The Barisan Nasional (BN) communications director [Rahman Dahlan] said he was bemused by the fact that many Malaysians continued to spread stories that were clearly not true.
“That one I don’t understand. I am trying to understand the psyche of Malaysians. Why is it that you know the story is so outlandish, so you know that it’s not right, but still you want to forward it to your Whatsapp groups and whatnot.
“That’s the nature of us. So if we cannot have self-discipline, then the government has to step in,” he said at the pre-launch of the Malaysia Day Ride 2015 programme at the Putra World Trade Centre.
Rahman denied that introducing laws to regulate the Internet was political, saying that the spread of lies and slander threatened the nation’s security, stability and the economy.
He said it was the government’s responsibility to step in and protect Malaysia from being destroyed by lies on social media.
“We don’t mind at all Malaysiakini, The Malaysian Insider, Free Malaysia Today and other blogs that reach the ‘kampung’. We have no problem. We are not afraid of the spread of information.
“But we have to draw the line. This is not about Umno, this is not about politics. It is about the stability of the economy, the nation’s security, the functioning of the country,” he said.
Isn’t this the fellow nobody had ever heard of until a month ago when he started suddenly championing that ‘bastion of the truth’ Lester Melanyi?
And now he is complaining about others spreading false information!
This arrogant and bossy man should find time to look in the mirror and consider who has been most responsible over the past few weeks for passing outlandish falsehoods and ludicrous videos around social media (and the licensed media) and then consider who is going to censor and control his own nonsense?
The truth is that we don’t need such controls, because common sense tells the majority of people what is rubbish and what is not. This is why the whole of Malaysia knows that Dahlan, Lester and Ramesh Rao are laughable clowns, whereas the information produced by Sarawak Report has been researched and substantiated.
What Dahlan is actually saying, as all Malaysia realises, is that in order to continue to keep their now precarious positions he and his bosses need to silence the truth and use brute force to insist that the country accepts lies.
It says everything about Najib and his position that this non-entity and his conspiracy theory mongering colleague, Mahdzir Khalid (of Christian/Jewish plot fame) have been promoted from nowhere to centre stage, whilst more established politicians remain stony silent.