China Press incident politicizes M'sian youths

Although the Internal Security Ministry obviously intended to show power, the net result of its action against the China Press is, in my assessment, negative. First, the two editors who were sacrificed by MCA have probably found better jobs now for themselves but the collective images of MCA and Abdullah's government has been greatly tarnished by its own self-deluding arrogance and counterproductive folly.

Second, the incident has also politicised another generation of Malaysian youths in their 20s with a classic, concrete, specific and easy-to-understand real-life example of how, in the words of British historian Lord Acton, "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely". It is what Brazilian theorist of social education Paulo Freire calls " pedagogy of the oppressed".

The Road Not Taken
http://lihkang.blogspot.com/

Robert Lua Khang Wei
http://robertlkw.blogspot.com/