In a news reported by The Hindu, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has said that it was a mistake to ignore the Internet. The Prime Minister said,

In the last election, we certainly lost the Internet war, the cyber war. It was a very, very serious mistake on our part. It was painful … but it came at the right time, not too late.

The party, which experienced the biggest setback in the 51 years rule, lost its traditional majority though it was able to retain the power. The party spent heavily on government controlled media like newspaper and television during the election campaign but failed to woo the younger crowd. On the other hand, the opposition, which was denied fair access to the government controlled traditional media, used Internet to spread its messages on the subjects like corruption, inflation etc.

Now, the ruling party is reaching out to bloggers and have pledged not to curb bloggers from writing about government related issues. The new Information Minister Ahmad Shabery said,

If there is something newsworthy, I don’t see anything wrong in them posting it. Everyone has the freedom to use the blogs as an information distribution center.

It’s surely a great sign for Internet and high time that the government agencies across the world understand the power of blogging Internet. Instead of restricting bloggers from writing about issues, the governments should try to take constructive feedback coming from these blogs and try to improve the system. The bloggers also need to understand the democratic and viral power of blogging and thus act responsibly while posting anything on the Internet.

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