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KUALA LUMPUR, 27 June: The cry for freedom of expression, national unity and Bangsa Malaysia reverberated again in the Bar Council Auditorium in the 3rd Session of SPK II – Rethinking Malaysia: Media and Civil Society. The moderator for the night, Amin Idris set out the session by quoting the prolific Turkish author and theologian, Adnan Oktar saying, “Yes, there is freedom of expression, but after that, there is no freedom after expression.”

The panel speakers for the night was Jeff Ooi, a Prominent Blogger in Malaysia, Elizabeth Wong, Secretariat Member of SUARAM and the Consultant of the Strategic Information and Research Development Centre (SIRD) and Datuk Paul Low, Secretary General of Transparency International Malaysia.

Jeff Ooi got off to a flying start in the session when he pointed out that media and civil society are the two extremes in an equilibrium and that we really need to reconcile the two. He went to ask that after 50 years of independence, “what have we achieved?”, equating Malaysia to a person 5 years away from retirement age. This statement was later accorded by Datuk Paul Low who described Malaysia as being at the age of a mid-life crisis, a time for change.

The media, added Jeff Ooi, can be looked upon from two angles. First, the mainstream media, saying the journalists who have self-esteem would consider themselves as the “fourth estate”, being the people who are involved in preparing the first draft of the history, which carries a huge role that really dictate the direction of civilisation. Second, the group of people who published news on the internet, whom he described as the “agent of change” in a sense that they are first exposed to even the earlier edition of the first draft of history that comes through the internet. News on the internet that is not picked up by the mainstream media is picked up by individuals writing on the internet. Therefore these individuals give subversive impact on the way people, the civil society, start to look at old issues from a new angle, and more so, when you have people who write on the internet giving critical analysis of the issues.

The term civil society, defined by Jeff Ooi following the term used during Anuar Ibrahim time as “Masyarakat Madani”, that this civil society is capable of a thinking capacity, a thinking generation. The formal definition of the term was later provided by Elizabeth Wong which is “a reign of quality, where self organising groups, movements and individuals relatively autonomous from the state attempt to articulate values, create associations, and solidarities and advance their interests”, which she clarified, include the non-governmental organisation (NGO) such as SUARAM.

Jeff Ooi posted a question; if whatever that is printed in the mainstream media has been sanitised, filtered and self-regulated, what would be the impact that will cast of the people who are recipient? Furthermore, the mainstream media are owned by the government of the day or the political party intimately close to the government of the day. The space that the people can operate in terms of the mindset is rather guided, therefore they are giving distorted history and hence the minds of the people are also rather guided. Moreover, the statistics have shown that the sale of the tabloids is higher than the sale of more profound newspapers. That goes to show that we really have to think hard whether the media has been giving the people sedatives that they lose the capacity to think. The proof, he said, can be seen in the bunch of graduates produced by the local universities and twinning programs, some are unemployed, and some are even worse, they are unemployable. He went on reminding that these younger generations are going to take over the leadership of the country and therefore we should start to think about what kind of media has shaped the civil society.

Elizabeth Wong, in her opening, introduced the SUARAM Human Rights Report 2006 which contains information in regards to freedom of expressions. It includes, among others, media statistic, incidents and case studies. Her approach, she said, was to identify what are the roles of the civil society now and in the future. She expressed her standpoint that if you expect good things to happen in the future, than you have got to work towards it instead of complaining. She further quoted from her sources that “in democratic theory, civil society is an essential element in mobilising oppositions to authoritarian and totalitarian regimes”. There is a particular function for a civil society, which requires unity of thoughts and common interests. According to Elizabeth, the media, as articulated by Jeff Ooi, is in such a dire situation.

