Kit Siang: PM underestimates Malaysians' ability to get around restrictions and blocks on media.
PETALING JAYA: DAP’s Lim Kit Siang believes that Prime Minister Najib Razak has underestimated the intelligence of Malaysians using the Internet, and said it would be Najib’s fatal mistake in facing the next General Election.
Lim pointed out that Najib’s predecessor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, had admitted his “serious misjudgment” about the impact of the Internet on the elections in 2008, losing the cyberwar to the opposition.
The 2008 general election resulted in major gains by the opposition, the loss of the Barisan Nasional’s control of five states and the loss of its two-third majority in Parliament.
Lim said Najib was now making a fatal mistake of underestimating the intelligence of Internet users in Malaysia to distinguish truth from falsehoods. “I believe Najib will find that just deploying an army of robotic cybertroopers flooding the Internet with meretricious lies and falsehoods about the Opposition will not win for him the cyberwar in the next polls,”
His remark about cybertroopers was a reference to a recent announcement by an Umno leader that the party would get together an army of cybertroopers and “keyboard warriors” in preparation for the elections.
Lim was speaking at a forum in Kuala Lumpur last night, sponsored by the DAP, in solidarity with The Malaysian Insider, access to which has been blocked by the government.
He highlighted the appearance of Sarawak Report founder Claire Rewcastle by Internet video link from the UK for a question-and-answer session with the audience as having highlighted “the futility of those in power to censor or control the flow of information in the Internet era”.
Government restrictions has made Malaysians familiar with means of unblocking sites and with the wider Internet devoted to fighting all forms of censorship.
-FMT NEWS-
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