I remember the old grandmother story. In 1987 the then Mahathir’s government banned two popular daily papers, the Chinese language paper Sin Chew Jit Poh and the English language MCA owned paper the Star as well as the Malay language biweekly paper Watan. The reason was, the paper had provided some avenues for the expression of alternatives views.
Ironically, what Prime Minister, Abdullah said is solidly based on the fact. Prime Minister, Abdullah said there were many things that were not right in the previous Prime Minister’s reign, citing the 1987 Operasi Lalang crackdown, the erosion of confidence in the judiciary and lack of freedom in the media as examples.
He also said Umno was deregistered under Dr Mahathir’s leadership (in 1988) “but we never asked him to step down”.
“There is no stopping his slew of accusations. He claims there is no freedom of media. Does he not remember that during his time, he asked the media to ‘block out’ stories and photos of (former Prime Minister) Tun Hussein Onn and not give coverage to certain people?
“As for Operasi Lalang, don’t forget who’s responsible,” he said, in reference to the 1987 crackdown in which over 100 people were arrested under the Internal Security Act for purportedly causing racial tension and posing a threat to national security.
On the judiciary, Abdullah said the problems did not start during his era.
“Many countries do not have confidence in our judiciary. And when there are differences between our countries, they do not want to refer the matter to a Malaysian court.
“They would rather take it to a court in Singapore, Hong Kong or Australia so I thought I had to do something about it to restore confidence because the people are hoping for reforms in the judiciary,” he said, in response to people being upset over what had been disclosed about the state of the judiciary during the Royal Commission of Inquiry hearing on the Lingam videoclip.
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