A Brief History on PRU12 Blogs

A visitor by the name of Frank commented on Rocky's Bru : A blog-friendly daily . According to the post, Sinar Harian will be featuring blogs in a column titled "Dari Blog ke Blog" . I was told by fellow Malay friends that this mainstream paper is more "balanced/fair" in their reporting. Perhaps, something like The Sun. Kudos to Sinar Harian for the effort.

After PRU12, it seems that the politicians from Barisan Nasional starts to realise the strength of public opinion expressed through blogs. These days, the websphere starts to see some of them started blogging as well. It is better late than never. A point to make, please keep the comments section open. Another useful function of a blog is to gather opinions and that is why accepting comments and replying them is necessary.

As for the Pakatan Rakyat politicians, they have already realised it few years back. A number of them are quite prominent in the blogosphere. In fact, some of the newcomer MPs from DAP, PAS and PKR started off as commoners in the blogging world.

PRU12 is the first time that BN lost many states. PRU12 is also BN's worst defeat in Malaysian history. Bear in mind that everyone should not forget that PRU12 also signifies the first time a number of bloggers managed to express their stands on public issues and indirectly promoting themselves translating in huge voter support that brought them all the way into the parliament.

That should not be forgotten this one moment in time.

Never forget this too : Malaysian bloggers' opinion = Malaysian citizens' opinion = Malaysian voters' decision
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Frank said...
Hi bro

Sharing my take on the "self-tapping feel-good" community of fellow bloggers and its impact on the march-8 election.

For the record:

True, the malaysian bloggers came out armed to the teeth with their fingers, so to speak, in this election to teach BN, especially UMNO a lesson.

To my mind, the rallying point of bloggers was Malaysia-kini, the news portal that sought to counter-balance the MSM and which did a wonderful job. Malaysiakini's reporters able to give its readers a different contest and frame of mind on the local social and political issues. And Malaysiakini has a good standing among the internet-savvy malaysians and especially among the bloggers.

In early part of the 2004 election, the Blog-of-the-Moment was your very good friend,Jeff Ooi's Screenshot after Jeff joined up with Malaysiakini when Steven Gan gave Screenshot a spot on Malaysiakini called "Malaysia's the Most Influential Blogger."

On hindsight, it is correct to say that Jeff/Screenshot was a trail-blazer with the sprouting of social-political blogs, against those diary-chit-chat blogs popular in those times.

In many ways, Screenshot opened up the door and sensitise many of the diary-chit-chat blogs to repost Screenshot comments and Malaysiakini's news and became more and more upfront and courageous in their commentary on local issues and politics. This as you know widen significantly the awareness of local issues amongst the mostly uninterested malaysian readers, especially the younger readers of the 18-35 group.

Towards the later partof 2005 and onward, Raja Petra's Malaysia-Today took the center stage with Malaysiakini.

In my view, Malaysia-Today evolved into a hybrid Malaysia-kini-cum-Screenshot with plenty of upfront bravo of Raja Petra. Malaysia-Today attracted a huge following amongst the young, both local and overseas. Many came to see Raja Petra as the voice which could not be heard for all the decades, Raja Petra spoke for them.

By which time socio-political blogs sprouted like tau-geh in the country.

Most prominent and they should be in the roll call, ie blogs such as yours, Rocky's Bru, Haris's Peoples' Parliament, Marina Mahathir's , Nuraina's, Disquiet Blog, Ancient Mariner, Sagaladoola, Zorro,Shieh's Kickdefella, Cakap Tak Serupa Bikin, Lim Kit Siang's blog, Anwar's blog, Susan Loone's, Elizabeth Wong's, Husam Musa's, KTemoc Konsider, Bakri Musa,Azy Rahman, Farish Noor, Din Merican, The Aisehman, Sean-the-man, Saidul Shaari, Mob's Crib, OBE-shar101,What a Lulu Mahaguru58 etc.

The Malay blogs played a big part towards the later part of 2007 when Ministers in the the BN Govt acted silly and ridiculous. These include the Kuda Ranggi, Sang Kelembai, Tumpang Sekole, Antics of Husin Lempoyang, Penarik Beca, Amin Iskandar, No2UMNO, DuniaTiger, Waejo, Mushroom Ali, Khalid Jaffar, Roslan SMS, Fathi ASris Omar etc etc.

... to name a few.

The ingredients that resulted in the role of the internet on the general election were the counterbalancing role of the Malaysiakini as a deliverer of local politics, the principled-stand of blogs such as Screenshots, Rocky's Bru, MarinaMahathir's blog, Nuraina's blogs etc etc and the activism of Haris Ibrahim and Bernard Khoo's Zorro Unmasked etc etc.

Such a recipe became very portent... and led to the humiliation of the UMNO-led Government to the most embarrassing election result in UMNO's history. It led to the disappearance of the Presidents of MIC, MCA and Gerakan in Govt (the Cabinet) and the loss of the stretch of the northwest coastal states the crown-jewels of Malaysia's economy.

Who should we thanked for:
1) the chap who invented blogging
2) Mark Zuckerberg together with Andrew McCollum and Eduardo Savaerin who invented FaceBook
3) Chad Hurley, Steve Chan and Jawed Karim for inventing YOUTUBE
4) Bill Gates for the computer softwards
5) Of course to Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who voluntarily made sure that World Wide Web (WWW) remained free for all of us to use.

UMNO and its equally dumb coalition partners were too sucked up in their own importance and stirred in their own juice, failed to realise what hit them until was too late.

Easter Europe has its Orange Revolution, Phillipines has its People Power Revolution on the streets.

Malaysia...we have our KEYBOARD REVOLUTION.

7:59 PM