Our High and Mighty Mediacracy

Here is Walla’s comments on my article about Mediacracy. An excellent piece of writing that must be shared with all right thinking Malaysians.

A government which is truly and honestly concerned about the rakyat would not practice mediacrassy (sic). It would want truths to be said so that lessons can be learned for real improvements to be made not just outwardly but also inwardly.

A puppet press glossing over bad things is like publicly broadcasting implicit proxy approval to the perpetrators to repeat them. Over time, stakes will be raised so that a small mistake will soon become a big bad deliberate deed.

We all know the quintessential question: if a government governs the people, who governs the government? It must be universal principles implemented without fear or favour by institutions of integrity.

But what happens when the institutions themselves are run by people appointed to high office by the perpetrating government concerned? Then it becomes abang-adik bertolong-menolong to subvert principles and fair-play on the excuse of political expediency as slogan to protect stability for development.

Integrity is then sacrificed and the sky becomes the only limit to abuse power, victimize the righteous, practice double standards and cheat the rakyat although the requisite rules of law may already be in place.

In some instances, the rules of law are themselves not updated for new situations in order to crimp such universal rights as the authorities in power may think will generate threats to their own way of life prioritized over their long-forgotten oath of duty to rakyat and nation.

In other cases, the rules of law are used selectively, for instance to bar activists from entering a state on political grounds as pointed out recently by Lord Pannick in his closing sentence.

The only antidote against all this is a proactive media to open more minds and help create a climate of critical thinking that will rationalize towards the right thing to do over the wrong thing to use just to satisfy the political ambitions of those in power.

 An enlightened and pro-citizen media will demolish the devilish turfdom of bad government.     It can even lift the rakyat out of the darkness of the devil into the light of the angel.  It can add momentum to the wave-change in mindset already started by the rakyat themselves.

Such a media can use its array of expertise and tools to spark real open improvement in government instead of conscribing minds to the status quo of past comfort no longer sustainable under present circumstances.

 A free press today will show that the only problem in this country is Umno. Not MCA nor MIC nor Gerakan for their epitaphs have already been written on the berlin wall of Putrajaya that is crumbling even as the remnant ranks of Umno are trying to erect a new west-bank wall in a final us-versus-them posturing against the majority of the voting rakyat.

So Barisan today is for all intents and purposes only Umno. But the Umno today has to be without Umno Wanita and Umno Youth. Going into GE13, Umno Wanita IS Shahrizat's cowgate. Going into GE13, Umno Youth IS that Penang celup.

And going into GE13, Umno is Mahathir, the only man no subpoena can touch so that he is now reduced to talking about bulldozers, perhaps in recollection of his own draconian methods against the lives of so many that have only succeeded in leaving behind a trail of corruption and racism, financial destruction, mental chauvinism, forfeiture of principles and personal vendettas.

It is also Najib, the new sheriff of Nottingham who would strike fear about Malay rights even on Malaysia Day while con-fabulously spending today YOUR money of YOUR future generations in a vain effort to create HIS own personal, superficial, flip-flopping and self-contradicting brand.

It is also Muhyiddin, the 1Malay brutus who has already as an oversight omitted in his new education blueprint the living skill of golf-playing, so necessary these days to win seratus billion ringgit contracts, no?

 But let us be fair and not forget the others.

Umno must also include Rastam who would have opined his piece about PR enriching itself at precisely the fateful moment when he was applying shaving lotion while staring at his own face in the mirror. Will the simple-minded, self-syioking people of Melaka wake up anytime soon?

How about Hishammudin and Nazri who expel intestinal air when they open their mouths, or the two Ali's, men of Umno's principle of no-principles, or Nong Chik, businessman-minister now framed in psychedelic LED display panels along the main road before you enter Bangsar. Or the two Aman's namely Musa and Anifah of UBS infamy. Or Shafie Apdal, Noh Omar, Zahid Hamidi, Zamry Kadir, Mustapa Mohamed, Mukhriz Apanama. Or Syed Albukhary and his monopolies. Or Rozali Ismail with his kensington-styled twin and back-to-back TTDI bungalows. Or the AG, KSN, IGP, MACCC, ECC, BNMG. Or the Umno grand viziers advising the royal houses.

 A free press would have done a good editorial on these men whose only distinction is in the black arts of spin and twist, power control and self-reward. Exactly what else are they good for, pray tell.

In the interest of their readers, even WCW of Star, Awang Selamat of Urusan, Farid Ridzuan of TV3, or perhaps Rocky Balboa himself will have to admit something is not right somewhere.

After all, how can Malaysia make finite and honest progress with this bunch? They're asking you for another five-year mandate to rule you and your children in the way Umno has run this country to the ground with overpriced development layered over stability branded in its own name. Unless you are saying the groundswell that had caused Barisan to lose five states the last general elections was just a mirage and the hundreds of thousands who had walked for clean government are just a figment of lordey-blimey's and kampong-originated, UK-trained, engineer's febrile imaginations.

And yet the same bunch wants to rule again over our Malays in Umno who number no more than sixteen percent of all our Malays who in turn number sixty percent of the population.

It is inconceivable that fraction of our Malays who are still in Umno are so blind in denial that they have closed their eyes and ears completely to what Urusan has already publicly admitted, namely it only spews pro-Umno propaganda.

A deed if done good needs neither introduction nor publicity. You only make propaganda when cause and effect are disjointed which more often than not happen when real intentions have been masked.

The masking tape of lies and spins are telling of a bad government run by a worse political party ruled by the worst culprits in the land.