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greetings jeff

it is always unfortunate that whenever the minister / government is being put into the bad limelight, they would invariably counter it that critics are lying and etc.

our politicians' pedigree does not seem to be able to tell between being critical and being anti-government.

i pay my taxes / i oblige and follow the rule/law but why is it so difficult for tax-payers like me to provide feedback to the system but yet to be called anti-government / establishment ?

does the fact that when you chastise / discipline your child for being naughty / mischievous makes the guardian / parent / teacher being a sadist / violent ?

poor Nila Tanzil not only lost her good friend due the the tragic air crash but has to be labeled/brandished being a liar for raising the above issues.

Jeff ,
Ku Nan’s off the cuff remarks and loose comments got him into trouble and you will find most main stream media ignore these types of comments to waste their valuable column-space. It is only the vernacular paper that highlighted them (sinchew). When things are technical, Samy can also get away with his comments as few bloggers and reporters are in the know to nail him.
But you missed the Malaysia Microchip launch Feb 24 2007 launch; you had a blog on this RFID chip way back in Sept 2003 when Dr M purchased the technology from Japan for an undisclosed sum
And this is what Home Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Radzi Sheikh Ahmad, was quoted in the STAR (Feb 25 07) after the launch by Abdullah
“The MM chip is highly acclaimed to be the world's smallest RFID chip with a built-in antenna and it can operate on three bands of radio frequencies”.
Malaysiakini believed it and had a headline “World’s Smallest Ready to Roll” On Feb 26 (but it was quickly taken down) and even AFP on Feb 27 screamed “Malaysia launches smallest microchip with radio technology” – all captured on jpg.
Who would challenge this until you google it? And you find the chip may be the smallest microchip - ONLY in Malaysia perhaps as in JAPAN, Hitachi's mu-chips (0.4mm x 0.4mm) are already in production and they had been used to prevent ticket forgery at last year's Aichi international technology exposition and they have developed even smaller ones (0.05mm x 0.05mm) POWDER TAGS (see pic) - 60 times smaller but NOT in production yet.
The spin was successful, as the respectable science PhysOrg.com carried the story and had it on their forum. All the above and more details from:
http://powerpresent.blogspot.com/2007/02/malaysia-launched-rfic-microchip-07mm-x.html
So bloggers can tell a lie from a spin.

The most diplomatic thing to do Ku Nan is to try and talk to SCTV Indonesia to reemploy NIla.

Otherwise, why don't you Torusim Malaysia in Jakarta to give her a job.

Its good and smart PR, Ku.

The big problem with the cabinet members is they can't see the wide-angle view. You have the parking lot abduction (local turned foreign), then the earsquat event (foreign turned local), then the demolition of a human being (foreign from afar), and now labelling a guest journalist (foreign from near) as a liar.

If the cabinet members could only see how the world has formed a poor opinion of this country from a series of concatenated events that happen to have common elements, they won't be so quick to shoot their mouths to mask their lack of brains.

The rest of the developing world has moved ahead; on a parallel event, what are we doing here witnessing a PM and deputy minister contradicting each other on who said what and who didn't? They sure know how to make this country which they presumably are trying to govern appear to be a madhouse.

On that score, what the tourism minister had said was as expected as one would expect what the s.i.l, the toupeeman, the silkygirl and all those others had said on other matters - the way bears the same motifs: fear, self-preservation, power-maintenance, blaming others (press, foreigners, women), craven denials and fact-twistings, and all sort of bully tactics only thugs and weak characters will adopt; never the straight candid answer.

Basically, they've lost it. That's because they're so lost. So that the first thing they should be doing is just hold a one-agenda meeting and ask each to answer honestly:

what's wrong with us the ministers (add: minions)?

There's nothing wrong with the rakyat who are increasingly finding better illumination and insight from bloggers.

One suspects the cabinet will miss the real message from the blogging phenomenon: it's all about transparency.

If governments are transparent about what they do, they will not have anything to worry about that's written. They seem to find it convenient for power-holding to use opaqueness as a tool to mount suppression on people who voice dissent on corruption, substandards, truth-hiding and incompetencies. They have such an arrogant and low opinion of the rakyat. That blogging is countering these with increasingly confident and influential coverage from day to day only shows the day for hiding truths is over.

Hiding truths will only deceive themselves in the end. When that happens, as we are seeing glimmers of it in the way the cabinet has been mis-conducting itself for so many years, it spells the end of what this country is all about.

neil, tired inside out.

Amen.
You sum it all up in half a page what we've been tossing around all week. And as always Neil, when you write, it's like someone drag a squeegy over the wet, stained and blurred windscreen.

Don't ever expect ANY of Bolehland ruling parties politickus to apology. It is not Bolehland cultures politickus to make apologies.

It will mean lost of face, and "not-macho" to those voters that vote them. No matter how insensitive speech the politickus made, as long as there is moron to support them, these politickus will never learn responsibilities.

At the end of the day, the job of Tourism Malaysia is a marketing tool for this country.

As a savvy marketer, the ministry should take seriously the criticism voiced by SCTV: apologise for the inconvenience or otherwise clarify the situation, and most importantly, make sure it does not happen again next year by giving a proper briefing, letters of accredition etc.

Something as simple as that would have cast Malaysia in a much better light. It's ok to make mistakes as we show ourselves willing to learn and improve.