Recently, the new Information, Communication and Culture Minister Rais Yatim hosted a dinner for 50 ‘prominent’ socio-political bloggers at a local restaurant in a move to engage the New Media.

Raja Petra Kamaruddin and his gang of Barisan Rakyat bloggers were not invited; to ask the reason why would be stupid of me.

rais yatim interview 160409 01 This is the same 3-in-1 Minister who not long ago warned bloggers “not to twist the truth or face the music”. It was a naked threat for bloggers to toe the line or face the full force of the law, no matter how unjust the laws are in the repression of our right to free speech.

Such laws are often described as ‘draconian’.

Draco was the law scribe called by the tyrannical nobilities in ancient Athens around the turn of the 7th century BC to codify all the unjust laws used to persecute the ordinary poor citizens. Draco’s laws were infamous for their severity of punishment, even for a minor crime like stealing an apple from an orchard. Death was the commonest punishment for both serious and minor crimes.

Of this grim code of laws, men said they were “written in blood”. That is how the term “draconian laws” came to be synonymous with pieces of harsh inhuman legislation.

Fortunately for ancient Athens, the tyrannical nobilities - especially the “accursed Alcmaeonidae” – were overthrown and banished. The great poet, statesman, and lawmaker, Solon, was authorised to prepare a new set of laws relieving the miseries of the poorer people of Athens. There is a historical lesson to be learned by Malaysians.

raja petra kamaruddin sentul police station 181108 01 One of the people currently persecuted by our Malaysian version of draconian laws is RPK. He has even chosen to be a fugitive of these laws, choosing to exile himself from his home state. “They” are after his blood with “laws written in blood”. Only a change of government at the federal level can save him now, and we may not have to wait long for that to happen.

Can ‘truth’ be twisted?

The stark warning by the 3-in1 Minister must have swept in a wintry wind of fear through Malaysia’s blogsphere. It cannot be allowed to go unchallenged.

The 3-in-1 Minister has a PhD in law, so presumably needs no lesson in jurisprudence. But his statement baffles me nevertheless. Can ‘truth’ be twisted at all?

Naturally, we are reminded of the story from the Bible; after having sentenced Jesus to death, Pontius Pilate washed his hands symbolically in a basin of water and asked, “What is the truth?” One can only conclude that he was being cynical, like many powerful politicians.

Was the new info czar of Malaysia talking about the truth with a capital “T” - the kind of Truth that was the pursuit of the European Enlightenment, the one closely associated with the Good and the Beautiful? Or was he talking about the Truth that features so significantly in the absolute unknowable Divine Truth of monotheism?

That kind of truth with a capital “T” is eternal and immutable, and so cannot be twisted. Or to put it realistically, that kind of truth is twisted by Machiavellian politicians all the time since time immemorial.

No, I think the minister was confusing “truth” with “fact”. Cold hard facts are indeed the raw material of the hard sciences, and the currency of good journalism. Even so, one can argue whether facts are hard and cold. Facts have a textual and an emotional context.

For instance, it is a fact that two cops have been convicted of killing Altantuya Shaariibuu. It is also a fact that these killers do not seem to have any tangible motive for that murder. It is also a fact that Altantuya’s death has evoked great sense of outrage among many Malaysians and they demand the Truth about her demise!

Facts actually have many faces and are subject to many interpretations.

Power to produce synthetic truths

Here, I am reminded by the great late philosopher of the postmodern school, Michael Foucault. He pointed out that one of the chief functions of power is to produce synthetic truths.

This is what the BN government has done for the last half century. They produce synthetic truths of their grand narrative of Malay nationalism, by writing their history books, and propagating that grand narrative in different forms through controlling the mainstream media.

Having monopolised the public sphere, theirs is the only story ever told. Gradually, people began to think in terms of the language they have created for that grand narrative, development, Ketuanan Melayu, racial unity, stability, patriotism, discipline, tolerance, the social contract, and so on. They subject themselves to thought control and to this singular mindset because there was no competitor to this boring discourse.

But Foucault also declared the public sphere as the open battlefield for different discourses to engage themselves in a ceaseless war for dominance. This battlefield was made possible in Malaysia only by the emergence of the Internet in the last 10 years or so. Online news portals and the many blogs they spawn are now destroying the credibility of the mainstream media and shaking the ruling class to the core.

In the latest post in his blog entitled ‘Death of the Malaysian media?’ Dr Azly Rahman happily announced the arrival of the post-modern age in Malaysian journalism.

He wrote, “The fast rate of Internet penetration in Malaysia will see the proliferation of ‘citizen journalists and commentators’ who will continue to exercise their right to free speech. Nothing can stop the bloggers from providing alternative truths, or truths that matter, or even - as of late - truths and nothing but the truths.

“The bedrock of the print media will be shaken as the microbes of voices in the wilderness continue to brew. The screenshots of social change will become a collage of radical social criticism and become a tapestry of voices of conscience that will engulf print media from head to toe. Such is the case of the metaphor of change as embodied in the recent zeroing in on Rocky’s Bru and Screenshots.”

The “citizen journalists and commentators” will exercise their right to free speech because they have the new tools, and because also they cannot help not thinking critically and independently.

Netizens must police themselves too

When you go to the heart of the matter, that is what we are: thinking biological entities. Without this freedom of thought, we are no different from brute beasts.

Nothing defines our humanity as our ability to think freely, in all our waking moments. Naturally, this freedom to think includes the freedom to make mistakes, and that is why dialogues and exchanges of ideas are so crucial, as peaceful means of correcting mistakes and gaining a larger understanding of issues of the day.

We also think in a language, for without language, there is no thought, as the great philosopher Wittgenstein had said. Thoughts are expressed through words, and the freedom of thought implies the moral imperative for the freedom of their expression in public.

You curtail this freedom of expression, and you diminish my humanity, and that, is the greatest crime on earth!

Alternatively, you curtail my freedom of expression, but you cannot curtail my freedom to think. I know millions of Malaysians are like me, watching and judging in the silence of their hearts and minds, waiting for the right moment to pounce.

That is what the Internet has given to Malaysians, a fertile ground for a hundred flowers to bloom, to challenge the legitimacy of the synthetic truths manufactured by the mainstream media. The Internet news portals and the thousands of Malaysian blogs have provided citizens refuge from a life of public hypocrisy.

Of course, the Internet can be chaotic and even anarchical. In his recent posting, RPK has appealed to his readers not to post toxic responses on his Malaysia Today . Anonymity has allowed many Netizens to flood the Internet with garbage.

It is a reminder to us all that we should cherish the new freedom given by the Internet. Bloggers and Internet commentators will have to be responsible, courteous, reasonable, and constrained. If we do not want the government to police the Internet, then Internet users must police themselves first.

Only then, can we twit our nose at the 3-in-1 Minister and ask him to go eat cake!

SIM KWANG YANG was MP for Bandar Kuching from 1982 to 1995. He can be reached at kenyalang578@hotmail.com.