SMLee and his thoughts

Thanks to Wisan who highlighted the interview that SM Lee (if you do not know who he is, look south!) gave to Tom Plate of the UCLA Media Centre and Jeffrey Cole of the USC Annenberg School of New Media, we can tell that SM Lee is still very much in touch with Malaysia's day to day issues. Even Singapore has the time for New Media. Global Voices Online had a forum here in Malaysia recently which the Minister of Information of Malaysia declined invitation.
Need I say more about our Government and their take on New Media?

Here are transcripts of the interview (I chose to highlight his comments where Malaysia was concerned. For full text, read here.)

ON MALAYSIA

Lee: I don't know if you've caught up with this story. It's a bit of scandal going on. [Former Deputy Prime Minister] Anwar Ibrahim leaked a video, an old video, way back in 1980, of an Indian lawyer talking to a top judge about how he can arrange to get him promoted to be the "Number One" or whatever. I think it was an eight-minute video and Anwar has now put it on the Internet and it's on YouTube! So the Malaysian bar -- which have already been dismayed at the degradation of their judiciary and the corruption and judge-buying and case-buying -- they have demanded a royal commission to inquire into the facts.

So, the government, under pressure now, has appointed a committee of judges and one eminent person, to check on the authenticity of this tape. So that's bought them some time, but in the meantime, 2,000 lawyers, following what the Pakistani lawyers did, have marched on to the prime minister's office to deliver a petition to investigate this matter. Now, this would not have happened without the Internet and without YouTube. I mean it is so simple, you see.

Q: That's a changing world.

Lee: But at the same time, there is the problem of credibility. So, you have a website called Malaysiakini. That means "Malaysia Now" and it's got some very good articles in it and some of them are signed regularly by the same person. So when we get that, we read it and then we say, okay, circulate it. But you get a lot of rubbish, too, and you have got to filter it. It's a waste of time.

Lee: When [Malaysia] kicked us out [in 1965], the expectation was that we would fail and we will go back on their terms, not on the terms we agreed with them under the British. Our problems are not just between states, this is a problem between races and religions and civilizations. We are a standing indictment of all the things that they can be doing differently. They have got all the resources. If they would just educate the Chinese and Indians, use them and treat them as their citizens, they can equal us and even do better than us and we would be happy to rejoin them.

Lee: It will stay like that for as long as you keep on getting talented people into your country and staying on, but will you do that? I think yes for 10, 20 years, but 30, 40, 50 years, I'm not sure because other countries will become more attractive or as attractive. It is the extra inputs you get.

Let me explain how I see it. If Singapore depended on its own domestic talent, we wouldn't have made it, but we were the center for education in this region from British days and many came to be educated and many stayed behind. Our top layer was drawn from a larger base and in my first Cabinet of 10, there were only two of us who were born and bred in Singapore. The others came from Malaysia, China, Ceylon, from India and elsewhere. It's a talent pool that was drawn from a bigger region, and that's the secret of your success. You drew in first your talent from Europe because you offered them opportunities. In the last few decades, you've been drawing your talent from all over the world, including Asia. If you can continue to do that, you will continue to succeed.

Not only must you attract them, you must get them to stay.

Meanwhile, here is Maliks response to DMFAK and his praise of a 'Truely Independent Judiciary'.