Think 3:06 - Raja Petra Kamarudin
The controversial editor of Malaysia Today is challenging how the Malaysian public views its government
By Chris Chew
“Hang on a second,” says Raja Petra Kamarudin suddenly. Seated at a café in one of Kuala Lumpur’s many malls, Petra’s mobile phone has just beeped. Our conversation, which only just began, is briefly quelled.
“Sorry about that,” he smiles after reading the message. “It’s just that someone hacked into our website last night and disabled it for four hours. I got the message at 8.30pm, but ignored it. Then I got another message at 1.30am, and I was wondering, who in the world would message me at this time? Turns out it was one of my associates, telling me that the website was down.”
He wipes his forehead, noticeably relieved that the latest text message concerns less urgent matters than the inactivity of Malaysia Today, the online news portal of which he is the founder and editor. “It’s the second time this has happened in recent weeks,” he explains. “The first time, we had just transferred our files to a new server, so our web developers reformatted the old server. So when the website was down, we had no backup. I was so demoralised. I just wanted to—you know. I felt like just giving in to them.”
Whoever ‘them’ may be, it is clear that they have their eyes set on rattling the 56-year-old activist. And for good reason too. Since its inception in 2004, Malaysia Today has become one of the country’s most visited news websites, currently receiving 1.6 million hits a day with visitors from 129 countries. Run entirely by Petra and another sub-editor, together with 10 part-timers and eight to 10 contributors, no news portal has proven more effective at monitoring the volatile temperatures of Malaysia’s spicy brew of politics with its hard-nosed analysis of governing bodies and authorities.
While the website is unrelenting in its condemnation of Barisan Nasional and its ruling party United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), it has also pulled some equally tough punches on the blemishes of the numerous opposition parties such as the Islamic Party of Malaysia (PAS) and Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR). As Petra proudly declared in his column back in 2004, “Malaysia Today will continue whacking. We will whack Umno. We will whack the powers-that-be. We will whack the opposition. And we will whack the opposition leaders.”
CRY FOR JUSTICE
It comes as little surprise that the portal found its conception against the backdrop of press freedom, or rather, the denial of it. Petra had been associated with PAS from the late 1970s, although his allegiances continued to lie with former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who joined UMNO in 1982. When PAS’s party publication Harakah launched its English section in 1997, Petra was one of its columnists, and used it to unleash stinging criticisms on all levels of governance. Then, when Anwar was arrested on charges of sodomy in 1998, Petra established FreeAnwar.com, a website to campaign for the release of the unfairly jailed politician. At the same time, he joined PKR (led by Anwar’s wife) and began writing for the party’s newsletter, Seruan Keadilan.
Unfortunately, slotting into the boundaries of party policies, at the expense of press freedom, did not sit too well with Petra. “Even though it was independent,” he recalls, “I was told that there were party cultures and disciplines that I was expected adhere to.” But Petra continued his honest critiques of the opposition party’s befuddling tactics, particularly PAS’s pursuit of establishing an Islamic State. “I would get memos all the way from Sungai Buloh (where Anwar was being held captive),” says Petra, “and [Anwar] would tell me that while press independence was accepted, I needed to be more responsible and watch what I write.”
Petra’s frustration with the opposition parties’ intolerance of press freedom reached its threshold in 2004, when articles he wrote, which cast unfavourable light on the opposition, were rejected by Harakah. Determined to have a platform where views could be expressed and discussed without censorship, Petra launched Malaysia Today in August 2004. A few weeks later, Anwar was released from prison, thus nullifying the need to continue FreeAnwar.com.
