How blogging changes the country

Assalamualaikum warahmatullah wabarakatuh,

To readers who are not Malaysians, if you have read the past 3 posts, you will have gain a little understanding of the political scenario in Malaysia. Many claimed that the politicians picked the Chief Editors of the main stream media in Malaysia and control the messages to send to the people - most of the time positive news for the ruling coalition and negative news for the oppositions. With the same sentiment around the world where the muslims loose their trust to the media which always portrays distorted image about Islam, the Malaysian younger generation started to think the same to the local main stream media and decided to find alternative channels to spread their message, may I restate that it is not to spread the opposition's message but the youths' own message. Many youths do not trust the main stream media in Malaysia and switch to alternative media like blogs, youtube news from Malaysia, internet news and many other, until at a stage, the government decided to ban the 'misuse' of blogs in Malaysia and wanted to take legal action on the bloggers who spread the not-so-beautiful stories about the government. Sound like communist? I don't know because I don't support the spreading of rumours but if it's true and the people need to know probably concrete facts and proofs should to be presented in a professional way.

Also another political scenario in Malaysia is that, you won't be able to stand as a candidate of a party until you get old because the seniority sentiment in Malaysian's political parties is very strong that dispite the ability and credibility of the candidate, if the person has been long in the party and has many supporters, especially from the top, he or she will have the opportunity to rise and gain a seat in the parliament representing the party. This is what we call the political ladder. You climb one step at a time but if you want to cross other people you either do it in a very sinful way (including oppression, corruption, propping up the superiors, etc.) or you really have that special talent that stand out among the rest. It is usual to find the parliamentary candidates are among those who are older than 40 years old. This is especially true in a party that has been long established. For example, the former Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamed, he has been the member of UMNO for 18 years before he had the chance to stand as a candidate representing his party and only after 28 years that he became the Prime Minister. Probably another reason for this is because you need to earn enough money to register to compete (you need RM10,000.00 to pay the deposite on the nomination day).

Now, since the imprisonment of Anwar Ibrahim, a new party was formed and many youths who started to take politics, the survival and future of the country seriously have a chance to have their say in the parliament. In this party, Justice Party, there appears to be so many young candidates in this election and many of them are elected. Among them are bloggers and many of the bloggers use their blogs to appeal for donation to run their election campaigns. One of the blogger managed to collect more than RM123,000.00 of donation on-line from donors in and out of Malaysia. The blog is not just a way for them to spread their messages across the country, it also provides the facility to accumulate campaign funds and to interact with people. This way, the communication is more dynamic and it is a channel for the people to ask questions directly to the candidates and the candidates' opinions and answers are on the blogs to be judged and criticised by the public. This is more effective than running the election campaigns all over the places in just less than 13 days and of course saves a lot of money.

As I browsed through many blogs of the Malaysian politicians, I find that there are a lot of bloggers that support the opposition than the ruling coalition. Maybe there is no need for the ruling coalition to blog as they have the main stream media to spread their messages across the country. Shocking news, message and information are all around the blogs, some that can be trusted and some that need some research to verify, like most of the news in the mass media today. It would be a complete fool to take what the newspapers and broadcasting channels as 100% correct, hey, but there are still many people out there just take as they watch on the TV screen as the truth like in some other countries (you know which countries I am talking about). People in the rural areas in Malaysia can only have newspapers, radio and TV. They have been fed by the main stream media everyday and if they don't think out of the box and make a wise comparison, their votes are for the ruling coalition, no doubt. Again, I am not saying that they will not vote the ruling coalition after making a wise comparison, they might do.

Seeking knowledge and reflecting on what we have learnt are among the most important elements one must possessed if one is truly a learned individual. This will result in a wise thinking and action, prevent one from being deceived. With the bombardment of information from all around us, it is sometime difficult to make the best judgement. As a muslim, ultimately to make a choice is to rely on ALLAH, we might have enough information to predict who will be good as the members of parliament that can represent us, but who can guarantee the future other than the Al-Mighty ALLAH?

"The happiness of the son of Adam depends on his being content with what Allah has decreed for him, and the misery of the son of Adam results from his failure to pray istikharah, and the misery of the son of Adam results from in his discontent with what Allah has decreed for him."

~ Hadith collected by Al-Tirmidhi

ALLAHU'alam.

Wassalam.