KUALA LUMPUR: If the government needed proof of the power of the new media, they got it on Twitter this week when Information Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim — who recently spoke out against Web lovers — became an overnight Internet sensation.

The incident highlights how the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) remains detached from young, Internet-savvy urbanites.

On Tuesday afternoon, what started on the popular micro-blogging site Twitter as a handful of jokes about Rais swiftly and unexpectedly snowballed into a torrent.

Most of the posts, or tweets, were about Rais’ age and started with “Rais is so ancient...”. (For example, “Rais is so ancient, he can settle the debate over who started using ‘Allah’ first.”)

By evening, #yorais — the tag used for the topic — was on the site’s “trending topic” list, making it one of the top 10 Twitter topics worldwide.

The phenomenon took the topic’s creator Bong Chan Siong, 28, by surprise. An engineer by profession, he goes by the nickname “Bongkersz” on Twitter and has a steady following.

Bong told The Straits Times that #yorais had begun as “just another tweeting session” on politics with his friends and Twitter followers. He never expected it to peak in a few hours at No. 3 on the list of top 10 Twitter topics, in the process beating out other hot topics like the Haiti earthquake.

The meteoric rise of #yorais was triggered by Rais’ unflattering remarks on Malaysia’s Web users a few days earlier. He had said Malaysians must avoid immersing themselves in the Internet culture, especially Facebook and Twitter, as those were Western influences, and should instead remain rooted in their own beliefs and culture.
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Bong feels that #yorais was a reaction to politicians like Rais, who are “out of touch with people on the ground”: “They never engage with us. They see us as a nuisance, as troublemakers who are loud and only know how to complain.”

The avalanche of reactions against Rais’ remarks suggests that BN is still slow to harness the potential of the new media, although it was recognised as one of the main factors behind the opposition’s inroads during the 2008 general election.

Broadband penetration rate has jumped in recent years, doubling from 15 per cent in 2007 to 30 per cent last year. Most of it is concentrated in urban city centres, where the opposition won the majority of their seats.

Many urban Malaysians these days turn to the Internet first for news and information. And with the government targeting 50 per cent broadband penetration by the end of this year, the medium is set to have an even greater reach.

For BN to use new media effectively, however, it first needs a message that is worth putting across to the Internet generation — which it still does not have, said political analyst Ooi Kee Beng.

“What the government now learns is that you cannot nowadays merely throw out a slogan if you do not mean to be consistent in your thinking and action,” he said. “In cyberspace, any inconsistency is immediately ridiculed publicly.”