Yet Malaysia Today continued, and flourished. In its two years of existence, the grassroots website has released a number of special reports that transcend beyond mere rumour mill mongering, with serious investigations into the shady underbelly of Malaysian politics. One report highlighted the ‘Oil for Food’ scandal that implicates high-ranking government figures as illegal financial beneficiaries of dubious business dealings with Middle East nations. Another analyses the RM600 million Government allocation to rural development under the Ninth Malaysian Plan, an amount that has been divided into RM3 million portions for each of the 191 UMNO division leaders and which requires members, as Petra bluntly puts it, “to lick the balls of their division chiefs for a share of the RM3 million”.
THE KHAIRY CHRONICLES
But what launched Petra and Malaysia Today into the stratosphere of controversy was the series of articles penned about Khairy Jamaluddin, the Deputy UMNO Youth chief and son-in-law of Datuk Sri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. A virtual non-factor who exploded onto the political scene two years ago, his stunning ascendance into the most exclusive quarters of Putrajaya prompted Petra to delve deeper.
“People ask me why I don’t do a series on someone more important, like [Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Sri] Najib [Tun Razak],” says Petra. “I say, what for? The whole country knows about Najib. Everyone knows about these people. But an unknown quantity like Khairy—now that’s a story.”
Beginning in the middle of 2005, the 23-installment series, dubbed The Khairy Chronicles, compared Khairy to Russia’s infamous mad man Rasputin. Among other disclosures, it revealed Khairy’s role in pocketing millions from the sale of Malaysia’s national assets, his shrewd appointment of fellow university friends in high-ranking positions who doubled up as spies feeding him insider information, and his fishy relationship with Anwar Ibrahim.
The series began drawing the attention of both opposition and UMNO party members, and in January, the latter tried to halt it via a court order. But it was during this time that the need to compile the writings into a book became more and more evident.
“A friend told me how a young man from Malacca approached him some time ago, excited over some piece of information he had learned about Khairy,” explains Petra. “When my friend heard it, he was like, ‘Aiya, that’s old news! Didn’t you read that in Malaysia Today months ago?’ Then he realised that the young man was not aware of the existence of this series because he was from the kampung, where Internet access is limited. Plus, the fact that the series was in English was another deterrent.”
Quickly turning the obstruction into opportunity, Petra and his staff compiled all the writings and released it as a book in November, just before the UMNO General Assembly. They printed 8,000 copies; 6,000 in Malay and 2,000 in English, and distributed these across villages, putting them in the hands of those whose lives could be transformed by an Oxford graduate who once stated his intention to be Prime Minister by the time he is 40 years old.
As expected, the response from the UMNO quarters has been swift and scathing. Khairy himself declared the book as “full of lies” and “an attempt to smear my reputation”. But Petra remains unfazed, and ever confident in his content. “I wonder what they are going to say about The Khairy Chronicles in 2007 or 2008,” he writes in one of his blog entries. “Hope I will still be around to say, ‘Didn’t I tell you so?’”
THE PRICE OF FREEDOM
Like many of the country’s freedom strivers, Petra has paid a steep price for his endeavours. He received a death threat a few weeks ago, and has been arrested four times under the notorious Internal Securities Act (“Twice under Mahathir, twice under Badawi,” he says), brought in for questioning by Special Branch members and asked to reveal his sources and prove his claims. But each time, Petra has walked out free.
“They ask me to prove what I write,” says Petra. “I say, no problem, I have the documents, and they are free to see if they are real and charge me if they aren’t. But them doing that means they have to acknowledge the existence of these documents. And in doing so, they legitimise them and the work I do.”
Petra isn’t the only one who’s rocked the boat. It has been, to say the least, a trying year for Malaysian news providers. Long acknowledged as being the propagandist paeans of the ruling parties, self-censorship and close monitoring have frequently kept the major dailies at highly sanitised levels. But the virulent repercussions of the Danish cartoon controversy early this year fell upon publications like a chunky hammer. The Sarawak Tribune was suspended indefinitely for publishing the cartoon, while Berita Petang Sarawak and Chinese paper Guang Ming Daily were slapped with two-week suspensions. Even media giants News Straits Times issued a front page apology for inserting a separately-illustrated but similarly-themed cartoon. Elsewhere, Weekend Mail was suspended indefinitely for an issue dedicated to the sexual habits of Malaysians, while China Press, TV2 and Tamil paper Makkal Osai were all threatened with legal action for various other offences.
