Those who recall the entertainment the ‘Khairy Chronicles' provided Internet followers in the middle years of the last decade when the blogosphere began to draw Malaysians to it as an alternate source of news and comment will have sat up the past week to take notice that a reprise may be at hand.
The ‘Khairy Chronicles' was a titillating amalgam of half-truths, gossip, rumour and conjecture that Raja Petra Kamarudin deployed in his blog Malaysia Today as soon as the new-broom sheen the Abdullah Ahmad Badawi administration sported on being installed in late 2003 began to pall by 2006.
Malaysians with access to foreign-owned regional periodicals have long suspected that the facts behind the published news on national politics are more riveting than the disinfected version the newspapers, all owned by the ruling class or affiliates, decided to print.
In the years before the inception of web news portals, readers eagerly waited for the periodicals to tell them what the mainstream newspapers found too risqué to disclose.
Thus when the blogosphere saw the emergence in the middle years of the last decade of a tattler like Raja Petra (right), he quickly gained a following for his irreverent musings, with followers of his stuff no longer reliant - for an inkling of what's happening - on those foreign-owned periodicals which in any case were fast becoming defunct.
As quickly as he emerged, Raja Petra faded in 2011 as supplier of title tattle that kept droves on edge with his revelations.
The reasons for his retreat were as mysterious as the sources that fed him grist for his mill when he hit out at targets which in his prime were the Abdullah family and, latter, the then deputy prime minister Najib Razak and wife Rosmah Mansor.
Since the time of Raja Petra's evanescence as prime purveyor of editorial contraband in 2011, the void he left was somewhat filled by Rafizi Ramli, the strategic director of PKR, from under whose bonnet there steadily emerged news of shenanigans in high places.
The most sensational in this genre was the RM250 million national cattle breeding scandal in which the family of Wanita Umno leader Shahrizat Abdul Jalil was embroiled.
Juicy revelations were trotted out in the alternate media and remained as scuttlebutt for punch lines on opposition campaign circuits in the lead-up to the general election last May.
The source-field for that kind of stuff of which Rafizi became the go-to conduit appears to have been turned off, presumably by the recent passing of laws that impose deterrent fines and jail terms on those guilty of leaking any information that the authorities consider secret.
Shifting gears
With that cut-off, a void has developed into which has seemingly stepped a former top editor whose blog, when it was launched several years ago, was not known for more than its commentaries on public affairs. In the past week or so, the blogger has ventured on to turf once treaded by Raja Petra.
A Kadir Jasin, the NST group's former editorial No 1, has shifted gears in his widely followed blog, perhaps opting to fill the vacuum left by Raja Petra.
A staunch Umno supporter, Kadir's long smoldering distaste for PM Najib ratcheted up in intensity after the Umno elections in October and broke out into the open at the conclusion of the party's annual general assembly last week.
What appears to have got Kadir's goat was Najib's defence of wife Rosmah at the party meeting where the PM disclosed that Malaysian students stranded in Egypt during the Arab Spring were rescued from danger through Rosmah's intercessory efforts with higher-ups she was acquainted with in the Arab world.
Dripping sarcasm, Kadir suggested in his blog The Scribe by Kadir Jasin that Rosmah ought to be made a minister because her talents have rendered redundant present holders of the portfolios of education, international trade and foreign affairs.
He said there would be no problem about her lack of a seat in Parliament because there was the Senate to which she could be appointed, in readiness perhaps for her to contest for a seat in the lower house at the 14th general election.
Kadir's sarcasm was too succulent for the other blogs and websites to ignore so that when one that had posted a piece had to take it down, reportedly on orders from the PM's Department, the scribe's gills overflowed, the sarcasm this time tinged with vitriol.
Kadir's venomous squirts were reserved for Najib, but Shahrizat was also sprayed, his scorn for her description of Najib as the "grandmaster" of political moves - "chest master" Kadir punned - a term certain to acquire cocktail-party immortality.
That's was not all. Kadir said he would soon have details of what the fawning Shahrizat actually thinks about Najib, something if indeed Kadir follows through with surely turn a cockpit into a cauldron.
