The the company he has bought shares into – ECM Libra – has sent letters to Harakah daily, and the PAS MP, Mr Husam Musa, for printing and asking trenchant questions respectively, which neither ECM Liba nor Mr Khairy would like to answer, asking for an apology instead. But sending a legal letter is a two-edged sword. Both Harakah daily, a web based daily and read widely, and Mr Husam has said they would defend the suit. But ECM Libra does not have local standing (to use the legal term, locus standi), and if it goes to court, Malaysians will know how a young man with no family wealth became rich beyond Croessus, having no job but having married Pak Lah's daughter. ECM Libra is nervous at this being revealed. But being nervous is not a reason for a defamation suit. If Harakah daily and Mr Husam take competent counsel, as they would, this action will sort out the law on suing internet publications, which under the Multimedia Super Corridor it has immunity. If this action is continued, the courts should first hear arguments whether it does, and then proceed with the ECM claims. But an old lawyer said unless ECM Libra has stated it has lost money, which can be quantified, the action will fail.

This is why the alternative media is so attractive to the Malaysian. There are 20 political weeklies in Malay alone. They run on shoe-string budgets, often cannot turn in a profit, some have UMNO backers who meet the losses from their pockets. Their most important asset is that they provide the communitarian views absent in the mainstream press. The best run and successful is the opposition PAS organ, Harakah, which presents an alternative political view, but this success has caused its own problems: it leaders cannot see why its coverage does not reflect their views, not realising that if they did, it would not be the political voice it is today. It is a financial success, has a clear political voice, yet it attracts a multiracial readership. Its news coverage is understandably of party and, on occasion, of opposition news and events. If the NST and the Star want to be political voices of their political masters, they should emulate the Harakah strategy, which cuts across party, racial and religious lines.

There is a fascination with polls in Malaysia. Partly it comes from the belief that we are now headed for the first world, the first world has regular opinion polls, and so we should have them too. When the PAS newspaper, Harakah, had its internet poll, not with any scientific basis but more to needle the UMNO leaders, the reaction in UMNO is one of shell shock. The questions are explosive, for instance, if Pak Lah is more popular than Tun Mahathir Mohamed before he stepped down as prime minister. But there is no basis to have one that is scientifically acceptable. Choosing a sample is difficult. People do not like to talk of their likes and dislikes to strangers, for fear they come from the government to find out if they are hiding something.

Since his reputation, he insists, like Caesar's wife, beyond reproach, he should demand a similar grovelling from the PAS organ, Harakah. If it does not, defamation suits are in order. It would at least get the issue argued out in the courts. That newspaper has targetted him for turning Pahang into a casino state, and his resorts in the state at Bukit Tinggi and at Pulau Tioman into virtual gambling casinos. Often forgotten he also got 38,000 acres of prime land from the BN government in Pahang on which his Bukit Tinggi resort and casino are sited. He got them by subborning two Malay cronies, both now ministers in the Mahathir government, to alter the official licence as he desired. And yet a Malay in Pahang cannot get a ten-acre plot he is entitled to without money changing hands.

THE PARTI ISLAM MALAYSIA (PAS) is worried its party organ, Harakah, would have its publishing licence revoked for a Zunar cartoon that depicted, rightly I thought, the contradictions on the origins of the SARS virus and the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed's mishandling of the SAR, the People's religious schools. So, the PAS president, Ustaz Hadi Awang, and the Harakah editor, Mr Zulkifli Sulong, apologised. They did not want the publishing licence revoked. But more than PAS, UMNO leaders are more worried of that, and worked feverishly behind the scenes to ensure it was not. Banning Harakah, they thought, is not how to address the Zunar cartoon, which in any case was deliberately highlighted for no reason than one faction lobbing missiles at the other.

IT IS AN OPEN SECRET THAT no National Front (BN) members with any interest in their political future would be without their fortnightly fix, the PAS organ, Harakah. They want to know what happens in their country, which the mainstream media and government propaganda outlets, Radio Talivisyen Malaysia, and the ministry of information, ignores. It was Harakah which put fear into their re-election hopes when it wrote of the BN's commitment to gambling institutions in defiance of its insistence Malaysia is an Islamic state. The government is struck dumb, and mute. So, BN, especially UMNO, MPs would grab at any straw to turn the tables. So far not yet. In the current session of Parliament, which began this week, it thought it struck gold.

[I wrote this for my column in Harakah in the latest issue of Harakah, out on the streets today, 10 June 2003]

THE MENTRI BESAR OF PAHANG, DATO' Seri Adnan Yaakob, was so hurt by the grant of a second casino licence in his state that he complained about it to the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed. It would redound on Pahang UMNO, he warned, to ward off a determined challenge from PAS. I had, in my last column in the PAS newspaper, Harakah, written of it under the heading: Pahang Darul Kasino. The licence was issued to that super-crony, Tan Sri Vincent Tan, last seen riding a horse with one Dr Mahathir Mohamed. It caused a furore in UMNO as its leaders rushed for cover. Dr Mahathir, on his return from two months' leave, summoned the second finance minister, Dato' Seri Jamaluddin Jarjis, who brought along the cabinet minister who orchestrated it, Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor. Tan Sri Vincent's pseudo-French establishment was only allowed slot machines, but the licence issued provides for a virtual casino, with computerised baccarat and roulette and other games of chance. The Prime Minister was not amused.

This is my column in the latest issue of Harakah.

I wrote this for my column in Harakah, out today.

I wrote this for my column in the latest issue of Harakah, out today.

I wrote this for my column in Harakah, out today, 29 August 2002.

I wrote this for my column in the latest issue of Harakah, out today.

I wrote this for my column in Harakah (www.Harakah.com). It is in the latest issue, out today, 24 July 2002.

I wrote this for my column in Harakah, which goes on sale today.

I contributed this for the latest issue of Harakah, out today

I wrote this for my column in the latest issue of Harakah, out today, 26 June 2002

I wrote this for my column in the latest issue of Harakah, published last week.

I contributed this for the special Harakah edition on the public forum, organised by Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka and ABIM at the DBP hall on 08 May 2002. The special edition would be out on 10 May 2002.

I wrote this for my column in Harakah (issue 15-31 May 2002), out today.

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