PUTRAJAYA, Aug 19 — Communications and Digital Minister Fahmi Fadzil said the freedom of the press and speech guaranteed in Malaysia does not equate to freedom to slander and...
Strategic shortsightedness then, no? You win the battle (you get to charge and arrest other ppl with the nice bonuses of causing technical faults that cause them ineligible to run for office - bankruptcy or detention) to lose the war (as you say, they’re on shaky electoral ground meaning the shoe being on the other foot will come soon enough).
The mutual prisoner’s game is to beef up institutions and rights so that neither side can gain the authoritarian upper hand. Every ‘slick’ politician esp Malay ones here are dumb as hell. Atok before he completed his racist heel turn used to be all moaning about why are Malays so captured by right-wing islamists and that was basically thanks to his 1994 constitutional amendment because his party support was so weak (sampai cipta UMNO baru, another political innovation) he thought he’d curry favour with them. Fahmi isn’t even nowhere as intellectually adept, cuma poisoned by too much House of Cards and West Wing viewing (imooooo)
If anything i would say it’s a calculated risk - trading individual liberty (freedom of press/speech) for their own political stability.
Fahmi isn’t even nowhere as intellectually adept, cuma poisoned by too much House of Cards and West Wing viewing (imooooo)
Fahmi does not need to know how to play 4D chess like that Mahafiruan, he just needs to know how to be a bureaucrat. We can see that in today’s world he is easily the most influential bureaucrat in whole of Malaysia given how Malaysians perpetually reside in fesbukjaya or twitterjaya. So he can easily control the narrative and for now, 3R seems to be off the menu. Expect to see more and more individuals getting into trouble for spouting racist and religious stuff online and PH-BN will make an example out of them.
I really really hope that this will turn out to be true. Certainly it will reduce the temperature in the rhetoric. Stuff like that book raid doesn’t make me feel optimistic, plus they did try this tack against Sanusi and arguably this blew up in their face (because I would say that Malays are actually less idolizing of the royals the way non-Malays seem to be in public and in large part it’s dividends from all that institutionalized religious education + historical memory; PH forgot why the Malay Rulers hate Mahathir’s guts, but he could even go that far because it’s one of the few things he’s got genuine political mandate in. TLDR I would reckon a typical Melayu more critical than ambivalent of their royals). If they want to activate pseudo-lese majeste to check religious rhetoric (of which the most low-key toxic comes from the institutionalized sources), they’re in for a rude shock.
(ETA: especially when u compare cultural codes, mandate of heaven is one thing but nusantara cultures absolutely are ok with killing kings if they’re seen to be zalim. This is a pre-islamic attitude that has continued to survive)
ANYWAY, while as an example can be pretty low-stakes, but the whole nonsense of separate Merdeka slogans, yang pandai2 buat dulu are the Pakatan states: https://www.malaysiakini.com/news/676372
Strategic shortsightedness then, no? You win the battle (you get to charge and arrest other ppl with the nice bonuses of causing technical faults that cause them ineligible to run for office - bankruptcy or detention) to lose the war (as you say, they’re on shaky electoral ground meaning the shoe being on the other foot will come soon enough).
The mutual prisoner’s game is to beef up institutions and rights so that neither side can gain the authoritarian upper hand. Every ‘slick’ politician esp Malay ones here are dumb as hell. Atok before he completed his racist heel turn used to be all moaning about why are Malays so captured by right-wing islamists and that was basically thanks to his 1994 constitutional amendment because his party support was so weak (sampai cipta UMNO baru, another political innovation) he thought he’d curry favour with them. Fahmi isn’t even nowhere as intellectually adept, cuma poisoned by too much House of Cards and West Wing viewing (imooooo)
If anything i would say it’s a calculated risk - trading individual liberty (freedom of press/speech) for their own political stability.
Fahmi does not need to know how to play 4D chess like that Mahafiruan, he just needs to know how to be a bureaucrat. We can see that in today’s world he is easily the most influential bureaucrat in whole of Malaysia given how Malaysians perpetually reside in fesbukjaya or twitterjaya. So he can easily control the narrative and for now, 3R seems to be off the menu. Expect to see more and more individuals getting into trouble for spouting racist and religious stuff online and PH-BN will make an example out of them.
I really really hope that this will turn out to be true. Certainly it will reduce the temperature in the rhetoric. Stuff like that book raid doesn’t make me feel optimistic, plus they did try this tack against Sanusi and arguably this blew up in their face (because I would say that Malays are actually less idolizing of the royals the way non-Malays seem to be in public and in large part it’s dividends from all that institutionalized religious education + historical memory; PH forgot why the Malay Rulers hate Mahathir’s guts, but he could even go that far because it’s one of the few things he’s got genuine political mandate in. TLDR I would reckon a typical Melayu more critical than ambivalent of their royals). If they want to activate pseudo-lese majeste to check religious rhetoric (of which the most low-key toxic comes from the institutionalized sources), they’re in for a rude shock.
(ETA: especially when u compare cultural codes, mandate of heaven is one thing but nusantara cultures absolutely are ok with killing kings if they’re seen to be zalim. This is a pre-islamic attitude that has continued to survive)
ANYWAY, while as an example can be pretty low-stakes, but the whole nonsense of separate Merdeka slogans, yang pandai2 buat dulu are the Pakatan states: https://www.malaysiakini.com/news/676372