Did the Web Bring Down Barisan Nasional?

Is the internet a significant factor of Barisan Nasional's dramatic lost of 4 more states in the recent Malaysian general elections? After the wild fires of oohs and aahs died down, many have put forth grand theories as to the true and wholesale reasons of how the mighty Barisan Nasional could have fallen. Some have argued en vogue ideas such as the presence and role of bloggers from ‘alternative media’ comprising also of mobile phone smses, emails and youtube movies as a force to be reckoned with. Such theories seems plausible as it is the internet age after all, and it ‘changes everything’ as one branded vendor used to say. But is that true? Can a government be brought down in 4 states unexpectedly through the web? What else can be the reason? Is it high fuel prices? The price of chicken meat coupled with sugar and flour? Arrogance of present representatives of the people? Backlash from over-exposure in mass media of one-sided content? Barrack Obama’s ‘Yes We Can’ slogan ringing in our ears? How about ‘all of the above’?
Instantly messaged theories such as those above reminded the author of how pundits explained away the stock market crashes. It is often after-the-fact and never before-the-fact. No one could predict the future, but they are often perfect journalists who can tell you yesterday’s events and hoping them to be historical truths. But still those journalistic narratives aren’t quite historically balanced. If we study the history of web usage among political trends, we can see that it was used extensively and even popularly during the 1999 general elections where the sentiment against the ruling BN was even stronger. Welcome to the birth of MalaysiaKini.com. But when they didn’t make much impact on the majority of the ruling Barisan, that doomsday theory didnt gain favour among the more traditional news reporting.
At the same time all the way to the other side of the globe, where internet usage is at its highest among its populace, we see how the hot blazing American presidential elections is greatly fought not entirely in the web, blogs or mailling lists, but still highly on billboards, prime-time TV debates, advertisings and well hand-shoke endorsements. It is still business as usual in the land of the brave and free and the web is not having centre stage at all. And the author doesn’t think so even if all 6.5 billion people on the planet has internet access and an IPhone each. Battles of the hearts and minds are still affected by sometimes unsensational factors.
Take for instance an unremarkable reason here: UMNO, the main coalition partner’s infamous and now quite boring infighting. It is historically shown that a weakened or decamped ruling UMNO creates a bigger mess at the ballot box. During the previous crises such as where UMNO split into two teams A and B, with the later forming Semangat 46 we see BN losing Kelantan entirely in 1990’s general elections. Then in 1999, the Anwar Ibrahim’s factor resulted in Terengganu been swept off in similar fashion. However with the return to stability and sanity of the party machinery within UMNO it can withstand the wildest of storms and still maintain its two-thirds majority. It also won back Terengganu and almost did so for Kelantan the previous time. This time around the infighting is deeper than admitted. The telling clue is seen when Perlis’ Menteri Besar, Shahidan Kassim reverted of what could have been a clean sweep of the northern corridor when he insist on having his way of his incumbent camp for the candidates’ list. Thus we see the tsunami of change stopping magically right at Perlis’ doorsteps. So is it quite the case with the southern part of the peninsular. Or in East Malaysia where people doesnt seem to drive cars or eat chicken or surf the internet. What else can we use to explain the unevenness of the outcome? Broadband facility is so cheap and widespread in whole of Malaysia but the returning ballots are coloured clearly along where the internal machinery is stronger or not. Therefore we see that the use of the internet as an alternative media is not entirely effective. So before people start creating more dotcoms in MalaysiaBoleh land and our gullible PC salespeople started pushing more wares into undigitisable areas en route to another silly bubble, the ruling classes better stand on hard ground and take a good second look at its own human ‘infrastructure’ of rank, file and all. And that goes for the new winners too. For an all out replay in about 4 years time.