Cyber promise or teaser?

Many a time, many a young man would come up to me to talk about girls. Rather complain about girls. The young lad would pour their hearts out, so to speak. Being an old man I would listened, “advising” here and there whenever I can.

Example. A young man would talk about this particular girl who he had befriended. Needless to say the girl is beautiful. Young of course. Witty, sharp, good sense of humour. Everything nice and pleasant. And sexy. Our guy would go on to say he feels the girl like him a lot. Love him even. Why? Did she say so? No but the way she behaves gives him that impression. Meaning the girl is sending all the right signals. At least that’s how he sees it. And he says the girl “lead him on.” So the young man fall for her, head over heels. He would do everything for her. He dreams of the day he would take her as his wife.

Then it happens. Suddenly. The girl just leaves him cold. In short, the girl brings our man to a high and drop him like a ton of bricks. He comes crashing down. Reality is the girl was not in love with our guy. Never did loved him. She was just leading him on. Teasing. Many would call the girl a teaser. Yes she teases. And our man is left devastated.

Early this month, I read a report in one of our newspapers on the proceedings of the Dewan Negara. Or was it Dewan Rakyat? Please excuse this old mind of mine. Datuk Rais Yatim, Minister of Information, Communications and Culture was responding to queries on the government’s stand on the new media, said the report. This I am sure of. Old I may be I know what I was reading about.

The report quoted Rais as saying the government would adopt an “open approach” towards the new media. That got me going. Good I told myself. Rais went on to say the government want to encourage people to use the internet to search for information and knowledge .

Yes, I yelled. This is great. After all when former PM Dr Mahathir Mohamad embarked on his MSC project he had promised no internet censorship.

So when Rais said what he said, I was on a high. Having said that he said this. The Malaysian Communications Multimedia Commission which comes under the purview of his ministry, is organising programmes to promote “awareness” on the “proper usage” of the internet. Such as cyber space security, publication of articles, interviews in the electronic media and advertisement.

The minister did not elaborate or say what he meant by “proper usage” of the internet. Perhaps nobody asked him. In the Dewan or outside the Dewan. No members of the Dewan, no the reporters covering the Dewan asked him.

Anyway, the report went on to quote Rais as saying his ministry in collaboration with the Home Ministry ( yes the one in charge of police, immigration and other law enforcement agencies) will monitor blogs to ensure that their content “adhere to local laws”.

And the monitoring will be “empowered” by the Communications and Multimedia Act.

I felt young after reading that report. Like the young man who got ditched by the young girl who had led him on earlier. But I wouldn’t want to call Datuk Rais a teaser. (By MOHSIN ABDULLAH/MySinchew)