I've been in Malaysia for 3 days now, and have finally acclimated to the time change. We are exactly 12 hours different from the US, so it takes a few days to get yourself oriented, and then I'll fly right back to the US on Thursday, and have the same thing happen all over again.

I've been thinking a lot about three different things while over here, and can group them together with three different meetings that I've had while here.  The first was with the Prime Minister at his residence, the second with with the Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, and the third John Burton, whom is a journalist with the Financial Times, on three different topics: the state of politics in Malaysia today; the conference I'm observing on 'bridging the gap' between the Muslim world and the West; and the role that the internet is playing in creating political change in the region.

The political situation here is unstable, but not threatening. A political turbulence is happening through the targeting of MP's within the ruling party being encouraged to defect by September, to the opposition. The coalition in power for 50 years, headed by the PM,  Abdullah Badawi, and his United Malays National Organisation party, suffered large losses in March, and aside from the potential of MP defections, Badawi is also having to deal with turmoil within his own party, with UMNO party leadership elections in December. But in the face of it all, meeting with Badawi for a 10 minute interview, and then over breakfast with a half dozen other journalists and bloggers, you didn't get the sense that the situation was rattling to him.

In the interview, I focused mostly on getting his understanding of what role the internet was playing in regards to political change in Malaysia, and blogged a bit about the conversation on Malaysia Matters. There is a bit of an irony in one of the key reform measures that he's put forward, the 'freedom of the press' initiative, in that the cat is already out of the bag via the profuse blogging that's going on here already. However, as he pointed out, the reach of the internet in Malaysia (about 60% penetration) is still lacking in parts of society, and of course, not everyone is reading the political blogs-- but even he reads them and they are having an impact.

One other topic that is of big interest here, and which Badawi talked about briefly, is the turncoat scenario mentioned above. The reform measures that Badawi embarked on after the electoral defeats have probably increased his political enemies power, and he was openly talking about how the opposition party was holding out large sums of money for MP's to turncoat away. I'm sure he fully understands that the more he goes along the path of 'reform' that the more his opposition will grow, even within his own party. It's not that different here in the US. I imagine that a President Obama is going to meet some pretty entrenched interests within the Democratic Congress, to avoid more transparency and accountability in the governmental process. In fact, the "Reform Republican" role is probably the one issue that allows the Republicans to get up off the floor in Congress, after this election.... back to Malaysia.

Before meeting with Feisal Abdul Raul, I read a few of his recent writings, and in particular, one that he wrote in the WaPost/Newsweek section, "On Faith" that dealt with the mindset in American politics regarding anti-Muslim language.  The interview is on podcast, if you'd like to listen, as Josh comes at him from the right, and myself from the left, presenting different perspectives. My initial questions dealt with what he felt the recent "spiritual advisor" gaffes meant in a wider sense of the religion & state balance. I was a bit surprised to hear him say that he felt religious participation was on the rise in the US, and going to pervade politics even more in the future. So after Josh took a turn, I came back to it asking again if he really believed that it was more than pandering, pointing out the trends we have, especially in the Democratic Party, of less religious participation and a growing group of non-religious voters. I don't think that Americans identifying with some sort of spiritual belief in "God" is on the decline much, but participatory religion is on the wane. If anything, the recent political exercises regarding the courting of the religious votes, mostly on the right but also emerging on the left, is a signal that religion has become less a pervasive worldview in America, and more of a typical identity group exercise, complete with the political pandering that goes on here. This, as you can imagine, sorta conflicted with the worldview of Feisal, but I found his advocation for a pluralistic political language regarding the Muslim religion, in the face of the typical dichotomy of expression, much needed -- less 'with us or against us' and more of a 'line of nuance'.

This afternoon, I'll be attending the summaries of the conference findings, and will try and follow-up on the topic.

Lastly, I'm coming back to the immense political change that is occurring here in Malaysia. There are over 300,000 blogs in Malaysia, and because most of them are in English, it's relatively easy to find yourself jumping into its blogosphere and learning about the political issues. A few, Jeff Ooi, whose now running for Parliament [edit: he's now a PM], Sagaladoola, and Amir Muhammad, and Azly Rahman will give you a glimpse of what's happening through blogging in Malaysia, I get the sense its where the real political revolution in Malaysia is happening.

Here's an overview of the typical Malaysian online behavior of internet users. I talked with Burton about the contrast between Singapore and Malaysia, regarding the issue of censorship. This brings up a wider point, about what sort of cultural and technological environments are needed for the internet to spur on political change. In 'Crashing the Gate' we talk about such a convergence that allowed the netroots to flourish in the US this decade, and though the necessary components differ in other countries, each has its own, typically involving both a technological and a societal factor, for the internet to exert itself as a medium of expression and for the political power to manifest itself.  

I recently went to a conference in London, and presented what was happening in regards to social media in the US, to a group of political operatives from Africa and Eastern Europe, and found a similar trend. Each country has its own set of political situations, and likewise, each has its own technological settings for people to use to participate in social media. And the extent to which the latter is open and accessible, plays a part in determining how free the citizens can be with political expression.  But then likewise, there is the political setting. For example, in Malaysia and Singapore, they have both been traditionally authoritative governments, in regards to issues like a 'free press', but have gone in different directions to date regarding the internet. Singapore going down the lane of censorship and Malaysia down the lane of tolerance.

It's a good thing that Badawi has embraced the 'free speech' worldview in Malaysia, as the country still has a ways to go in becoming societally tolerant (don't we all). Who knows what sort of political turbulence is coming up in this country in the near future, but the stronger the people's voices are, like over the internet, the more likely that Malaysia continues on a trajectory toward away from authoritarianism and toward societal democracy.