Malott: I hit a raw nerve

Since his article entitled The Price of Malaysia's Racism appeared in the Wall Street Journal early last week, former U.S. ambassador to Malaysia John Malott has faced increasing criticism from Prime Minister Najib Razak's Umno party.

This despite the fact that Mallot had tried to clear the air with an explanation on where he was coming from during an interview with Malaysia Chronicle on Friday.

Instead of subsiding, the tirade against him has intensified and Minister in the PM's Department Nazri Aziz has even threatened to ban him from Malaysia.

Malott led the U.S. mission in Kuala Lumpur from 1995 to 1998. In his article, he wrote that Najib’s prized 1Malaysia plan was unravelling. Instead of unifying the various races in the country, under Najib, racial polarization had widened significantly.

In the wake of the Umno firestorm that has blown in, Malaysia Chronicle contacted him again over the weekend and sought his views on why his article had stirred such rage within the Najib administrayion. This is his reply via email:

Malott: I think I touched a raw nerve because it is all so true. Or at least it is so well documented and argued that they don't know what to say in response. All of the examples I gave are factual. Hardev and Hisham and Zahid did do those things. The NEM is on hold, something that Zainal Aznam Mohd Yusof, an insider, also said. I didn't make anything up. There are lot more examples that I could have used, from the DPM's "I am a Malay first and a Malaysian second" comment to the long delay in reprimanding the racist school principal who called her young students dogs or told them to go back to China.

Johan Jaafar wrote in The New Straits Times that when I said that 500,000 Malaysians left the country between 2007 and 2009, it was "an exaggeration at best, irresponsible at worst." But those are the Government's own statistics, revealed in Parliament in November 2009 by Deputy Foreign Minister Kohilan Pillay. So the Chairman of Media Prima is attacking me for repeating what the government said.

When I read the comments under the Malaysiakini article reporting on Rais Yatim's comments, almost everyone said "stop the personal attacks, and if you disagree, say why."

Overall, I have been very, very impressed by the comments that readers have posted on the various websites. Eighty percent of them have been thoughtful comments, pro and con, and only about 20 percent were personal or vitriolic.

I think that today Malaysians know what is going on. They know the score. They don't depend just on RTM or the UMNO and MCA controlled newspapers anymore. In fact I understand that circulation for NST, Utusan and so on is down. The people are plugged in, especially in the cities, thanks to the internet and the alternative media. Last October The Star newspaper reported that Malaysians have the most number of friends on social networking websites like Facebook and also spend the most hours per week on such sites. The Wall Street Journal reported that over 12,000 people posted my op-ed to their Facebook page; the next highest number was "Apple starts production of new iPad," at around 4,000.

So I think all this is making UMNO's leaders nervous as well -- they no longer can control access to the news and therefore what people think. But they know that if they start to control access to the internet or crack down on websites they don't like, there will be a major reaction from Malaysians, and to the outside world they will start to look like China or North Korea. It seems like a couple of weeks ago the Government was flirting with the idea of restricting on-line media in some way, but now it seems like they have backed off.

As I told you the other day by email, I don't think we are going to see an Egypt-type situation in Malaysia, meaning people taking to the streets and the leader having to step down. In the case of Egypt, the army did not crack down on their own people, they did not shoot or tear gas their own people. But as I said, I think the RMP would not hesitate to crack down. They have done it before, and they will do it again.

But there are some similarities between Egypt and Malaysia with regard to people -- you have a younger generation, plugged in and wired, who know what is going on in the outside world, and who, thanks to the internet and everything connected to it, also know what is going on inside their own country. - Malaysia Chronicle