COMMENT When a paper like Utusan Malaysia attacks a target three times in a week it means something is brewing.

 

One need not advert to Auric Goldfinger's aphorism - "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times, it's enemy action" - from the eponymous Bond story by Ian Fleming to know that there is something ominous in Utusan's sustained attacks on web news portal Malaysiakini .

 

To its credit Malaysiakini gave prominence to the attacks. These, predictably, drew the ire of the portal's readers.

 

Their reactions were duly uploaded on the website, furnishing Utusan with more ammo for its fusillades, the Umno mouthpiece's chief grouse being that Malaysiakini does not filter the comments of its "low-mentality" subscribers.

 

It said their outpourings were drivel and denounced the website as "irresponsible" in allowing them to pollute the web.     

 

One has to see the Utusan attacks against the backdrop of the warning some weeks back by former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad who said that if he were PM again, he would censor the Internet. It was Mahathir who as PM in 1996 granted the Internet a bill of rights among which was a government guarantee against censorship. He says he now regrets having done so.

 

Given what we know of the role played by Utusan as harbinger of "enemy action" against a pre-selected target and what we have seen of the scheming character of the ex-PM, one can say that the ground is being prepared for restrictions on the net.

 

Mahathir is shaping to resume an active role in the political arena; civil society in the country must brace for a raft of measures that will curtail its hardily-gained freedoms if Mahathir is anywhere near the levers of power or influential on those wielding them.

 

In that sense, former deputy prime minister Musa Hitam has done civil society a favour by attempting to pull the rug from under the schemed return of his authoritarian former boss.

 

Just the other day Musa let on that Mahathir was in Malaysia when the Memali incident of November 1985 occurred.

 

That incident resulted in the deaths of 14 villagers and four police personnel when police raided the home in Baling of a Muslim preacher known as Ibrahim Libya.

 

The incident was bizarre and its cost in lives lost was big enough to warrant national introspection such that the impression Mahathir sought to foist on the public that he was abroad when in reality he was at home appears to have been callous.

Mahathir has now conceded he was in the country on the day of the incident but recalls that he left for China the following day after leaving the matter in the hands of then home minister and deputy prime minister Musa.

 

The latter presently admits that the incident was a black mark on his career but disclaims responsibility for the police operations that led to the raid on Ibrahim's house which eventuated in the shooting deaths of 18 people.

 

Stop intemperate speech

 

Let us say that the Internet was already invented in 1985 and that Malaysiakini was in existence as an independent web news portal: Would it have been possible to conceal news that the PM was in the country when the Memali incident occurred?

Surely, such concealment would not have lasted the 29 years it has taken Musa to reveal the truth.

In fact, many repressive acts of the 22-year Mahathir era as PM, particularly the ISA detentions of October 1987 and Salleh Abas's removal as head of the judiciary in May 1988, would not have been feasible had the Internet existed and an independent news portal like Malaysiakini been in operation.

All this, of course, is tangential to the point about unfiltered comments and the flagrant offensiveness of some of the comments that are posted on stories appearing in Malaysiakini , a point that Utusan employed to argue the case for charging the opposition-friendly website with irresponsibility and being base in quality.

Utusan , which claims that its readers are of a higher quality than Malaysiakini's , can get away with self-congratulation only with readers with short memories; its complicity in the public humiliation and obloquy that an opposition leader has been subjected to over the past 16 years has stripped it of any claims to moral superiority.

The paper can be as contemptible as some of the comments and terms that regularly appear on Malaysiakini reports.

Despite its not infrequent transgressions against the canons of good journalism, Utusan's point that Malaysiakini should filter the more intemperate of its commentators is a valid one.

Advances in information technology have made it possible for Malaysians to have access to alternative sources of news and views like Malaysiakini .

Prior to the website's inception in November 1999, Malaysians, hungry for news on whether the PM was at home or abroad at any one time, were at the mercy of an authorities-compliant mainstream media.

Not any more, thanks to Malaysiakini's technology-driven satisfaction of the public's right to know. But rights come with responsibilities.

It is imperative that Malaysiakini wields a judicious filter against intemperate speech and offences against the proprieties of political dialogue such as some of its commentators are apt to commit.   

 

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for four decades now. He likes the profession because it keeps him in touch with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them.