When former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad inaugurated the Multimedia Super Corridor in the late 1990s, he issued a Bill of Guarantees to convince investors of the government's good intentions. One of the guarantees is that the Malaysian government - which is accustomed to a high degree of interference with their citizens' public and private life - will not censor the Internet.

This was groundbreaking: the press in Malaysia is encumbered by various laws and is further restrained by a cosy relationship with the authoritarian ruling political parties. The government, especially under Mahathir, has styled itself into a fervent critic of "Western liberal democracy" and sees, or at least claim to see, press freedom as having no place in developing and multi-cultural nation like Malaysia.

Yet Mahathir, a technological-savvy visionary was willing to grudgingly concede some space, at least in the digital world, if that was what it took to launch his brainchild. He probably calculated that it wouldn't have made a lot of difference anyway as the market for the Internet was already the critical middle-class.

The MSC did not live up to its fanfare the 1997 regional economic crisis and the dotcom bubble had an adverse impact on the project. There has been some good news, largely due to the outsourcing trend one element which was not one of the original MSC flagship programmes.

The Internet also expanded in ways which Mahathir did not foresee and which he probably caused him great regret. Following the political awakening that emerged after the sacking of Mahathir's deputy, Anwar Ibrahim in 1998, the Internet became the primary avenue for the alternative and critical chattering classes.

Critical newspapers like Eksklusif were banned, while the popular Harakah saw its printing permit being restricted to twice a month. Yet Mahathir's guarantee prevented a similar clampdown in the cyber world. Around the time of the 1999 general election, malaysiakini was born as a professionally-run Internet news website and has since attracted local and international attention.

Cow the press differently

Nevertheless, we can sense the unease faced by the authorities with the Internet media. The government has always been able to control information in Malaysia and a culture of self-censorship has been prevalent in Malaysian journalism. Criticism could be managed, or even 'staged' and directed at certain levels of government, but controlled in a way so as not to endanger the survival of the establishment itself. The promise made to investors something

which was deemed as more crucial as the promises made to the electorate meant that now the government could not resort to the more convenient ways of cowing the press.

Rather, the government could only attack the Internet media either using its own subservient press machine or resorting to a physical raid on the premises on the basis that the media had committed something illegal.

The former was used against malaysiakini where they were accused of being tools of foreign figures as the government accused them of being funded by George Soros; against well-known blogger Jeff Ooi when a comment on his website was spun as being insulting to Islam; and similarly Raja Petra Kamaruddin of Malaysia Today was accused of malicious intent in allowing for debate to take place in his news website on religion and politics.

The approach is despicable as the news reports used to attack the Internet media abandoned general elements of journalistic ethics in approaching all sides involved and balanced-reporting. The reports were sheer propaganda at its best, something that the Soviet Pravda would have been proud of. In the modern ad-parlance it is called negative branding. For the many Malaysians who read mainstream papers and do not have access to the Internet, they probably would have a distorted picture of malaysiakini , Jeff Ooi and Malaysia Today .

Yet at the same time it restricts the ability of the authorities in dealing with alternative sources of opinion and information by using misinformation. Neither the convenient threats of permit withdrawals nor pressure through subservient media corporations are available online. Just like the mistake they did with Shahnon Ahmad's Shit, they provide free publicity to the wired chattering classes to be introduced to these alternative sources of information and let the readers decide whether the criticisms made against them were warranted or not.

Politically apathetic

Of course, the sheer exasperation felt by the authorities can cause them to exceed these normal limits to further levels of idiocy, in which they confuse with a show of strength. The best example would be the 2003 raid on the offices of malaysiakini which attracted global condemnation. The incident occurred probably because certain elements of the authorities felt untypically impotent in facing against the new chattering classes.

The sense of impotence seems to be prevalent when it comes to the Internet media. In general the authorities are still contented as they maintain a strong grip over the mass media and worse still, the general public through various government and public institutions. This combines with the belief that Malaysians are generally politically apathetic.

Nevertheless a sense of unease still lurks as more and more Malaysians have access to sources of information out of their control where they respond with the intention of branding the critical Internet media negatively.

However they are fighting a losing battle - as more Malaysians become part of the new chattering classes - then Malaysians can decide what to read and rely on; without help from the government. As the saying goes - they may be able to fool some of the people all of the time, or all of the people some of the time, but never fool all of the people all of the time.

NIK NAZMI NIK AHMAD also contributes to BBC World Service, Channel News Asia and the Asia Times. His blog can be accessed at http://www.niknazmi.com