I refer to Malaysiakini report 'Don't regard new media as our enemy' .

What a paradox. Najib Abdul Razak wants Umno members to embrace the new media but at the same time, his party secretary-general, Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor has deemed it fit to ban six new media organisations from covering the Umno meeting this week.

The reason given by the Umno secretary-general that new media stories are full of ‘lies’ and ‘deceit’ does not make sense as the party could well sue these news portals for slander.

Or they could have letters written to the new media concerned rebutting point for point those news that they find slanderous or full if lies.

But they did not do that because the truth hurts. Or are they afraid that the real truth will be known to the public if they dare sue the new media for slander?

Dr Mahathir Mohamad was lucky that during his time, the mainstreams media editors were afraid to report all the wrongdoings of his time in office while Internet’s penetration was at an infant stage.

All the wrongdoings and misuse of public funds for grand projects were swept under the carpet as Internet access to reports of such misdeeds were not available then.

But his successor, Pak Lah, did not have any such luck as during his time in office. Bloggers and other Internet options were available to the public to help digest all the misdeeds and corrupt practices by those holding the fort as well as that of their acolytes. All of which were previously buried by our mainstream news media.

Even the present prime minister has acknowledged that one of the main reasons why the ruling coalition lost big in 2004 general elections was because of the onslaught by bloggers who played their part in influencing voters to dump the present lot of BN lawmakers in favour of their opposition counterparts.

Somehow, the BN government is now in a panic mode and has banned PAS’ and PKR’s party organs saying that the two publications have produced malicious articles which run down the government.

But will banning these two vocal publications stop all the bad news regarding the present weak government from reaching the public? Not by a long shot.

Information, whether good or bad, can travel freely across the border-less world that we live in today and no country in the world can put a lid on information which is detrimental to their leaders’ reputations or about their misdeeds.

The present BN leadership is in a denial mode and living in a fool’s paradise if they think voters nowadays do not know or care about what is wrong with this country today.

New media is here to stay and unless Malaysia wants to live in the Stone Age, any government running this country will have to engage intelligently with their critics in cyberspace in order to counter any allegations made against them.

If you have nothing to hide, what is there to be worried about? Only those whose hands are dirty are afraid that their misdeeds will be known to the public have that fear.

Umno needs to change their perception that the new media have the malicious intention to run the party down. With the mainstream media losing their appeal to the public, new media is now the main source of information for the educated.

Whether Umno likes it or not, they will have to embrace the new media if they want to remain in office after the next general elections. And that is a cold fact.