The New York Times recently claimed that the “year of the political blogger” has arrived. While that might be a true statement, it is certainly not limited to the American political agendas discussed in that article.
The Malaysia Situation
TechDirt has been keeping an eye on what is happening with blogging in Malaysia, and gives a little background:
First, a gov’t official slammed blogs and tried to pass a law requiring bloggers to register with the government. Outrage over such a plan resulted in it being scrapped, but the majority ruling party still struggled with blogs — though tried to figure out ways to respond to them more feasibly than attacking them. It set up a gov’t agency to respond to bloggers, and later required certain candidates for offices to set up their own blogs.
Government Blocking Access
Now there are blogs being written by members of the opposing party. These and others are critical of the current ruling party. Naturally, the government is now blocking access to them.
The New Straits Times (NST) Online reports that one such blog, Malaysia Today, was up and running on a mirror site, just hours after it was blocked. “How could the MCMC [Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission]have overlooked such an obvious loophole?” asks NST writer Evangeline Majawat.
Help for the Opposition
The whole thing has to make the already heavily existent government criticism skyrocket. On a related note, one of its biggest critics, a blogger named Jeff Ooi, was elected into Parliament this year.
