has since morphed into a holding ground for basically any vaguely political story, and serves as a way to get controversial (and therefore high page view generating) stories on Slashdot that aren't necessarily directly tech related. The FAQ itself is so rarely updated that you could hardly expect it to contain up to date information on what individual sections of the site are currently used for, or even provide a good list of what sections currently exist.

In short, take a deep breath, relax, and learn to let these things slide.

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Not to mention the potential for Obamasms by pointing out that Barrack Obama has a blog [barackobama.com] while W doesn't (well, not a real one anyway [vox.com]) or that Obama has a MySpace page [myspace.com], etc.

Why, I can just see people modding me up +5, Informative right now! ;)

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These are not ordinary citizens, they are political candidates. As a wise man once said, "with great power comes great responsibility".

Re: A blogger was elected into Parliament

Agreed, though the interactive nature of blogs doesn't work unless you want it to. I imagine:
* comments on these "blogs" (if allowed at all) will be carefully moderated and perhaps simply fabricated
* they'll also be able to modify and remove old posts if