The fax machine defined the Tienanmen Uprising, e-mail accelerated the overthrow of Indonesia's President Suharto, mobile-phone messaging systems brought the crowds into Manila to force President Estrada out of office. In Malaysia, it is the Internet.

What helped position the Net as a political force was support from Dr.. Mahathir Mohamed's government for the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC), an Asian Silicon Valley of 650 square kilometers, an area larger than Singapore. The opposition parties, and those with a different view from the government, went into this new technology as ducks to water, adopted it and spread their messages across cyberspace.

Helping them, ironically, was the government's commitment to no censorship of cyberspace. It was about this time, in 1996, that I began a local political discussion group called Sang Kancil. I am a "banned" writer to government-controlled newspapers in Malaysia, my views heretical to those in power, and my writings appear regularly in usually Malay magazines on the fringes. There is no formal ban, of course, but it has been made clear to me my articles would not be accepted in the mainstream.

Shortly after I started Sang Kancil, a business man sued me for libel and demanded RM100 million (then $40 million, now about $25 million, sums still academic). Malaysia's Supreme Court (called here the Federal Court) hears my motion next week (April 9) to set aside its own judgment in another libel case, on the grounds of the Chief Justice's apparent bias.

Today Sang Kancil is the most popular discussion forum on Malaysian politics with 2,200 subscribers, and my articles from there appear in, at last count, 30 other Web sites on Malaysia. The articles in English are translated into Malay with the romanized Rumi and Arabic Jawi script and disseminated into the remotest corner of the country. Individuals translate and distribute them on their own volition, a communal effort.

But for its first two years, Sang Kancil drifted along with a few hundred subscribers. It was listless and dragged on, mainly with my daily political commentaries. Then in September, 1998, the whole scene changed. The Prime Minister, Dr. Mahathir Mohamed, sacked his deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, had him arrested for sodomy and corruption, and the national police chief weighed in with a few karate chops of his own. The courts sentenced Anwar to 15 years in jail in trials that many people felt were based in vendetta.

Anwar's supporters went out into the streets in a political confrontation that turned Dr. Mahathir into a lame duck. What spurred them on was the Internet. Hundreds of Web sites came out in support of the detained politician, all pointing their guns at Dr. Mahathir and his government. The government did nothing: it had promised there would be no censorship, but it fatally delayed setting up its own Web sites to counter the flood.

People, desperate for clear information on the political crisis, turned to the Web. Sang Kancil provided a semblance of balance on what was happening, but it was not until an Internet newspaper called Malaysiakini came on the scene last year that changes really began. Insufficiently funded with seed money from international press freedom groups, its Web site made the Web pages of the main English and Malay newspapers seem weak and tired. This was followed by AgendaMalaysia, another shoestring operation which quickly ran out of funds, shut down and is now restarted. There are others, like saksi.com. They provided an alternative to the news.

Steven Gan, the editor-in-chief of Malaysiakini, says of his pioneering effort: "We are still very much a cowboy outfit. We have seven or eight journalists as against hundreds in the main newspapers. But people judged us for our Web site, which provided news the main newspapers did not." Ironically, often the Malaysiakini "exclusives" were press releases the main newspapers automatically consigned to the wastepaper basket.

The launch of online independent news had one immediate effect. The circulation of the main newspapers declined. Part of this is due to an effective boycott by Anwar's supporters. But the Internet reports also gained wide readership: readers printed them and passed them along. Hundreds of thousands of copies were faxed and posted around the country, quickly countering the worldview of the mainstream press.

Gan says the Internet challenged the government's monopoly of truth so effectively that the mainstream newspapers and the government-controlled radio and television stations found their reassertion of government views were ignored.

The government, after ignoring the Net challenge for so long, reacted in haste last month: it started a campaign against Malaysiakini and Gan, accusing them of being foreign-funded by the billionaire investor, George Soros. For weeks, the public and the Web sites were subjected to such a tirade, often on facts patently wrong, that at the end of it all Malaysiakini became a household word. Its daily hits of 100,000 more than doubled in a fortnight, and now support is high enough to begin to attract advertisers.

Tan Sri Ghazali Shafie, the former foreign minister whose long and distinguished career in government included a stint to rein in the press, says the government has lost its way: "It missed out on the Internet. It waited too long. And now when it tries to catch up, it has all but lost the battle."

The Internet has become an important vehicle in this march to press freedom. The government holds a tight control on newspapers and magazines by requiring publishers to have an official license renewed annually, which it can suspend if the contents displease the authorities. It severely circumscribes how opposition political parties may spread their gospel. So, opposition parties could only sell their publications to their members. But the theocratically inclined Islamic Party of Malaysia (or PAS, to use its Arabic acronym) defied the government and broke the law by publishing its paper, Harakah, five times a week. Then this was reduced by the authorities to first twice a week and now to twice a month.

Harakah, though a political party organ, is considered a newspaper whose views are listened to with respect. Its 16-page English insert, with trenchant views and comments on the Malaysian scene, makes it the best-read newspaper in Malaysia. Its English section editor, P.K. Mohamed Koya, says he tries to provide a newspaper which concentrates on issues, especially on Malaysia.

It is an Islamic paper, well edited, and this ensures its current circulation of 300,000; its circulation had quintupled in three years. It does well despite such restrictions as its printers insisting upon payment before publication and its having had to change printers, which also requires a license. Its printers are charged in court along with the publishers when the conditions of the license are breached, and this is another disincentive.

PAS and the other opposition parties pushed the limits and set up their own Web sites. A lacunae in the law allowed Internet newspapers and Web pages without the need for a licence, and they took full advantage. PAS has two widely read Web pages — http://www.harakahdaily.com and http://www.harakah.com — and it still gets hits in excess of 100,000 a day. There are in addition other opposition-based Web sites; the most active are in support of the jailed Anwar. http://www.freeanwar.com is one of the most active.

In contrast, the mainstream newspapers, all owned by interests linked to the National Front coalition which has governed the country since 1955, have seen their circulations decline sharply. The New Straits Times saw its circulation decline from 200,000 at its peak to under 100,000. The Star makes money hand over fist with a circulation twice that of the NST. The Sun, also from the mainstream, with fresh capital and ownership, taking a cue from the Internet newspapers, reoriented itself from a paper that did not matter to one which presented the news more neutrally than the other mainstream newspapers did. It did so well that it is now the second most widely read English language newspaper.

But the new owner, under pressure from regulatory authorities, has pulled out, and the Sun is rumored to be for sale — to a former editor-in-chief of the New Straits Times. This could not be confirmed, but the newspaper has lost it verve and quickly descends into mediocrity.

More important, the Internet newspapers forced the mainstream newspapers to improve beyond recognition. They still have a long way to go. But commentaries and articles that now appear in them would have caused those who wrote it the sack not so long ago.

Gan puts its more succinctly: "The government's monopoly to truth is challenged. It reacts like a dog in heat, and bites and barks at anyone who says it is wrong. And found that no one cared what it had to say. They already knew the truth is not what it says it is." The Internet challenges, in Malaysia, the official worldview, and forces the government to admit that there are more variations of the truth than its own.

AS THE MEDIA WATCH THE WORLD, WE WATCH THE MEDIA.

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