Malaysian Blogger Fights a System He Perfected
In a vast office at the top of one of the world’s tallest buildings, former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad sits at a broad, glass-topped desk, scribbling his thoughts on a pad of unlined paper.
For 22 years, Mr. Mahathir was the most powerful person in this land, and his thoughts were commands as he reshaped the country in his own image.
But he has become an irritant and a spoiler five years after stepping down, turning against his handpicked successor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and falling victim to the press controls he perfected as prime minister.
“Where is the press freedom?” he asked two years ago, apparently surprised at being suddenly ignored. “Broadcast what I have to say! What I say is not even accurately published in the press!”
This May, though, he discovered the power of the Internet. Like many other inconvenient critics, he joined what seemed to be a political wave of the future, creating his own blog — www.chedet.com — where he vents in English and Malay several times a week.
Around the region bloggers are becoming a Fifth Estate, challenging the government’s monopoly on information in Singapore, evading censors in Vietnam, and influencing events in places like Thailand, Cambodia and China.
In March, political experts said, Malaysia’s bloggers helped influence elections, contributing to the biggest upset that the governing party, the United Malays National Organization, had suffered since independence in 1957. For the first time in decades, it held fewer than two-thirds of the seats in Parliament, and it lost control of 5 of the 13 states.
