Thursday 28 Mar 2024
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This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on March 26, 2018 - April 1, 2018

Years ago — in the 1970s right up to the early 1990s — during Umno elections, party operatives serving the many different camps in the party would run down candidates from opposing camps. They would do this by spreading “stories” about their enemies, so-called revelations or exposés juicy enough to entice party members, in particular delegates, with voting rights. These “stories” were sometimes true but, more often than not, false.

The information or disinformation was disseminated via letters or pamphlets. Allegations  against opposing candidates — made anonymously, of course — would be typewritten, photocopied by the hundreds, put in envelopes and posted to party members.

On the eve of party elections for the Umno supreme council, for instance, the envelopes would be slipped under the doors of the delegates’ hotel rooms in the wee hours of the night.

The letters were called surat layang, literally “flying letters”. But they would later be rightly labelled poison pen letters due to their nature, or rather, their objective, to “poison” the minds of delegates so they would not support certain candidates.

A disclaimer is in order though. I am not saying poison pen letters are synonymous with Umno. I am just stating what happened in the old days. And I think other parties and organisations, political or otherwise, must have used such tactics in dealing with their foes.

And I don’t know if current Umno members are using such tactics during polls, be it party or by-elections or even general elections.

But the thing is, now we have in our midst even non-political people who, for reasons known only to themselves, are fond of spreading stories — all sorts of stories. Only this time, instead of typewritten letters sent via snail mail or discreetly hand delivered, juicy “stories” are distributed via social media.

And instead of surat layang, we now have, yes, fake news. No elaboration is needed except to say fake news is a serious menace. That is putting it mildly.

This week, the government is set to table in parliament the Anti-Fake News Bill, which, according to Federal Minister Datuk Seri Azalina Othman, “is to protect the public from fake news and from becoming victims of fake news”.

But, asks veteran journalist R Nadeswaran in his column in Malaysiakini: “Why do we need a new law when existing laws are sufficient?” He cites the case of a former religious teacher and a herbal entrepreneur who were fined RM2,000 each by the Sessions Court for falsely communicating on Facebook that a container containing pork mixed with mutton had been brought into the country from Spain last year.

Back to Azalina. The minister is adamant that the anti-fake news law “is not to stifle freedom of speech as provided in the Constitution”.

Yet, Deputy Minister of Communications and Multimedia Datuk Seri Jailani Johari has ruled that any news on 1Malaysia Development Bhd that has not been verified by the government is fake news and only government statements on 1MDB are “real” news.

To me, that runs contrary to Azalina’s pledge of not stifling freedom of speech.

And Nadeswaran has this to say: “Does giving a comment or opinion contrary to that of the establishment constitute fake news too?”

I must add — who decides what is fake news and what is not?

To be honest, there is no stopping fake news and it’s going to get harder as social media platforms become more sophisticated. The onus is on all of us to call out or sense what is fake and what is fact.

How? That’s a discussion for another day. For now, I conclude by saying the anti-fake news laws envisaged by the government can be easily abused.


Mohsin Abdullah is contributing editor at The Edge Malaysia. He has covered politics for over four decades.

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