Where censorship has not dealt its hand, corporate dealings have. In October, Tan Sri Datuk Tiong Hew King, the chairman of timber conglomerate Rimbuan Hijau Group, took over Nanyang Press Holdings (which owns Nanyang Siang Pau and China Press), effectively bringing all four of Malaysia’s leading Chinese language press under one roof (the company already owns Sin Chew Daily and Guang Ming Daily), and casting a dark cloud over the future of Malaysia’s Chinese language media, which have always been significantly more liberal in their political coverage. And in December, the proposed merger between Malay daily Utusan Malaysia and the New Straits Times Press (which already controls Berita Harian) was only halted due to objections by several UMNO leaders.
It comes as little surprise then that Malaysia recently placed 92nd out of 168 countries in a press freedom report by French organisation Reporters Without Borders. While it is an improvement over last year’s ranking of 113th place, it is more a reflection of the dire state of press freedom in the region than any noticeable progress. More chillingly, the clampdown even attempted to stretch towards the Internet this year, with selected ministers calling for further regulations to be imposed on blogs that published news which “[disseminated] disharmony, chaos, seditious materials and lies”.
It is such shaky rocks of credibility that online news providers like Malaysia Today, Malaysiakini and Aliran, together with the resolute contingent of political bloggers, have strived to displace, and build their own reliable bases as alternative perspectives of Malaysia’s political agenda. With mainstream papers cowering in the shadow of political intimidation and ownership, online portals have become the central source of information about incidences like religious conversions, AP scandals and police brutality—disclosures that cause far less chaos or disharmony than the corrupt activities of the powers that be.
And as Malaysia seeks to become a beacon of religious moderation, portals like these help to readjust the world’s focus. “A lady from Canada flew down here to meet me because she was doing her PhD on alternative media,” says Petra. “She obviously realised that if we were talking about the kinds of things we do on our website, there had to be a decent amount of truth in the content.”
He continues, “I always tell people who dispute with what I write, ‘Give me your version of the truth’. I may not always agree with what is on [the website], but I will defend the individual’s right to say it.”
As we talk, a card-carrying UMNO member sits across from us. Petra bumped into him as he arrived in the mall, and the two had lunch together as both their wives wandered off to shop. The man (who declined to be identified) quickly shifts from pride to disdain as he ponders the state of the ruling party’s higher levels. “Climbing the [UMNO] ladder is like climbing Mount Everest,” he says. “The higher you go, the harder it is to breathe.”
The lunch setting flies in the face of everything Malaysian politics has postured itself as. With elections rumoured to be called next year, Petra sees the beauty in the irony. “I’m sitting with a man who is dedicated to seeing UMNO succeed,” says Petra. “I am dedicated to seeing UMNO brought down. Yet we can still have lunch and be friends. Of course, come election time…”
“You stay away from my polling station!” jibes the man.
“We’re old, the two of us,” says Petra, gesturing to his lunch mate as they finish up their paella and garlic bread. “It comes down to the next generation, people like his kids and my grandkids, to bring about change. We need a reformed, multiracial government that will bring our country into the future. But if this generation continues to say, ‘Saya Cina’, ‘Saya Melayu’—then it will be up to his grandkids and my great grandkids.”
Petra seems willing to wait. He might not have time, but Malaysia Today’s extensive documentations serve as witness to another monumental chapter in the nation’s history, stored in the boundless confines of the World Wide Web. As we get up to leave, the UMNO man turns to me. “How old are you?” he asks. I tell.
“Wow,” he says. Neither a smile, nor a frown, creeps upon his face. Just a look of resolution. “Take care of our country. It’s almost time.”