Najib may have won the general election last May and was triumphant at the Umno internal polls in October, but he cannot be certain of turning the double win into a sweep of all he surveys in the party.
The ‘Khairy Chronicles' was a titillating amalgam of half-truths, gossip, rumour and conjecture that Raja Petra Kamarudin deployed in his blog Malaysia Today as soon as the new-broom sheen the Abdullah Ahmad Badawi administration sported on being installed in late 2003 began to pall by 2006.
Malaysians with access to foreign-owned regional periodicals have long suspected that the facts behind the published news on national politics are more riveting than the disinfected version the newspapers, all owned by the ruling class or affiliates, decided to print.
In the years before the inception of web news portals, readers eagerly waited for the periodicals to tell them what the mainstream newspapers found too risqué to disclose.
Thus when the blogosphere saw the emergence in the middle years of the last decade of a tattler like Raja Petra (right), he quickly gained a following for his irreverent musings, with followers of his stuff no longer reliant - for an inkling of what's happening - on those foreign-owned periodicals which in any case were fast becoming defunct.As quickly as he emerged, Raja Petra faded in 2011 as supplier of title tattle that kept droves on edge with his revelations.
The reasons for his retreat were as mysterious as the sources that fed him grist for his mill when he hit out at targets which in his prime were the Abdullah family and, latter, the then deputy prime minister Najib Razak and wife Rosmah Mansor.
Since the time of Raja Petra's evanescence as prime purveyor of editorial contraband in 2011, the void he left was somewhat filled by Rafizi Ramli, the strategic director of PKR, from under whose bonnet there steadily emerged news of shenanigans in high places.
The most sensational in this genre was the RM250 million national cattle breeding scandal in which the family of Wanita Umno leader Shahrizat Abdul Jalil was embroiled.
Juicy revelations were trotted out in the alternate media and remained as scuttlebutt for punch lines on opposition campaign circuits in the lead-up to the general election last May.
The source-field for that kind of stuff of which Rafizi became the go-to conduit appears to have been turned off, presumably by the recent passing of laws that impose deterrent fines and jail terms on those guilty of leaking any information that the authorities consider secret.
Shifting gears
With that cut-off, a void has developed into which has seemingly stepped a former top editor whose blog, when it was launched several years ago, was not known for more than its commentaries on public affairs. In the past week or so, the blogger has ventured on to turf once treaded by Raja Petra.
A Kadir Jasin, the NST group's former editorial No 1, has shifted gears in his widely followed blog, perhaps opting to fill the vacuum left by Raja Petra.A staunch Umno supporter, Kadir's long smoldering distaste for PM Najib ratcheted up in intensity after the Umno elections in October and broke out into the open at the conclusion of the party's annual general assembly last week.
What appears to have got Kadir's goat was Najib's defence of wife Rosmah at the party meeting where the PM disclosed that Malaysian students stranded in Egypt during the Arab Spring were rescued from danger through Rosmah's intercessory efforts with higher-ups she was acquainted with in the Arab world.
Dripping sarcasm, Kadir suggested in his blog The Scribe by Kadir Jasin that Rosmah ought to be made a minister because her talents have rendered redundant present holders of the portfolios of education, international trade and foreign affairs.
He said there would be no problem about her lack of a seat in Parliament because there was the Senate to which she could be appointed, in readiness perhaps for her to contest for a seat in the lower house at the 14th general election.
Kadir's sarcasm was too succulent for the other blogs and websites to ignore so that when one that had posted a piece had to take it down, reportedly on orders from the PM's Department, the scribe's gills overflowed, the sarcasm this time tinged with vitriol.
Kadir's venomous squirts were reserved for Najib, but Shahrizat was also sprayed, his scorn for her description of Najib as the "grandmaster" of political moves - "chest master" Kadir punned - a term certain to acquire cocktail-party immortality.
That's was not all. Kadir said he would soon have details of what the fawning Shahrizat actually thinks about Najib, something if indeed Kadir follows through with surely turn a cockpit into a cauldron.
Najib may have won the general election last May and was triumphant at the Umno internal polls in October, but he cannot be certain of turning the double win into a sweep of all he surveys in the party.
TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for four decades now. He likes the profession because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them.
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