sultanmuzaffar

Malaysia's First Politikus Blogger
by Danny Lim

Is this the first blog by an officially running candidate in the Malaysian elections… ever? Nik Nazmi (whose uncle Nik Mahmood Nik Hassan is running in Kota Bharu -- you’ll soon see why this is notable) certainly thinks so, and makes an outright endorsement for Sivarasa Rasiah, the Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) candidate for Petaling Jaya South.

Elizabeth Wong is helping to run the site, along with "Muzaffar", who also runs one of the most popular blogs in Malaysia.

The site previously only had a single page stating Sivarasa’s candidacy for PJS and a campaign e-mail address, but from about 8.30pm on Thursday, March 11, a whole new site went live, with a whole range of features, most notably being the campaign blog.

There’s a Press Room, a download page (you can get posters and leaflets) and a gallery that includes pictures of Sivarasa swimming (!) and Sivarasa with his wife Anne James, who made the first public announcement of his candidacy in her acceptance speech for winning Best Solo Performer in Theatre at the 2003 Boh Cameronian Arts Awards.

Wong, whom you can see here [subscription required] being hauled away by police on February 28, was nice enough to answer some of my questions:

Who writes the blog?
Everyone involved in the campaign can contribute.

Will Sivarasa himself write?
Yes.

Why a blog?
It’s a lot more personal. You can see how the election machinery works, all the problems we [the campaigners] have. We want people to know it’s not easy to run a political campaign. There is only so much official good news that people can take. Sometimes there’ll be tense moments, relaxed moments, etc. Plus we feel that PJ residents are one of the more connected (group of) voters in the country so they would be interested in this sort of thing.

How will they know?
So far we’ve been getting it out by word of mouth. We’ve sent e-mails to friends and NGOs [It’s already on the BeritaMalaysia e-group]. We’ve informed the local residents’ association. There hasn’t been an official launch or announcement. So we were surprised to see this morning (of March 12; the revamped site went live 8.30pm, March 11) we had nearly 200 unique visitors. By Sunday night, every household [in the PJ South constituency] will have the web address because it's in all our leaflets, posters, banners, basically wherever we can stick that web address on!

A small step forward then.