Thursday, March 27, 2008

My Biggest Mistake

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said this week that his "biggest mistake" was to ignore cyber-campaigning, and the new information minister has said he will reach out to bloggers.

Alternate news was read avidly ahead of the recently held elections that handed the ruling coalition its worst ever results in its half-century reign over Malaysia.

Malaysia's blogs and alternative news websites have become popular because some people believe the mainstream press, which is mostly linked to the government, is biased.

However, The Malaysian High Court made a decision on Wednesday (26/3) after Raja Petra Kamaruddin (who runs Malaysia Today website) and the opposition party Keadilan's newspaper, which also published the alleged story, failed to file a defence, the official Bernama news agency said.

It ordered Raja Petra to pay 4.0 million ringgit (1.25 million dollars) to Vice-Chansellor of University Utara Malaysia, Nordin Kardi and University Utara Malaysia itself, while two editors of "Suara Keadilan" had to pay 3.0 million ringgit.

University Utara Malaysia and its vice-chancellor filed a lawsuit against Raja Petra , over an item that alleged Nordin had plagiarised an article.

Nordin said his victory would inspire others, including politicians, to take legal action against people who abuse blogs.

Source: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5h9XLi02O6YnAugfj9uWWW1Bt5qVA

Campukak: ..learning to be a decent blogger.. Etiquette comes first!

1 comment:

Kadazan Man in New York said...

this reminds me of a malay expression where they say something like "jatuh di timpa tangga, you blame it on someone". sorry, need help on that. but i guess its all too late now to play the blame game. however, it's all for better administration of the country anyway.
by the way, i do read raja petra's commentary. sometimes it is quite entertaining and offers different insights of thinga in malaysia. although sometimes you can't help to notice that he complains a lot but it's all for good things and change in malaysia, i guess. yes, i do follow and i do keep track issues with the malaysian government too just to keep a balance perspective. although,i did noticed that some of the mps or ministers seems to have the notion that most malaysians are born to be pak turut.
it is also funny to see how the government realized about all these only after election when they know before the election and did say before the election that bloggers wouldn't be any threat to them at all. i remember it was najib who said that and yes, sharizat did say the same thing too and so did the menteri belia dan sukan too. forgot her name.
well, its funny too because all this while they are promoting e-knowledge among malaysians and totally forgotten that malaysians are better in dealing with this e-knowledge thing than they thought.