TWO DECADES AGO, WHEN THE PRIME Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, as now, was out of the country, his deputy prime minister and home minister, Dato' (now Tan Sri) Musa Hitam, sent in the police to silence a Muslim cleric nicknamed Ibrahim Libya. The police rushed in as bulls in a china shop, killed him and several of his followers, in an action that helped fuel both anti-government feelings, and a PAS resurgence, in Kedah. It all but destroyed Dato' Musa's standing as prime minister-in-waiting, and hastened his departure from the government. Today, he is the Godfather of the present deputy prime minister and home minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's ground-breaking efforts to succeed Dr Mahathir at any cost, when the latter finally calls it a day at the end of the year. And Tan Sri Musa has only one aim: the blacken Dr Mahathir's reputation as much as he can.

Dr Mahathir is careful to ask Malaysians to support his successor, whom he does not name. And, like Dato' Musa two decades earlier, Dato' Seri Abdullah must fight to keep his place on the succession list. In ordering the police crackdown on Malaysiakini, he has created his own Memali, and places Dr Mahathir more on the defensive with the outside world than Dato' Musa ever did with his adventure in Memali.

Malaysiakini, on 09 January 2003, carried a letter from Petrof, a pseudonym, which found much in common in the fate of the American Red Indian and the Malaysian aborigine. UMNO Youth, as always Mercedes-, BMW- and Jaguar-clad business men rebels desperately in search of causes to support, promptly filed a police report. In a country where more serious police reports have been filed over the years are not acted, the police acted swiftly: within a fortnight, it had raided the Malaysiakini offices in Kuala Lumpur, and all but shut it down.

It is clear in how it acted that sedition, the basis or the UMNO Youth police report, was not on its mind. It seized 19 personal computers and servers when the editors would not reveal the identity of Petrof. But it did not expect what happened next. Suddenly, Malaysia is known throughout the world as a country which not only does allow dissent, but is quick to shut down any print or Internet publication which is mildly critical of it. The government was unprepared for the widespread expressions of shock and horror at its crackdown of Malaysiakini.

In this globalisation debate, much is focussed on freedom of expression. And nations are targetted when journalists and newspapers are under political pressure to conform. Malaysia, by and large, has skilfully argued and acted her way out of trouble, even in blatant instances of official skullduggery. But this time it could not. The government's formal promise not to censor the Internet, in keeping with its espousal of the Multimedia Super Corridor, is in tatters. It now joins the more execrable Third World nations which target journalists with threats and physical injury. It is not a reputation Dr Mahathir wants to take with him into retirement. Nor indeed have Malaysia known for it in his remaining ten months as prime minister. Some of his aides think, without proof, that this was deliberately engineered to put him on the spot.

With the Non Aligned Movement summit in Kuala Lumpur next month, it showed not a Malaysia which provides the democratic space for its citizens that is denied in many a non-aligned country, but a country which deliberately curtails that freedom so that it can join the crowd. Malaysia, for all its support of President Bush's war on terror, has shifted the blame on to the opposition PAS, and its acolytes, for fuelling the war on terror, and acts hard against them. But Malaysians are in that select group of Muslim countries who are under sufferance when they visit the United States. Until this view is ameliorated, the summit of Islamic nations in Putra Jaya at year's end will pander to the West's misconceptions of democratic space in Islamic countries.

The Government, internally, has dropped the "bin" and "binti" from Muslim names, and the "Anak Lelaki" and "Anak Perempuan" for the confusion it causes world wide. A bin to one's name, is proof, to many an immigration officer in the United States, of a link to Osama Bin Laden; and Kuppusamy a/l Periasamy is an al Periasamy and therefore an Arab to be treated extra harshly! Now this attack on Malaysiakini has added Malaysia into the United States' terror bin of profiling Muslim nations.

Dato' Seri Abdullah miscalculated when he allowed the police to act with such speed. An aide of his said I should not blame him for the police did what it must. I told him it would not wash. A matter as important as raiding a newspaper office and disrupting its functions and seizing its computers and servers, not to find out if sedition is committed, though that was its aim, but to find out who wrote the offending letter, could not have been possible without his connivance and agreement. If he did not know, as is now suggested, the implications then are worse: the police are a law unto themselves, and act as it deems fit, no matter what the impact on the government. Either way, Dato' Seri Abdullah is trapped in his corner. But at what cost!

Malaysiakini runs its Internet portal under heavy official pressure; its reporters are not accredited; the Information Ministry attempted to force it to confirm but could not; and the government itself does not have rules for Internet publications. The long and short of it is that the government has yet to formulate rules for these Internet portals to operate, partly because of its confusion on how to distinguish between business portals and news portals.

With the Malay community split, and the government's reach on control of the news media in question, coupled with the uncertainty of what happens after Dr Mahathir, the UMNO leaders after Dr Mahathir would be severally challenged to deliver what Dr Mahathir has not. Since the next Prime Minister, whoever he is, was not a member of UMNO, as the first four Prime Ministers, at its founding, he would not have that cultural confidence that came from being in at the beginning. Far from being a feudal leader whose words are unquestioned, he would have to be one who survives after negotiating with the Malay chieftains.

It is essential then for the new leader to have the media eat out of his hand. The government controls the other media, by licencing them and with laws that provide for jail terms for the transgressors. It is also relatively easier since all are owned by those with close links to the National Front (BN). The political parties have their political organs, but only PAS's "Harakah" comes close to challenging the mainstream media with an alternate view. But it is Malaysiakini, with its political neutrality and reporting on the opposition parties as the mainstream newspapers would not, gives it a credibility that frightens the government. So it had to act. But did so to ensure maximum damage to itself. For that, it is the deputy prime minister and home minister who carries the can. And a reputation that Malaysia is without press freedom. It is that perception that Malaysia would find difficult to overcome. Willy nilly, Malaysia is forced on the defensive. That is the frightening conclusion from this attack on Malaysiakini.

M.G.G. Pillai