RPK Public Lecture @ ANU, Canberra
Time: Wednesday, 2 March 2011, 6:00pm – 8:00pm
Location: Manning Clark Centre Theatre 3, ANU, Canberra, Australia
MORE INFORMATION HERE: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=142379612493685
Public Lecture
Beating Malaysian Authoritarianism with People Power: A Blog Activist’s Tale
Raja Petra Kamarudin, founder and editor of online news blog Malaysia Today, is coming to Canberra.
“Malaysia’s Julian Assange”, RPK (as he’s usually known online) has been accused by the Malaysian government of being a security threat.
He is also Malaysia’s most famous online political activist, and a forceful advocate of transparent, accountable government. His website Malaysia Today hosts many allegedly official documents detailing government corruption and scandal.
Most infamously, he has attacked the Prime Minister Najib Razak online, alleging the PM’s involvement in the sensational murder of a young Mongolian woman, Altantuyaa Shaariibuu, and sworn a statutory declaration to the effect that the PM’s wife, Rosmah Mansor, was present when Altantuyaa’s body was blown up by the PM’s security staff.
He will speak as chairman of the Malaysian Civil Liberties Movement (MCLM), which is now working towards full representation in Malaysia’s 14th general election.
MCLM wants to revive and re-engage Malaysians disillusioned with an UMNO-dominated federal government and return them to a government that holds fast to the spirit and intent of the Constitution.
With the next general elections looming this year, there’s a palpable sense of urgency.
MCLM is driven by human rights lawyers and other professionals, political veterans, civil society activists and ordinary citizens with social justice in their sights, targeting a corruption-free, transparent government, free and fair elections and the end to racial politics.
But is the MCLM merely a newer manifestation of the ‘People Power’ that marked 2007’s massive street demonstrations and rallies organised by BERSIH (the Coalition for Free and Fair Elections) and HINDRAF (Hindu Rights Action Force)?
How does it differ from all other grassroots popular movements that came before it?
The media has painted the MCLM as a ‘third force’ that has created a schism in an Opposition coalition that in 2008 broke the government’s 51-year stranglehold on federal Parliament that allowed it to re-write the Constitution at will.
Will the movement be a force to be reckoned with by both the ruling party and the Opposition? And will it change Malaysian politics for the better?
http://billboard.anu.edu.au/event_view.asp?id=73387
