Malaysian Prime Minister Under Facebook Rally Pressure

Tze Lin Low on Flickr

A Penn-Olson reader directed us to Malaysian Insider’s report on yet another case of Facebook outcry in Malaysia. This time around, more than 150,000 Facebook users in Malaysia have come together on a Facebook page, pressing for Malaysia Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak to resign.

The page, titled “100,000 People Request Najib Tun Razak Resignation,” is currently experiencing swarm of likes. Malaysia Insider noted that the Facebook page “has been attracting at least five “likes” per second, and it hit the 100,000 mark at about 3:50am this morning.”

The speed and volume of likes and wall comments echoed the citizens’ anger towards the Prime Minister. So why all the hate over Prime Minister Najib? Prior to this Facebook drive, the Bersih 2.0 rally (also called the Walk for Democracy), was held at Kuala Lumpur to fight for free and fair elections in Malaysia. The number of people who attended Bersih 2.0 is believed to be between 5,000 and 20,000.

[The Walk for Democracy] demanded that the Election Commission of Malaysia clean up the electoral roll, reform postal voting, use indelible ink, introduce a minimum 21-day campaign period, allow all parties free access to the media, and put an end to electoral fraud. —Wikipedia

However, the peaceful rally was met with violence which greatly angered the people. Even though Prime Minister Najib has denied that physical violence was used, the Facebook page was set up shortly after in protest. According to Global Voices, there was also significant chatter and photo sharing on Twitter surrounding the Bersih Rally. Many users have changed their avatars to yellow to reflect the call for people to wear yellow until demands are met.

Amnesty International has a video showing footage of the protests, and including some commentary and explanation about what’s happening.

We have seen similar Facebook activism in Malaysia before, though perhaps not at this scale. Prior to this “resignation rally,” the Malaysia1 email incident saw citizens voicing their unhappiness over government spending on email accounts. There was also a Facebook page to protest the ban of file sharing sites. And then there was the uproar directed at Tourism Malaysia as the government spent a whopping $590,000 for just a few Facebook apps.

[Photo: Tze Lin Low on Flickr]