Eating One's Own Words

Wow, what an epic about-face.

From this:
Adnan Mansor: "From my understanding, out of 10,000 unemployed bloggers, 8,000 are women. Bloggers like to spread rumours; they do not like national unity."

Khairy: "There are no laws in the cyberworld except for the law of the jungle. As such, action must be taken so that the "monkeys" behave."


To this:

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Some candidates for posts in Malaysia's ruling party will be required to set up blogs, an official said Friday, a turnaround for governing politicians who had derided online politicking.

Abdul Rahman Dahlan, secretary general of the United Malays National Organization party's youth wing, said all those vying for national youth posts must have blogs to introduce themselves and their programs ahead of party elections in December.

[...]

"All candidates must have blogs," Abdul Rahman told The Associated Press. "If not, they are not qualified to be leaders."

Source


So, does this mean that they want to become unemployed, get sex-change operations and use alot of hair-growth tonic now?

Jokes aside, i'm beginning to suspect that they just don't 'get' it.
Requiring party members to set up blogs for the sake of having one is rather pointless. Blogs are merely a single factor among hundreds of others which affected the outcome of the last elections, and hardly the most important.

In retrospect, these 'little things' have been adding up, slowly but surely. As the saying goes, sikit sikit, lama lama, jadi bukit.

Here is but a small list of these 'little things' i'm referring to:

• Seditious, racist and sexist comments by ministers and members of parliament.
  
  
• A "Little Napoleon" who built an illegal bungalow and satay stall then ignores the Sultan's summons.
  
  
• Threats by component party members to burn down the Chinese Assembly Hall.
  
  
• Extremely costly and ultimately futile attempt at imposing "Malaysian values" on other countries.
  
  
• Demolitions of Hindu temples around the country.
  
  
• The brandishing of weapons in party talks.
  
  
• The anti-blogger stance held by the ruling party.
  
  
• Forceful suppression of the BERSIH rally.
  
  
• The Port Klang Free Zone scandal.
  
  
• Illegal billboard fiasco in PJ.
  
  
• The M. Moorthy controversy.
  
  
• Rampant rent-seeking.
  
  
• The Hindraf debacle.
  
  
• Issues of faith.
  
  

As far as I can see, this is a case of "You're Doing It Wrong".

To be fair, the Prime Minister made promises and as far as I can see is really interested in implementing change.
But when the body does not heed the head's instructions and only pays lip service and sycophantic fawning, the cracks appear faster than a sloppy contractor's work on low-cost housing projects, which of course resulted in a landslide in the last elections.

If they are really serious about fixing their image, they need to clean up their act, deliver on their promises and do their jobs, which is SERVING THE PUBLIC as government servants like they should be, not acting like feudal lords.