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papers: Sin Chew Daily, Guang Ming Daily, China Press and Nanyang Siang Pau. Astro All Asia Networks monopolises the pay TV market and its subsidiary, Satellite TV Astro, and owns ten subscriber and eight free-to-air radio stations. Astro is reportedly owned by the apolitical billionaire, Ananda Krishnan. NexNews, under the Berjaya Group of Companies, publishes The Edge weekly and The Sun daily. It also holds shares in MiTV. Berjaya Group’s chairman is Vincent Tan, who also holds shares in Media Prima. Lau Swee Nguong, chairman of the KTS Group of Companies, has stakes in Oriental Daily News, Borneo Post (Sabah), Borneo Post (Sarawak), See Hua Daily News (Sabah), See Hua Daily News (Sarawak) and Utusan Borneo. The primary concern in Malaysia is that the concentration of media control in the hands of a small group of companies with close links to the ruling political elites will make it difficult for the press to play its role as a key platform for exposing corruption in the system. Alternative views are discouraged and the government issues gag orders on certain sensitive topics from time to time to prevent open and civilised discussion by civil society. Corruption easily creeps into closed systems and the general public is deprived of its democratic rights when permits to publish favour companies that toe the dominant political line.
Democracy takes a back seat to political drivers The by-election in Ijok, Selangor, triggered by the death of Datuk Sivalingam, was held on 28 April 2007 and won by the Barisan Nasional can-
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didate, K. R. Parthiban, with a narrow 1,850 majority on an 81.9 per cent turnout. The constituency was clearly significant to the BN’s selfesteem because it marked the return to electoral politics of Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia’s former deputy leader, who was released from jail in September 2004 after being imprisoned for what were commonly considered trumped-up charges of corruption and sodomy.9 A government fund of RM36 million (US$10.3 million) was created to pave and widen roads, install street lights, construct drains and lay water pipes for a community of just 12,000 during the week set aside for campaigning. Election law limits the maximum expenditure per candidate in a state assembly election to RM100,000.10 There were widespread allegations of land-for-votes and low-cost housing offers to influence voters, in addition to reports of intimidation of opposition leaders and their supporters, abuse of government machinery, phantom voting and bribery.11 The Election Commission chairman, Rashid Rahman, dismissed these abuses in procedure by declaring the allocation of development funds to a voting district as acceptable electoral practice, rather than the ‘tsunami of money politics to buy votes’ that it appeared to be to one blogger.12 Other alleged irregularities included the following. ● Many Malay addresses had apparently been occupied by people with Chinese names who had lived there for decades, and vice versa. In one village, thirty-five such cases were identified. ● Voters could not be found at the listed addresses, and occupants had no knowledge of the persons who had been registered at those addresses.
BBC (UK), 2 September 2004. Bernama (Malaysia), 18 April 2007. See politics101malaysia.blogsome.com/2007/04/30/ijok-by-election-real-losers-and-winners. See bersih.org/?p=96.