TR EMERITUS

OPINION

During Malaysia’s general election last year, the new media was credited with triggering the “political tsunami” which saw the previously weak and fragmented opposition capturing 82 seats in the Dewan Rakyat and 5 states in the Malaysian peninsula including the richest states of Penang and Selangor.

The ruling Barisan Nasional coalition who had governed Malaysia uninterrupted for 52 years since independence in 1957 was denied its customary two-third majority for the first time in Malaysia’s modern history.

Former Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, who was widely blamed for BN’s dismal electoral result, admitted that one key reason for BN’s poor performance was its neglect of the new media.

The opposition’s resurgence in Malaysia led some Singaporeans to believe that Singapore is next in line for a similiar “political tsunami” too. After all, Singapore is more highly wired than Malaysia and there is no reason why it will not happen in Singapore.

Unfortunately, the Malaysian “political tsunami” will not come to Singapore any time soon.

The new media is not just about blogs, forums, facebooks, twitters, youtubes etc. It must be viewed in conjunction with other key pillars of a healthy and functioning democracy such as the political maturity of the citizenry, the presence of a robust civil society and a credible opposition.

That’s why internet penetration rate alone will not determine the impact of the new media on Singapore’s next general election as it is found severely lacking in the following:

Political maturity of citizenry

Years of systematic de-politicization of the populace through the state media had numbed the political awareness of ordinary Singaporeans.

The ruling party has also done an excellent job in branding itself as a “trusted name” in politics by making Singapore one of the most affluent countries in the world today.

In a recent report released by the United Nations Develepment Program (UNDP), over 90 per cent of Singaporeans expressed confidence in the their country’s leaders and institutions.

In Malaysia, there is a significantly higher proportion of citizens who are aware of the rampant corruption, nepotism and cronyism in the BN government.

Young Malaysians yearn for change and they are willing to fight for it as reflected in the number of young candidates fielded by the opposition during the 2008 election such as Tony Pua, Elizabeth Wong and Jernice Chua.

On the other hand, there is simply no impetus or motivation on the part of Singaporeans to challenge the ruling party and change the status quo.

Though Singaporeans may have grouses against the ruling party, public confidence in the administration remains high and while they may desire more opposition in parliament to check on the PAP, they still prefer it to govern Singapore based on its track record.

Singaporeans are a conservative and pragmatic lot. “Democracy” means little to the average Singaporean living in the HDB heartland who has experienced PAP rule in his/her entire life.

With no credible alternatives in place, it will be foolhardy to expect a large swing of votes to the opposition camp because of the new media which is still in its infantile stage of development compared to Malaysia.

No strong players in Singapore’s new media

Despite much hype surrounding the new media, it is highly unlikely to have a real impact on the next general election, if any at all.

The key players in Singapore’s socio-political blogosphere suffer from a lack of readership, professionalism and solidarity.

Over in Malaysia, internet newspaper Malaysiakini has an alexa traffic ranking of less than 20 with a daily readership of more than 2 million people. Malaysiakini is staffed by 30 or so full-time journalists and is owned and managed by a registered company with a board of directors.

Another influential news portal – The Malaysian Insider, is run by 3 to 5 full-time reporters on the ground producing original news article and supported by a large team of freelance writers. It is consistently ranked among the top 50 sites in Malaysia with a daily readership exceeding 1 million people.

That is the kind of setup and readership one must have in order for the new media to have any sort of impact on the ground.

On the other hand, Singapore has no Malaysiakini or The Malaysian Insider. The top two socio-political sites  – The Temasek Review and The Online Citizen, are blogs run by part-time amateurs which do not come under the management of any commercial entities.

The Temasek Review is ranked a pathetic 500 plus in Singapore followed by The Online Citizen at around 700. They have a combined readership of not more than 10,000 daily which pales in comparison to the Straits Times and Channel News Asia.

Each article published by The Temasek Review can be expected to garner about 2,000 readers within 48 hours of publication.

Assuming the figure doubles during the elections to 4,000 which amounts to roughly 100 readers per constituency, be it GRC or SMC. This will hardly have any bearing on the election results considering the fact the majority of Singaporeans are not even aware of our existence in the first place.

Furthermore, a sizable proportion of our readers are hardcore opposition supporters who will not vote for the ruling party anyway and almost half of them are living overseas. We have to be realistic that we will have negligible impact on the next general elections.

The wide gulf between the Malaysian and Singapore new media is further widened by the lack of collaboration and solidarity among Singapore bloggers to advance a common cause.

They appear to be more interested to competing with one another for the same pool of readers than to combine their resources to reach out to a wider audience on the same platform.

The PAP need not be too overly worried about the two amateur blogs. Passion alone cannot sustain them for long. Without funding, vision or leadership, they are likely to fade away from blogosphere on their own sooner rather than later.

