by Thomas Lee Seng Hock
COMMENT
MCA president Chua Soi Lek has declared that his party wants the current restrictive and oppressive Printing Presses and Publications Act scrapped, to keep up with the increasing public demands for more openness and freedom of expression.
Chua said at the recently concluded 58th MCA annual general assembly that the aspirations of the new generation of Malaysians for a more liberal and democratic society means that the Barisan Nasional government should be bold and confident enough to dump the intolerable piece of harsh and authoritarian legislation, not just make amendments to it.
“We must work towards abolishing the Printing Presses and Publications Act and set a time frame for that. The government has to be bold and confident enough to take such a step,” he said.
Chua pointed out that there is no level playing field now in the communication and information arena between the traditional main stream media (MSM) and the fast expanding and influential cyber media.
“The print media is subject to various laws, but the new media seem to have a free hand. There should be no such discrimination,” he said.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak had announced in his Malaysia Day message to the nation on 16 September 2011 that the Barisan Nasional administration would amend the Printing Presses and Publications Act to exempt newspaper publishers from the current mandatory obligationto apply for a new printing permit annually.
The MCA proposal to go beyond just making adjustment to the intensely unacceptable and undesirable legislation iscertainly commendable and deserving of praise and support.
But, an honest and objective look at the current attitude, policy and practice of the party in the area of press freedom surely exposes the hollowness of the Chua proposal, and the insincerity,and even hypocrisy, of the party leadership.
If Chua and the MCA are truly and sincerely in favour and supportive of the real and pragmatic practice of press freedom, advocating the unrestrictive, unregulated, and unreserved media culture in the country, then the very first thing the MCA must do is to divest itself totally of its control of The Star and other related publications, by selling its shares in these media companies to the general public. At the same time,the party must remove all political appointees currently running the editorial operation of The Star and the party-controlled Chinese newspapers.
Chua Soi Lek should shut up about the issue of press freedom if he is not able to make the MCA give up the control of The Star and other newspapers it currently owns.
The political control of the nation’snewspapers is surely the most glaring and conspicuous of a bad press culture,of which the MCA is among the top two culprits, the other being Umno which controls the Utusan Malaysia and other Bahasa Melayu newspapers.
Chua Soi Lek wants to project himself as one who believes in and advocates the practice of a free press culture, yet he is not prepared to lift the political control and abuse of the newspapers owned by the party.
If The Star can publish in full Chua’s presidential address at the MCA assembly, it should also publish in full the policy message of DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng, if it is truly a free and independent paper, with the catchphrase tagline “The People’s Paper”.
The political slant in its news reporting and political commentaries is very obvious. Anything spoken by the MCA bosses must be published in full, while anything from the DAP or other opposition groups, especially those critical of the MCA, will not see the light of day.
Editors at the MCA-control newspapers practise self-censorship to ensure nothing detrimental to the party and its leaders is published. Such a bad press culture in these newspapers is largely responsible for the eroding of the independence and freedom of the media in our nation.
I challenge Chua Soi Lek to walk the talk on the matter of press freedom by freeing The Star and the MCA-owned Chinese newspapers from the party control. The test of his credibility and sincerity is not just in the talk advocating a free press culture, but in a determined, decisive, and deconstructive effort to deactivate the political control and abuse of The Star and other MCA-owned newspapers.
Until Chua Soi Lek liberates The Star and other MCA-control newspapers, he has no moral right to talk about the freedom of the press and freedom of expression.