Tag Archives: Malaysia

Elections in Malaysia

barisan_ad.JPG

So, it’s Election Day in Malaysia today, so I thought it would be appropriate to make a post about it. To tell the truth, I’m aged 32 this year and I’ve never registered as a voter, let alone voted in any election in Malaysia. My excuse is that I’ve never been in Malaysia whenever there’s actually been an election since I left for France immediately after finishing high school and have spent most of my time outside the country since then.

Still, as you can see from the screenshot above, even I can’t run away from it entirely. I was surprised to see a political advertisement for the Barisan Nasional while reading some oddball news about an Israeli researcher who claims that Moses was high on drugs when he saw God on Yahoo News. Since I don’t think that advertising like this is exactly cheap, I suspect that this is a sign that the pressure this year really is getting to the ruling coalition. The buzz from blogs like the one by Jed Yoong and Taiping Coffee also confirms that the people of Malaysia is highly unsatisfied with the coalition that has ruled the country since independence. When you read about stuff like the Chinese stating their willingness to vote for PAS and opposition party rallies attracting crowds of thousands of people while BN rallies have mere handfuls of them, you can’t help but feel hope for real change.

I can’t claim to know much Malaysian politics, given how out of the loop I’ve been. On the one hand, it seems clear that the BN has been busy enriching themselves at country’s expense and more disgustingly, playing up racial and religious differences in a crass attempt to keep power at all costs. On the other hand, I can perceive that Malaysia is still a highly unequal and inhomogeneous country with a wide disparity between rural and urban areas. The incessant complaints of the rising cost of living for Klang Valley residents for example feel out-of-place when you consider how undeveloped many parts of Malaysia still remain compared to the Klang Valley. I also have serious doubts about the competence of many opposition party politicians, especially on economic matters, given the populist and simplistic campaign promises some have been making.

I of course heartily agree that the BN needs to given a good drubbing to wake them up a bit, but I must confess that the idea of DAP or PKR running the country makes me nervous given how inexperienced they seem. Ironically, it’s PAS that might be best at running the country given their experience in Kelantan and previously other states. And don’t count out independent candidates like this 89-year old grandmother!

Malaysian Co-owner of YouPorn?

This interesting tidbit caught my attention in an article in this month’s issue of Condé Nast’s Portfolio magazine. The article itself concerns the severe competition that traditional producers of pornography are facing from the abundance of free and pirated pornographic content on the internet and points to YouPorn as a prime example. As its name suggests, YouPorn is a pornographic version of YouTube. According to the article, one of the co-owners of YouPorn is a Malaysian, supposedly named Zach Hong, who lives in Australia.

The article itself is actually quite interesting in of itself. As it mentions in passing, the pornographic industry has always been the first segment of entertainment to adopt new technology, beginning with content in VHS and later in DVD format. Its problems and how it deals with them could be a good predictor of how more mainstream entertainment companies deal with the breakdown of their traditional content distribution models due to the rise of the internet.

Still, if it is really true that a Malaysian is co-founder of YouPorn and it turns out to be the biggest internet business yet founded by a Malaysian, it would give an ironic twist to the tired refrain of Malaysia Boleh!

Software Boutique Victim of “Rasa Sayang” Spat

More Malaysians by now should be aware of the ridiculous spat between Indonesia and Malaysia over who owns the rights to the song Rasa Sayang, a popular folk song. It seems that its use by the Malaysian government to promote yet another tourism campaign triggered protests from Indonesians who claim that they rightfully own that song.

What most Malaysians probably don’t know that the argument has claimed an unlikely victim, the website of The Software Boutique, a Malaysia-based online games retailer. I’m in the market for some new games and have been trying to access the website for the store for the past few days without success. Curious, I dug around a bit and found this. It appears that angry Indonesian hackers hacked the website for Tourism Malaysia’s Rasa Sayang campaign. In the process, however, they seem to have also hacked every website that used the same hosting provider, and The Software Boutique was one of those. According to the same source, their store remains down until they manage to find a new hosting provider.

Considering that TSB is only one of two online games retailers that I know of in Malaysia, I’d be glad to see it up again. TSB has always had very quick customer service for me in the past. The other retailer that I know of, PC Game.com.my had much slower customer service, though they seem to have improved somewhat lately.