Disappointed with the fact that his contribution to Utusan Malaysia was not published today as agreed, Deputy Higher Education Minister Saifuddin Abdullah has killed his column.

After tweeting about his disappointment, he was approached by “another new Malay daily” which is now offering him a weekly column.

NONE “ Utusan didn’t spike it but it just didn’t get published on the day it is supposed to be published. I am no beggar so I decided to stop,” he said when contacted today.

 

“After I tweeted about it, a new Malay daily offered a weekly column. I am discussing with them to do it once every two weeks.”

Saifuddin, an Umno supreme council member, said this is the second consecutive time that the Umno-owned daily has held back his column.

“I’ve told Utusan to not publish it… Last month they (held it back saying) it was to focus on the PAS muktamar but (then) other articles were published. Today I didn’t bother to ask,” he said.  

The article, Mendepani transformasi ketiga demokrasi (Facing the third phase of a transforming democracy), focuses on the need for more participatory and inclusive democracy.

azlan This call comes at a time when more than 200 people have been arrested in relation to a public rally for clean and fair elections by NGO coalition Bersih 2.0, planned for Saturday.

In the article, Saifuddin argues that, while the model of this third phase of democracy is not yet known, it will clearly involve greater participation particularly by the youth.

He argued that the focus now should be on governing and not ‘ruling’ (memerintah) , and that governments need to be ready to take on board divergent views, rather than steamrolling these.

‘Open up or die’

The deputy minister, who has been seen to take a progressive outlook on university autonomy, said the advent of information technology also means that this third phase of democracy is fast emerging.

“This third phase of the transformation of democracy is moving at the speed of a bullet train. We have four choices.

“First, to get on the train and navigate it to the direction that we want at the speed that we want. Second, we can take our time to get on it and thus be rendered a mere passenger.

“The third option is we are too late to get on it and get left behind, and the fourth option is for us to try to stop it, get run over and die.”

Saifuddin’s tweet this morning has generated colourful response from netizens.

One user, Hazaer Ismail, whose profile photo was the Patriot logo for the Umno Youth rally originally planned for Saturday, said this showed that the media is free to decide its own content.

Others, including several with the Bersih 2.0 logo as the profile picture, lent support to Saifuddin, asking him to publish the article on his blog.

Some also offered to invite him to their radio stations and to post the column on their respective news portals.