I refer to the letters entitled 'Sim's article a balanced, realistic view of malaysiakini ' and ' Malaysiakini existing only by the grace of BN' by Jimmy Wong and Charles respectively.

As far as humility goes, my riposte was based after experiencing the depth of goodwill that filled the portal's birthday bash on Nov 27 as opposed to any 'shallow reading' or what its nuances would want us to believe.

I cannot for the life of me say that I have to disbelieve what I saw on that night and if that was the level of achievement the website could reach after five years, all malaysiakini needs is hope and not Charles's 'intonation' of grace.

Nobody reading Sim's article could escape noticing the pessimism which he infuses his dictum with. Though he finished his piece by saying something of malaysiakini being an 'education' for him; the education that one needs in a climate of revelry and good cheer is how to appreciate, acknowledge and celebrate the spontaneity of the human spirit.

Nowhere in the opening of Sim's introduction was there a cause for the optimism that the good cheer arising out of a birthday celebration invariably brings about. Nor was there reference or any indication to the high encomium for a portal that has laboured under difficult, if not intractable, conditions to arrive at where it is today.

Though Sim did some form of justice by mentioning something positive about malaysiakini towards the end of his article, its heading 'Can malaysiakini survive another five years' is somewhat tantamount to asking a birthday boy at his party if he will still be around for his next party?

It should not be forgotten that malaysiakini was born in 1999 when the groundswell was one of popular resentment towards a repressive climate and a hunger for an alternative media for civil society to regain its pride of place.

Importantly, it was also about freeing Malaysian minds colonised by other Malaysians and to provide an avenue for Malaysians to regain their character, spirit and dignity as the Malaysians they want to be known as. Isn't that something that is worth striving for?

So how does malaysiakini do that? Not by the 'grace of the BN' but through the sheer grit, determination and above all by showing that conviction does need courage if it wants a public audience.

Malaysiakini incidentally, after all, is about the 'peoples' collective will', it is about their right to be free of fear, favour, patronage or retribution in creating the conditions that to date only malaysiakini thus far exemplifies.

It is all about giving Charles and Jimmy Wong the chance to partake in a national discourse as how they did now in replying to me, and consequently contribute to the civil society that Sim desired.

Malaysiakini is indeed the first step in a thousand-mile journey. It is about snuffing out the embers of disillusionment and allowing the bright, glowing fires of hope and optimism to burn such that there is no harking back to that era in Malaysian history dubiously famous because of a black eye.

What malaysiakini needs more than anything is encouragement, not pessimism and certainly not 'grace'. It is your country's next best hope for an alternative media.

From where I come from, we don't even have an ideological equivalent to malaysiakini .