I have been urging Pakatan Rakyat to introduce free wireless Internet in the states they are governing since March 2008 but to no avail. Soon we shall be celebrating the second anniversary of the 12th General Election and still no free wireless Internet in sight.
NO HOLDS BARRED
Raja Petra Kamarudin
Pakatan Rakyat is sleeping and thinks it can win the next general election by doing nothing. I am fed up of trying to convince them about the importance of the Internet to the opposition cause. If Pakatan Rakyat has a death wish then so be it. But just so that I can say “I told you so” when the results of the next general election is announced and Pakatan Rakyat gets sent back to wherever it crawled out from, I want you to see the video presentation below to understand why I am so upset.
Pakatan Rakyat does not seem to understand that it is at a disadvantage when it comes to the mainstream and electronic media and they therefore need the Internet to get their message across to the voters. Ten years ago there were only 280,000 Internet users against eight million voters. Today, the ratio is one-to-one and in time the number of Internet users are going to outnumber the number of voters.
It is plain and simple. He who controls information on the Internet can influence the thinking of the voters. At the height of the Vietnam War, four out of five Americans bought newspapers. Today, it is only two in five because Americans now obtain their information from the Internet.
The number of newspapers sold in Indonesia today is half what it was during the Reformasi days -- at the height of the anti-Suharto era -- in spite of the increase in population. And this is because Indonesians now also depend on the Internet for their news and information.
Rupert Murdock has predicted that by 2030 the print newspaper would be totally replaced by the Internet. So Pakatan Rakyat ignores the Internet at its own peril. Let us just hope that on 19 December 2009 the delegates to the First Pakatan Rakyat Convention will discuss this issue and do something about the matter.
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