Najib is guilty of an invasion of Online privacy

Mariam Mokhtar, Malaysia Chronicle

In a desperate attempt to appeal to Chinese voters, Prime minister Najib Abdul Razak sought to send unsolicited messages to several Malaysians but instead of being praised for his efforts, managed to incur their wrath.

Malaysians with e-mail accounts were surprised to find a Chinese New Year greeting from Najib’s personal 1Malaysia.com.my blog in their inbox. The selection of people included those who celebrated Chinese New Year and those who did not.

Uppermost in their minds was how he obtained their e-mail addresses. Some will have subscribed to his website or any other government sites, but many others have said they have not.

It is illegal to steal personal information and unethical to send meaningless messages at random. Perhaps Najib is unaware of people’s views on ‘Spam’ mail?

Former Prime minister Gordon Brown tried to engage with the UK people by randomly phoning people and discussing the state of Britain with them. He did not get a favourable press. He also got a load of abuse.

At best, people were delighted to receive a telephone call from the Prime minister. At worst, many described him as desperate and clutching at straws to shore up support for the Labour party. A few threatened to report him for invasion of privacy.

In his New Year message, Najib wished every Malaysian a prosperous beginning in the Year of the Rabbit. He then recalled how he would accompany his parents, when they visited their Chinese friends and enjoy the various delicacies which included kuih kapit and pineapple tarts.

He said, “A wide smile would cross my face when I received ‘angpows’ from my parents’ friends. Today, the celebrations have grown to include sate, ais kacang, mi rebus and maruku even”

Although a married adult, Najib still enjoys his ‘angpows’, which come under the table, in brown envelopes and contains hundreds of millions of ringgits.

They are called ‘contracts’ or ‘commission’ for various contracts. They are the multi-million payments for massive government projects which did not go through an open tender process.

The other fallacy is to do with the presentation of food when entertaining during an ‘open house’.

Try as most non-Malays might to please the Malays with halal food or by making sure the food is prepared to halal specifications, the majority of Malays might just have a sip of drink, but will never partake of the food.

This leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of the non-Malay hosts who will have put much effort and expense to cater for the Malay/Muslims.

This is what former Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad’s process of forced Islamisation did to this country.

Prior to that, there was more unity and cohesion among the races. Mahathir and now Najib will have seen to the effective destruction of the cohesion between different races in Malaysia.