NO ONE IS SURPRISED ABOUT the Malaysiakini affair. It was a matter of time before someone in government lost his head, ordered a crackdown, as it did on 20 January 2003, and without considering its impact elsewhere. The Non-Aligned Summit is due next month, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference summit at year end. The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, is in Egypt and Lebanon on an official visit. Malaysia's stock overseas, despite the belief of the Malaysian cabinet that it could not be better, is at an all time low, and worsens because there is no attempt to mend fences. Burning the house down to catch a mouse is standard practice. The raid on Malaysiakini offices only affirms it. But it is only the latest in a series of officially-inspired mishaps.

What it did not expect was the worldwide condemnation and anger at this ill-thought out attempt to shut down the Internet newspaper not for what it contains -- much of what it carries is what a newspaper should carry as a matter of course, but they do not, but it does, and therefore one to be targetted -- for its refusal to conform. It looks at the news neutrally, and takes a position, which because it is not as the government wants it, is made the target. But the hamfisted attempt to shut it down by force on political pressure backfired. The government is faced with more than mud on its face when it can least afford it. But this is what happens when a government believes only it has the answers, would not allow another to have an alternate view, and is frightened when some one has. To the problems it acquired in mishandling the Anwar Ibrahim affair must be added the mishandling of the Malaysiakini affair.

Police raided the Malaysiakini offices in Kuala Lumpur, seized its computers and servers, harrassed its staff and reporters, effectively shutting it down, as it acted promptly on an UMNO youth report to it of a letter in the Internet newspaper which compared the fate of the Orang Asli (aborigines) with the Red Indian in the United States. This is sedition, UMNO Youth declared, and the police acted unaccustomedly fast. Whether it is sedition or not is for the Attorney-General to decide, not the police, and it exceeded its brief when it seized the computers to find out who Petrof is who wrote the offending letter. Since the editors would not give it, seized the computers to find out for themselves. There was no need for that. But it did, for it was as important to make it impossible for Malaysiakini to survive as it was to find out who Petrof is.

There is more. The raid could not have been possible without the consent of the deputy prime minister and home minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. Dr Mahathir, one must assume, was informed. But the two men work at cross purposes that one cannot be sure. Dr Mahathir would not take steps as stupid as this if only for not wanting to create problems for his reputation before he leaves this year. But one cannot remove the suspicion that the prime minister-to-be acquiesced to this plan to shut down an irritant, without realising the larger implications of the action. In this, even the question of whether Malaysiakini survives or not is irrelevant.

For Malaysiakini has become yet another pawn in this battle for the Malay heartland and UMNO. It is important for whoever is in power not to have even a mild questioning of its actions. Dato' Seri Abdullah is not only insecure in his perch, for he can be challenged for the UMNO presidency, but he also does not have the political credentials to hold the fort as firmly as Dr Mahathir can and could. What makes its so worrisome is that all this is done without a clear plan but is done piece-meal, with each of the individual parts not in consonance with the whole. It is this that is more dangerous for all of us than the infractions to Malaysia's promised intent not to censor the Internet. The Multimedia Super Corridor, whatever its promise under the Mahathir years, is one casualty, not for the Malaysiakini affair or attempts to rein in Internet publications, but because of an official disinterest in its development, in the post-Mahathir epoch, now that its promoter is about to retire.

It is real politik more than any conscious desire to censor the Internet that led to this. It backfired. More than that, it is a warning that the new prime minister is not wedded to such concepts, as freedom of the press, or the right of the citizen to take a stand that is not the government's. That UMNO Youth should have lodged a police report when it could as well replied to the letter and started a debate about it is proof yet of UMNO's desire to stifle all dissent. Then, on the other hand, UMNO Youth could have been subborned to do what it did, and did, for it does not believe in a free debate of issues either. And, in the context of Malaysian politics, what it did was only to be expected. But, it is also marginalised, in the larger Malay debate. And tries to return to the centre by dangerous and ill-advised agent provacateur actions as this.

But it also opened a can of worms. The worldwide reaction of horror and anger is, in part, the belief that Malaysia, for all its commitment to President Bush's war on terror, is nevertheless a superficial democratic state that hides an autocratic, even racial, state within. This attack on Malaysiakini, done for a narrow political vendetta, and others like it, in various degrees, merely shows how undemocratic the government can be and is. When the government accuses one of anti-national leanings, one is forbidden now, in law, to move the courts for redress. If the government says one is communist, then one is, even if one is not. It is in this context of the gradual erosion of liberties and democratic space of the citizen, that the Malaysiakini affair should be viewed. It would require more than assurances that the government means well when it cracked down on Malaysiakini. Especially when this idea of engaging its critics, local and foreign, is alien and anathema to its beliefs.