sg’s opposition may be slow to capitalise on the new media but
majority of the heartland voters are not internet-savvy.
Asia’s
New political tool
From various cities, Takshin organises his forces via new-tech and
shows how woefully inadequate Singapore’s weak opposition is in its
use. Comment. By Seah Chiang Nee.
Apr 18, 2009
In Singapore, the law stipulates that opposition candidates have
only nine days to campaign for votes before a general election is
held, a rare restriction in the world.
In effect, the Internet has rendered this obsolete because any
politician of any party – whether in or out of a country – can
campaign by using the new media right into people’s homes round the
year.
In short, if the opposition parties were to set their minds to
it, they can campaign anytime they want to – 24 hours a day.
It may be less effective than physical rallies or house-to-house
calls, but – as proven by Anwar Ibrahim (Malaysia) and Barrack
Obama – the new tech can be instrumental in winning power, provided
if you have a winning message.
In contrast, none of the opposition in Singapore has shown the
ability – or willingness – to make use of this channel to good use
to overcome the regulations that work against them.
They do not need to wait for a Parliament session or the
stipulated election campaign period (that’s for the physical
campaigning) to put their messages across.
They do not require a press conference to do so. If they have a
winning stance, they can sell it across the digital waves to
millions of people.
Time is actually not on their side because the ruling People’s
Action Party has plans to begin to move into the new media.
A new era
In the present era, no politicians can afford to adopt a
tortoise-like plan to use high tech. They should consider any, and
all, means to get their messages to the electorate.
This is a contrast to the bad old days of press controls in
Singapore more than 30 years ago.
At the time, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew used to blacklist ‘offending’
newspapers or reporters by barring them from attending government
press conferences – as a form of punishment.
Punishment by banning people from reporting your messages! Can
you imagine?
Today any government that ban the media – whether new or old –
from covering its events is punishing itself. It will give its
rivals a field day to score well.
Thaksin
The latest to successfully use the new-tech to rally supporters
is ousted Thai leader, Thaksin Shinawatra, as reported by Sreeram
Chaulia of Asia Times in “A tech-savvy rebellion” that run as
follows (excerpts):
“Exile was once an effective ploy used by governments to deprive
political opposition figures of their audience.
Banishing a politician from the homeland in the pre-information
technology (IT) era was often enough to break the link between that
individual and any of their supporters.
By physically kicking enemies out, governments in those days
could reasonably hope to suppress unwanted personalities.
Exile therefore sat alongside arrest, detention, co-optation and
assassination in the toolboxes of regimes trying to ward off
threats to their survival.
But the advent of Internet technologies leaves in doubt the
usefulness of political exile.
In early April, ousted former Thai prime minister Thaksin
Shinawatra, whose “red shirts” recently shook the wits out of not
only the incumbent government but also visiting Asean dignitaries,
showed he is a perfect exponent of the new phenomenon of
long-distance, tech-savvy rebellion.
Through Internet-based communications devices and video links,
Thaksin – who was deposed from power in a 2006 military coup – has
continued to script Thai politics from exile in London, Dubai in
the United Arab Emirates and Hong Kong.
The ability of Thaksin’s backers in Thailand to screen his
speeches and public addresses live, via advanced net-enabled
technology, has given him a platform to urge the Thai people to
overthrow what he has labelled an illegitimate government.
By harnessing mass communication that can traverse continents,
Thaksin has more than lived up to his pedigree as a
telecommunications magnate.
The current uprising against the military-supported government
by the “red shirts” may not have materialised without the
provocation of Thaksin’s tired but angry face rallying spirits from
video screens erected on the streets of Bangkok and broadcast on
satellite-based television stations.
Instead of the man in flesh and blood, his supporters took
inspiration seeing him via satellite imagery.
When Thaksin thundered on the giant viewing panels that
“negotiations are impossible”, the assembled red shirts howled back
in agreement and took to the streets after his call for a “people’s
revolution” against the Abhisit Vejjajiva-led government.
For followers of Thaksin, the sight of their leader appearing
before their eyes in crystal clear picture and sound quality is a
powerful image, perhaps more so than if he were physically present
at the gatherings.
The electronic medium served as a stirring reminder to the red
shirts, who feel their leader had been persecuted and should be
brought back to head the country.
The video-linking not only substituted for lost political
opportunities due to Thaksin’s self-imposed exile – he was
sentenced in October 2008 to two years in prison on conflict of
interest charges – but also gave him the halo of a martyr.
Thaksin is not the first Asian politician to organise
Internet-based revolts.
Altaf Hussain, the leader of Pakistan’s mohajir community that
migrated from India to Pakistan during and after the partition of
1947, has been in exile in London since 1992….
.. In the Middle East, Hamas’ exiled leadership in Syria has
also benefited from the Internet to overcome the handicap of living
outside the Palestinian Occupied Territories.
The speeches and political commentaries of Khaled Mashal, Hamas’
political bureau chief in Syria, are often relayed via Arab
television and satellite links to Palestinians inside the Gaza
Strip….
...Social networking websites like Twitter and Facebook, and
video-sharing websites like YouTube, now form part of the arsenal
of political movements, from Barack Obama’s election campaign in
the United States to the opposition Pakatan Rakyat alliance in
Malaysia’s polls last year.
What Thaksin, Hussain and Mashal have proved is that
technological innovations can be used to influence the politics of
the street…
.. Thaksin appears to have been able to inflict as much
political damage to the current Thai government from his
unconfirmed location in Hong Kong or Dubai.
The Thai government finally pulled the plug on the satellite
broadcasts, claiming they had caused “chaos”.
But the quantum leap in global communications of the past two
decades is a boon for exiles and a bane for regimes caught up in
obsolete methods of survival.
Look no further than Thailand for confirmation of how technology
is altering political landscapes and rattling rulers.”
(Sreeram Chaulia is a researcher on international affairs at the
Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs in Syracuse, New
York.)
Report in full:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/KD1…