Presence of a robust civil society

The presence of a civil society outside the government is critical in the development of a politically aware, astute and active citizenry.

In Singapore, all civil society groups are directly controlled by Registrar of Societies (ROS) which empower the Home Affairs Minister to dissolve any society not in line with “national interests”.

Grassroots organizations come under the purview of the quasi-government People’s Association whose Chairman is none other than the Prime Minister himself.

Even the Singapore Law Society which should be playing an active role in educating Singaporeans about their political and civil rights, has been muzzled by a law which prevents them from speaking up on policy and legislation matters unless their opinions are “specifically” sought after by the government.

The dearth of influential NGOs in Singapore is in stark contrast to Malaysia which has more than 2,000 independent registered civil society organizations not under the control or influence of the government.

The Malaysian Bar Association has won much public support, respect and goodwill for speaking up frequently against the Malaysian government’s heavy-handedness in clamping down on political dissent.

Lawyers from the Malaysian Bar offered their legal services pro bono to civil activists and dissidents who were harassed and arrested by the Malaysian police for participation in protests and rallies.

The Malaysian new media work closely with civil society groups like “Bersih” – a NGO to advocate for free and fair elections in Malaysia by giving their events extensive publicity to raise the political and civil consciousness of ordinary Malaysians.

There are no such organizations in Singapore to educate Singaporeans on their political and civil rights who continue to be “brainwashed” by a daily dose of state-sponsored propaganda from the mainstream media.

Without a robust civil society, the new media’s wings are clipped. One important reason why the new media is able to thrive in Malaysia because there are so many news and events going on in civil society which they can report on unlike in Singapore.

The few Singapore CSOs choose to advocate for causes with no broad appeal to ordinary Singaporeans such as human rights in ASEAN, rights of transient migrant workers and to round it off, the plight of disowned pets.

Strength of the opposition

Though the Malaysian opposition is perennially weak and divided like Singapore’s, it is still a force to reckon with in Malaysian politics.

To use an analogy, the Malaysian opposition is able to bloody the nose of the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition while the Singapore opposition will not be able to even prick the thick hide of the PAP. That’s the gulf between the two sides.

The Malaysian political tsunami is made possible not only by the new media, but by its opposition deciding to set aside their differences and unite against Barisan Nasional on a common platform led by charismatic former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim.

Singapore’s opposition parties remain small, weak and divided. They are not able to work together to co-host events, let alone collaborate to challenge the PAP.

The Workers’ Party is too quiet, meek and subservient and appears to remain contented being the “approved” opposition party of the PAP. At the opposite end is the Singapore’s Democratic Party which lacks support from the grassroots though its ideology and methods are winning converts from the IT-savvy generation.

It is indeed mind-boggling that the Islamist party PAS is able to work together with the Chinese-dominated DAP in Malaysia while WP, SDP and other opposition parties continue to work in their own isolated circles without bothering to reach out to one another.

The Malaysian opposition is also adept at making use of the new media to reach out to the voters, especially the young who forms an increasingly influential voting bloc.

Last general election saw a few bloggers being voted into Parliament for the first time including famous political commentator Jeff Ooi from Penang.

68 year old Malaysian opposition veteran Lim Kit Siang, writes on his widely-read blog three to five times a day without fail despite his many duties as a MP and a key leader of the Pakatan Rakyat coalition at the same time.

None of the three opposition MPs in the parliament had bothered to even set up their own blogs. It appears they have little interest to win over the hearts and minds of young Singaporeans.

With anti-establishment sentiments on the rise in the online community, it is a pity that the opposition has failed to capitalize on it to recruit new blood into their dwindling ranks.

Other than the Singapore Democratic Party, the websites of all the other political parties are not updated on a regular basis and have a miserably low readership.

The new media is not just about setting up a blog and leaving it there as it is. Time, efforts and resources must be put in to build up its readership and to engage its readers.

The opposition is missing out on a wonderful opportunity to grow their clout and numbers in cyberspace which explains why the new media will not have an impact in the next elections even if we were to have a Malaysiakini.

With so many factors in favor of them, the ruling party can afford to ignore the new media altogether and still romp home to a “resounding” victory in the next general election to be held by early 2011 – a clean sweep of all the constituencies in Singapore is not impossible.

The Singapore mainstream media has a combined readership exceeding 2 million and is more than suffice to crush the puny new media which can garner only a few thousand readers at the most.

It is simply not worth the price to pay for by introducing harsh, repressive and ridiculous laws to curb the new media when there are relatively easier measures at hand to control and manage it.

If we were strategists of MICA, how are we going to fix the Singapore new media without incurring the wrath of the international media and NGOs?

Find out more in Part 3 of our article.

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