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Friday, August 15, 2014

Nazri takes friendly fire

Blogger attacks him for cordial relations with the DAP CM of Penang
COMMENT
We often hear “that the government is BN, and the BN is the government.” This mix-up is very common and totally understandable.
Until rather recently, when blogs and online news portals became accessible in Malaysia, all our news came from predictable mainstream papers and radio and TV channels that were run by the BN government, as in the case of RTM, or had close ties with BN components.
NazriNow that the Internet has liberalised the nation’s communications model and levelled the playing field for content providers, we are witnessing a renaissance of sorts, at least in regard to alternative opinions and viewpoints.
This doesn’t mean that the government isn’t participating in alternative news and views, or restricting itself to a regulatory role. The reality couldn’t be further from the truth, as it actually has many horses in this race. For example, one former prime minister is particularly famous for his blog.
As you might imagine, there are many pro-Umno troopers who will want to follow in his footsteps. It was he who rubbed the lamp and let the genie out of the bottle. But getting the genie back into the lamp isn’t half as easy.
Nazri Aziz’s support for Lim Guan Eng’s proposal to ban foreign labour from cooking Penang street fare is one such case to highlight. More recently, there was an attempt by a pro-Umno blogger to link Nazri to a video of a group of people frolicking in their birthday suits on the beach in Teluk Bahang, Penang.
The blogger zeroed in on Nazri and attacked him for his cordial relations with the DAP Chief Minister of Penang, seeing some connection in Nazri’s presence in Penang at the time the video was purportedly taken. Nazri, in his usual frankness, called the blogger “stupid” and “sub-standard”.
This episode with Nazri in his role as the Tourism Minister supporting the government of Penang isn’t particularly controversial by any yardstick. But in the eyes of pro-Umno bloggers, Nazri had crossed the line because he was depicted in photos as having far too much fun with Lim at the Penang Arts Festival.
The point to consider here is not the scorn or contempt poured on Nazri, who is well able to defend himself. It is the divisive nature of the blogger’s mindset, which routinely mixes up and misunderstands that the government and BN are separate entities. They may be one and the same on occasion, but not always.
The relationship of politicians and bloggers can best be described as symbiotic. They feed off one another. The politicians make the news and the bloggers interpret and disseminate it. But our fractured society and education system have engendered the belief that politics and government should both be the sole, exclusive domain of Umno or its proxies, and that everything or everyone else is an interloper.
A fanatic’s mindset will never admit fresh air and sunshine into its recesses. He will not acknowledge that any genuine act of good or kindness from the enemy is even possible.
Thus when Nazri strays into the crosshairs of the blogger’s “target acquisition system”, already pre-set to select Pakatan targets, the operator of the missile fails to discern friend from foe. He recognises Nazri, but fires anyway. “That smiling man must be an ally of the enemy; why else would he be in a war zone?” he thinks to himself.

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