We have alternative media such as Malaysiakini, Harakah Daily, Malaysia Today and KL Post. These alternative media, according to her, is trying to fill a vacuum that we have here in Malaysia. She does not think that we want to allow the mainstream media to get away spot free and at the same time we are also trying to make the mainstream media accountable. The state at the moment allows these alternative media to exist because it fills up a particular niche; it satisfies very basic “democratic credentials” in a democratic country like Malaysia. Essentially it does not have a major impact on the mainstream media, because it is a solid block, she added.

She posted a question on how we can put pressure to the media to reform and to pressure the government to allow publishing permits to other entities and to restructure the media environment. The NGOs like SUARAM are very small. Everyone is very disjointed and with the lack of common objective. The NGOs, in its role as part of the civil society do not become the vehicle to move in one direction in order to change the political landscape.

The approach taken by Datuk Paul Low was slightly different from the first 2 speakers. He began his talk by stating that to rethink Malaysia, we must understand where we came from. We went through a period of nationalism and finding our identity in the last 50 years. Today is the age of globalisation and to change, there are there core issues that we have to consider. First is the ability to speak English. Second is the cross-cultural issue. Third, the issues of religion, righteousness, integrity and ethical values. If a society does not have the moral ethical values as we grow, we are then facing a decline. He expressed strong resentment against bribery, saying that a society will have a long way if the society has high intolerance against bribery.

Datuk Paul Low also stressed on the role of the civil society as “agents of change”. According to him, everyone must read, be re-educated and get correct information in order to make a decision. In order to bring about nation building, we must integrate into the society and bridge the gap between the races. Individuals must be catalysts of change. We must select people in the Parliament from people who is passionate about speaking for the people.

He ended his talk by informing the audience that the Transparency International Malaysia is working towards promoting, among others, integrity and ethical values by considering on creating “an award for good citizen”, which is to be made applicable to the public at large.

The responses received by the speakers from the members of the floor during the question and answer session thereafter were very encouraging. Among issues raised were the questions regarding freedom of press and the New Economic Policy (NEP).

On freedom of press, there was a slight disagreement between Datuk Paul Low and Elizabeth Wong. The former stressed that we should not measure freedom of press in Malaysia with the ones in the western society. Although he agreed that the media must be free to bring up issues that must be brought up, even if the accusation is about “high” people, freedom of press must still be seen in the context of a society and in Malaysia, therefore there is still a need for a responsible press. Elizabeth Wong begged to differ on the statement by contending that responsible press which is executed under duress cannot be regarded as freedom of press.

On the infamous NEP, Datuk Paul Low alerted the audience that notwithstanding its existence, the globalisation which is happening all over the world will sweep it away anyway because Malaysia has high export rate in the international trade community and any policy which is seen as “unfair” by the international trade community will result in them to retaliate in a way that will be commercially prejudicial to this country. He further cautioned the audience that when the NEP ceased to exist, the protected race is the ones who are going to pay the high price.

All the speakers were in concurrence on the fact that the internet alone is not enough to spread this message because people in rural areas, the majority of the voters, get information from the mainstream media. No specific workable solution to overcome this problem was given by the speakers on this issue. Another agreed issue was that the people who form part of the civil society must exercise their rights to register and vote for the government that they want. This way, Malaysia can have a government that will change the current guidelines on the mainstream media and publishing rights to allow more freedom of expression and with hope to enlarge the scope of the well informed and opinionated civil society in this country.

At the closure, all the speakers summed up their objective which is to create Bangsa Malaysia whom are colour-blind. No more four columns that say “Melayu”, “Cina”, “India” and “Lain-lain”.

Due to the responses from the audience, the session was concluded a lot later then the scheduled time. The audience, ranging from age 19 to late 50s, sat through the whole course. This was yet another successful session held by the National Young Lawyers Committee, which was represented by its Deputy Chairperson, H R Dipendra and the Youth for Change, represented by its Convenor, Lee Khai Loon.

The next Siri Pemikiran Kritis II – Session 4 on Youth Roundtable: New Voices and New Visions for Malaysia will be held on July 3. Admission is free and everyone is encouraged to attend.

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