Technology brings to Democracy, is it true? (PART 3)

I have talked about the Accessibility for the past two posts last week. Now, I will continue the topic that we have discussed before. Today, I will share something about the character of Diversity in a democracy system. There are three aspects of diversity which are the diversity of the range of different information, idea and the pattern of thinking, and the pattern of media. We always say that we are in the democractic country, but have we ever thought that do we really have diverse information?

I think that technology actually can bring various of information to people. For instance, the internet system can provide us unlimited resources to identify the information whether it is correct or not if compared to newspaper, radio station, and television. The obvious comparison is that all of the traditional media always choose the information for us to read and to know it.

On the other way round, actually we can choose what kind of information we want to obtain through internet or the new media. This kind of technology has different structure of operation which can let us freely to select the information. For example, we can get the latest information through internet immediately so that we do not need to wait until the next day to buy the newspaper. The current hot issue in our society is about Internal Security Act (ISA) which known as a bad act to cope with people who are against BN government without fairly interrogation in court because of the reason of internal security in Malaysia. Now, I just want to ask you what is the definition and the interpretation of Internal Security in Malaysia? There are different definitions of Internal Security if we compare between the newspaper which mostly controlled by our government and the bloggers in internet. As we can see, there are two kinds of paradigm and ideology.

For new information, our government used the ISA to arrest Raja Petra (known as most popular holder of an objection website-MALAYSIA TODAY), Tan Hoon Cheng (a senior reporter of Sin Chew Chinese Daily) and an opposition leader of DAP. I am very not satisfied with the current government using ISA to arrest people who are telling the truths, I think everyone has the right to get these information because the newspapers had lost their reliability and people need to gain different information from other ways. I want to voice out that we are not afraid of the ISA and people should not afraid also in order to protect our democracy system in future. If you are conscious of this issue, ISA is one of the tools that government always uses for cracking down on people who threaten their regime. Is this ISA really useful for the security of our country or protecting the hegemony of politicians?

Let me take another example from foreign country. Community radio is a media which is used widely in many countries like Vietnam, Japan, Australia, Philippines, Thailand and so on. Here, I am going to focus on community radio in Thailand. This media is a very important channel which disseminates a variety of information to the public like farmers. However, since the changes of politic, there is an act which might restrict the community radio from disseminating the information. From here, we bave to think, is the information in Thailand still diverse?

We really need diversity of information to solve a lot of social problems and this can be done by the internet platform. A society which is considered to have a healthier development is which has freedom to speak up and free diversity of information so that people can be mature to think and discuss national problems.

BY : ER SIANG (ryan) & YING SHIN

An Apology

We, at the team, one2voice, would like to apologize, because we have made a mistake regarding our previous post. The mistake is highly regretted. Thank you

Team,
One2voice

‘Technology bring to democracy’, is it true?? (PART 2)

Continuing from Part 1, we shall look at the universities in Malaysia. Our university does not provide or allow us full internet access for the students to get more information. Sometimes we cannot access a website which is marked as violent by our university. By the way, university students should have their own right, wisdom and knowledge to identify whether certain information is true or not. Filtering websites is not the right and appropriate way to control or teach these students.
So, is it true if we have technologies (internet access), it can truly enable us to gain more information? Are we more able to express our different points of view openly through web publishing and speech? Is this bringing our society to be more democratic?
If we look at the other countries which have already implemented high technologies like Singapore (a technologically advanced country in Southeast Asia), China (known as a big country in Asia), Japan (a high-tech country in the world), United States (as the most democratic country in the world) and so on, are they more democratic today?
Please do take some time to think on this issue and give us comments.
I have just shared regarding Accessibility; I will touch on Diversity and Accountability the next time.


BY ER SIANG(ryan) & YING SHIN

something for everyone, no matter who you are! (Yeah, even you over there! ^.^v

this is a video made by fellow malaysian artistes for unity. It is a great music video to share with everyone. It is considered one way, how communication technology can be used to voice out and promote democracy!!



Click here for more!!

‘Technology bring to democracy’, is it true?? (PART 1)

As we know, a lot of people think that if we have advanced technology, which can bring us forward, then we will be able to develop into a more democratic country like the United States. But, I just want to bring out some questions to discuss with you all…Is this really true? If our society possesses advanced technology, our nation will become more democratic in the aspects or human rights, attitudes, thinking or opinions, truths and so on and so forth? Just take a few minutes to think about it!
What is the definition of democracy? I think everybody have a basic understanding about it. Here, I am not going to talk about what is democracy, instead, I want to share something on what do we need in order to be democratic and what is the reality we have when we have various technologies like the mobile phone, computer, PDA, Internet system, satellite, television, radio, newspaper and many more which enable us to gain the important information from all over the world.
When we talk about democracy…Accessibility, Diversity, and Accountability are the three aspects which we can use to see whether a country is democratic. I use the first alphabet from the three words to create a new word called “ADA” (Malay word), which means “HAVE” in English. Now, I want to ask do we have “ADA” in Malaysia where we always say it is more democratic than other countries? Let us do a little observation on our society. First, I want to talk about the accessibility in our democracy system in Malaysia. Long ago, newspapers were one of the main sources to get true and free information. Now news agencies are controlled by our government indirectly, and this control is due to power crisis. But nowadays, we have advanced technology like SMS and Internet to gain the true, free and various information to replace the newspapers. Obviously, the new technology actually lets us express our different opinions easier, discuss about our routine matters and making it more complete.
However, if we look into the issues in our country seriously, that we can know that it is not true actually. Let us use the current issue to talk further about it. MALAYSIA TODAY has been blocked by order of the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC). It is because it posted many comments which are able to incite the country’s multi-racial society to hate each other. Accessibility is basically about the equal chance that is given to everybody to gain any information and use the communication technology freely. In the case of MALAYSIA TODAY, the government blocked it for the sake of our society, do you agree with it?? Or you might think the government is trying to protect itself? If the decision to block MALAYSIA TODAY is to limit our accessibility to it, so now do you think Malaysia is still democratic???


