PKR's de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim today welcomed the withdrawal of the government directive to prevent opposition statements from being aired over private TV and radio stations but maintained that the Abdullah administration's much vaunted glasnost (openness) policy was hanging by a thread.

He was commenting on Energy, Water and Communications Minister Dr Lim Keng Yaik's decision to rescind a directive sent to all private TV and radio stations by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) on June 7.

In it the MCMC chairperson Dr Halim Shafie warned media owners against broadcasting the speeches of opposition leaders. [See original letter]

"The minister's decision to rescind the order is an exercise in damage control but it is to be welcomed," Anwar told malaysiakini when contacted.

"You put a lid on things in this time and age and pretty soon the pot boils over. Keng Yaik's decision to rescind implicitly acknowledges that," he added.

Back to bad old days

Anwar said the directive from the MCMC chairperson to suppress opposition pronouncements, in the first instance, exposed the "threadbare" nature of the government's purported stance on taking Malaysians into the IT age.

"If you are going to practise a policy of selective suppression, you are going to cut the ground from under your feet in this age of the free flow of information.

"You are bringing a third world mentality to the tools of a first world order," he commented.

Anwar said the Abdullah administration's much ballyhooed policy of openness to criticism and contrary views was in tatters despite damage control measures such as the rescind order.

"It was never much of an openness in the first place as its boosters claimed," claimed Anwar about Abdullah's glasnost policy, begun at the outset of his administration in November 2003.

"Nevertheless, the public were grateful for little mercies while it lasted," he remarked.

"Now it seems like we are back to the bad old days when publishers had to fret over the threat of suspension of their licence to operate when weighing news items," said Anwar.

"The truth will emerge no matter how sophisticated or crude the methods devised for its suppression," he maintained.