In the aftermath of the Bersih rally Health Minister Liow Tiong Lai tried to bulldoze away reports that the police had fired tear gas and water cannons into the Tung Shin hospital by bare faced denials backed up by a cowed hospital board member despite the wealth of video, photos and eyewitness accounts. He soon suffered intense public and political attacks until he was forced to recant his earlier statements and ordered an enquiry. He even had to beg the public for sympathy with his piteous claim that some quarters were trying to pull him down.
Liow Tiong Lai’s brazen attempt to bulldoze away the inconvenient truth may have worked in the 1970s when the mainstream media monopolized the flow of information but it does not work now. Back then the mainstream media could make or break any issue but technology and the internet have overtaken their dominance. The public have alternative sources of information now and anybody with a mobile phone and a PC can be a photographer, videographer, reporter or commentator.
Why then did the unfortunate Liow attempted something so foolhardy? He was neither a maverick nor a fool but a living symptom of BN’s inability to deal with the public at large. Instead of moving with the times to deal with a matured and well informed public BN’s thinking seems fossilized in the past, stuck in the time warp of the 1970s while technology and socio-economic conditions have evolved far ahead.
Malaysian Spring inevitable if BN refuses to come out of time warp