BY ER SIANG(ryan) & YING SHIN

to ACT, or NOT to act.... that's the question....

As university students, we rely on public transportation to get back to our hometown, to see and embrace our love ones. The question is: Is public transportation ALWAYS safe? Well, to me, I certainly DISAGREE but I'll leave that question for you to thinker for a moment. Everytime when I board on a bus to travel somewhere, I would always think, “Is this bus going to overturn now? Will I be able to reach my destination safely?”

What happened was a life of my dear friend was taken away while she was on the way to Kuala Lumpur by an express bus. Her name is Lee Nian Ning. She is a beautiful 21 year old medicine student, pure at heart and has the whole world in her hands. She had her life all planned out. But her future crashed right before her eyes: It happened all because of the reckless bus driver.

Losing a friend is indeed a weird feeling. No words could express how we felt. I thought that nothing could be done due to this incident. However, democracy somehow proves me wrong. My friends had set up a blog (http://buscrashnomore.blogspot.com- if you guys haven’t heard of this blog, do check it out) regarding to her incident hoping to reach out to the people out there which receive many response in return. The purpose of the blog is to voice out on safer long distance bus rides for Malaysians. The best part was that petition about road safety was set up by them and many people actually signed up for it! Then, the petition was sent to the government.

You guys can go and have a look at the petition: http://www.petitiononline.com/buscrash/petition.html

After all the work, finally there has been progress. This is what my friend has forwarded to my mail:

From: Raymond <raymondtjh@yahoo.com>
To: teoleeken@yahoo.com
Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 19:35:24 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Dialogue Session

Dear Lee Ken,

Good morning. My name is Raymond Teoh and I am attached with the Road Safety Department as an Assistant Director. Firstly, let me extend my deepest condolence for the loss of your friend.

Everyday we hear about accidents occurring but it only really effects us when the victim is someone close to us. We, at the Road Safety Department are working tirelessly to reduce the number of fatalities and injuries due to road accidents.

As such, we welcome a dialogue session with your association on how we can work together to improve road safety in Malaysia. I have scheduled for the dialogue session to take place on the 16th May 2008 at 9.30 a.m. in the office of the Road Safety Department (Level 2, Block D5, Complex D, Putrajaya).

Please confirm your attendance and inform me of the number of your associates that would be attending this dialogue session. Hope to hear from you soon. Thanks.

Regards,

Raymond Teoh

Road Safety Department

Though there has been progress, it wasn’t easy at the first place. Before that, they have tried many times to get in touch with people from the Transport Ministry but so far they have received no reply. They do face a lot of rejections before they manage to talk to the people from the Road Safety Department, even I myself. I teamed up with a group of friends and talk to the people about our petition and hoping that it will change the current road safety. A lot of them gave us their full support, while there are others; who told us to just leave it to the government. I do not disagree with them, but if we do not take the effort to voice out or do something... who can hear us? If this could happen to my friend, it can happen to you too.

There might be changes if the society work together and voice out their opinions. Though there might be or might not be any changes, at least we do give it a shot, and see how it goes right? We must always bear in mind that this is a democratic country, which means the people has the rights and freedom to speak up and voice out their opinions. I must clarify here first that I do not mean to insult or support any other parties but rather more on my frustrations and disappointment to what has happened on my friend. I hope this matter will raise a more pivotal issue and question the importance of democracy.

By: Neoh Shin Yen and Tan Wei Fu

Malaysia Today BANNED!!!

Popular Malaysian news blog ‘Malaysia Today’ has been blocked by the order of MCMC. Malaysia's telecoms watchdog ordered internet providers to block access to Malaysia Today website because it posted comments that could incite the country's multi-racial society. The MCMC action was then said to be contradicts the MSC Bill of Guarantees 'zero censorship on MSC'.

Democracy or Totalitarian
Democracy = freedom of speech + freedom of information
Malaysia Today = space for public speech + source of information
Ban Malaysia Today = Ban freedom of speech + Ban to freedom of information
= BAN DEMOCRACY!!
Through the action towards Malaysia Today, the government was trying to proof to us that ‘NO MORE DEMOCRACY IN MALAYSIA’. Beside, the action showed the degree of totalitarian from the authority.

Dont Feed Us Like a Baby
The claims from the government towards the action taken were, the information posted could incite the country's multi-racial society. Thus, it was not suitable for the citizens. However, are we as stupid as a baby who needs someone to decide what food is good for us? We are actually able to know if the information is really bad to us or untruth but not the government to decide it for us.

Walking Backwards from 51st Merdeka
This year, Malaysia is celebrating its 51st independent day. Malaysia has been pronouncing itself as a democracy nation over 51 years. However, for my words, the action taken recently was just a shame of the 51st independent day of being democracy.

Prepared by: Lim Chin Aun, Lim Fei Fun