The speech by the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to the Mass Media Conference 2007 last Friday is more significant for what he omitted than what he said.
Eight years ago, when he was first appointed Home Minister, some 600 journalists in Malaysia which in the subsequent year grew to over 1,000 journalists, on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day on May 3 presented a memorandum to him calling for the repeal of the Printing Presses and Publications Act and other repressive laws fettering the development of a free and responsible press.
Abdullah had given a solemn undertaking to the Malaysian journalists that he would give their memorandum serious consideration.
Eight years have passed and Abdullah has still to respond directly to the 1999 memorandum on press freedom which has the support of over 1,000 journalists.
The Mass Media Conference 2007 on Friday is most disturbing for more reasons than one. In particular, the conference was organized by the Internal Security Ministry which seems to reflect an increasingly intrusive and invasive government role in the sphere of mass media.
In his eight years first as Home Minister and later Internal Security Minister with direct responsibility over the media, the arsenal of repressive instruments and laws fettering media freedom had been left intact, whether Printing Presses and Publications Act, the Official Secrets Act, the Sedition Act, the Internal Security Act or the Police Act.
At any time, these repressive instruments and laws could be resorted to and re-activated. There has been no move whatsoever towards new legislation to create an environment which fosters greater openness, accountability and transparency like the Freedom of Information Act and Whistleblowers Protection Act.
What is very disturbing is that there are more and more signs of government obstruction of the development of a free and responsible press, as for instance, in the latest government directive to expand the blackout of the Opposition from government television and radio stations to private stations.
Is Abdullah’s speech on mass media last Friday a final answer after eight years rejecting the memorandum by over 1,000 Malaysian journalists to him when he first became Home Minister calling for the repeal of the Printing Presses and Publications Act and other repressive laws fettering the development of a free and responsible press?