Malaysia Matters Podcast

Malaysia is undergoing a unique transformation of its means of communicating politically, and this has already had electoral ramifications. One of the key measures of Badawi has been presenting as an item of reform is the ‘freedom of the press’ initiative. Alongside the other major reform areas –judicial process, economic security, religious tolerance, and corruption prevention– a freedom of the press has been embarked upon in order to liberalize the licensing policies to allow opposition voices to use the traditional newspaper medium of communication, but the real ‘reform’ of the ‘freedom of press’ revolves around the internet.

Malaysia does not censor the use of the internet, and in talking with the Prime Minister, he made it clear that he intends it to stay that way. There are some 300-500K blogs in Malaysia, and many of them are political in commentary. Badawi mentioned that he read the blogs frequently, through press clippings by one of his staff members. I made a post over on MyDD yesterday about the blogging of the former PM, Mahathir Mohamad, whom the current PM Badawi said he doesn’t read firsthand, because “I already know what they are saying” on that blog. He mentioned MalaysiaKini.com as one of the sites he reads frequently, and other sites that were talked about while visiting the PM’s residence, during a traditional Malaysian breakfast afterwards, were MalaysianInsider.com and MalaysiaToday.com.