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| .my Malaysia |
Overview The untimely death of a pioneer of the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC), the exit of Malaysia’s longest-serving prime minister, the proposed merger of the country’s top two ISPs, the indefensible police raid on the office of Malaysia’s premier independent Internet newspaper, Malaysiakini -- these were some of the main domestic developments in "digital" Malaysia during 2003. Beyond Malaysia’s shores, world events such as the US invasion of Iraq, SARS and the bombing in Bali all played important roles in shaping the Malaysian political-economic environment. In September 2003, Dr Othman Yeop Abdullah, the first executive chairman of Multimedia Development Corporation (MDC), the organisation charged with the coordination and implementation of the MSC project, died of lung cancer at the age of 62. He had retired from the civil service in 1996 after serving at the Ministry of Primary Industries, the Ministry of Energy, Telecommunications and Posts, the Modernisation and Manpower Planning Unit of the Prime Minister’s Department, and a local university as vice chancellor. Upon retirement, he was picked by Dr Mahathir to help spearhead the much-heralded digitisation of Malaysia by chairing MDC. Under his stewardship, the MSC surpassed the milestones that had been set for what many have described as Malaysia’s most ambitious national project. However, the last few years of his tenure saw increasing criticism of the MSC, as similar initiatives in other countries in the region, most notably Hong Kong and Singapore, had evidently surpassed the accomplishments of the MSC. The retirement of the feisty prime minister, Dr Mahathir, in October 2003 continues to raise questions about the future of Malaysia’s ICT policies and strategies, with many observers still unsure where the new prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, will concentrate his priorities. As one MDC senior executive put it in a recent conversation, "At present, we seem to be outside the radar range of the new PM as he targets corruption and other social ills." On 20 January 2003, the police raided the Malaysiakini office, seizing 15 computers and 4 servers, crippling the web-based independent newspaper for about ten hours. In a protracted "investigation" of a purportedly "seditious" letter published in the paper, the police interrogated the senior editors with no formal charges being levelled against them. A year after the raid, Malaysiakini donated the remaining computers still under custody to the police. In the 2004 budget, tabled in Parliament in October 2003, it was proposed that the country’s two top ISPs, TMNet and Jaring, be merged. Despite promising cheaper broadband access, the proposed merger sparked an outcry from local users fearing the creation of a monopoly. The merger has since been abandoned by the newly appointed Minister for Energy, Water and Communications, Dr Lim Keng Yaik, who said that his ministry had discussed the proposed merger and had decided in favour of preserving a competitive environment in the ISP market. Local online content The bulk of local content available on the Internet is still provided by news and mass media organisations, as evidently is the case with many other countries. The online edition of Malaysia’s premier English daily, The Star, remains the most popular website. Other newspapers such as Malaysiakini and The Edge continue to depend heavily on the Internet to convey their news messages, though for different reasons. Malaysiakini, due largely to its independent and politically critical stance, has been unable to obtain a publishing licence from the Home Ministry, despite having been around for more than four years. This is a problem faced by many other politically "independent" newspapers in Malaysia attempting to present views that, if not critical, are not blindly supportive of the government. The much-criticised Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984 (Amended 1987) has not been further amended, let alone repealed, by the government, despite being petitioned by an overwhelming number of (mainly) mainstream journalists. The act enjoins all regular publications to have a publishing. . . . . . the complete text of this chapter is available for purchase and immediate download as a PDF file, please click here for more information. |
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