COMMENT | The day when the little people speak up

[superadmin]

COMMENT | Oh boy! What a day yesterday was.

I don’t know about you, but it was one heck of an emotional rollercoaster for us at Malaysiakini.

The day began with the possibility that our editor-in-chief, Steven Gan, could be put behind bars on a contempt charge stemming from some readers’ comments on a relatively innocuous story about the resumption of court operations last July.


But that fear soon dissipated when the Federal Court, while finding the first respondent - Malaysiakini - culpable of contempt, determined that Gan was not guilty.

Okay, I thought to myself, we’ve passed the point of greatest danger.

We braced ourselves for a sizable penalty - while our lawyers were asking for it to be not more than RM30,000, the prosecutors were demanding a RM200,000 fine.

Then came the moment the court announced the fine - RM500,000! We aren’t a media conglomerate where the big bosses earn millions. Having to fork out this kind of money is a debilitating hit - and what’s more, we were given a few days to pull together this huge sum.

What followed was an indelible reminder of the real Malaysian spirit - something that gave me my proudest moment as a Malaysian in a long while.

It’s been a year with little to cheer after the horrible Sheraton Move (that unfolded this time last year) in which an old man’s greed for power resulted in the collapse of the elected government and the simultaneous hopes of millions for a better, more progressive, and forward-thinking Malaysia.

It’s been a year spent in the grip of a lockdown that seems endless and meandering as our leaders interspersed shifting goalposts with outright blunders.

And now, here was another bitter blow - in fact, our case prompted international attention with the likes of The New York Times, The Guardian and the BBC carrying articles on it yesterday.


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