The anti-imperialist script 
James Wong Wing On

1:16pm, Thu: Whether infamous American financier George Soros and his Open Society Institute (OSI) financially support Malaysiakini.com or not is, to me, quite irrelevant. 

Both the OSI, which administer Soros' foundation, and malaysiakini have openly denied such an allegation, and the Far Eastern Economic Review has also made a clarification, albeit still not to the satisfaction of the parties concerned. 

Assuming, and only assuming for argument's sake, Soros and OSI really support Malaysiakini.com financially, so what? What is the problem? 

A case can indeed be argued that we should thank Soros and OSI for supporting Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad's Vision 2020 which envisage a psychological liberated, scientific, smart and hi-tech society based on openness, and which is epitomised by the Multimedia Super Corridor. 

A successful billionaire having faith in Malaysians should be awarded for successfully attracting foreign direct investment (FDI), especially to the field deemed most strategic for the transformation of the economy of Malaysia, when times are bad. 

And economists know that any injection of funds from overseas, especially the United States, lessens the pressure on the domestic financial system, and creates jobs, increases tax revenues of the Malaysian government and stimulates technology and knowledge transfer. The value is real and multiple as economic students learn in their second-year macroeconomics. What is the problem then? It is certainly not economic. It is political, but whose politics? 

Imperialist interference 

The standard "Anti-Al Gore Script" would pin it down to "imperialist interference into our national sovereignty". For this line to really work now, it has to be proven that Solomon Smith and Barney, which was engaged by the Malaysian government as the financial consultant after the IMF option was rejected, is truly "Marxist-Leninist" and "anti-imperialist". 

Perhaps Malay Action Front leader Ibrahim Ali who visited the socialist Cuba with Mahathir in late 1998 would take up the assignment to prove that Solomon Smith and Barney is actually a Third World national liberation front. 

What about the US Council of Foreign Relations whose luncheon in US Mahathir attended and addressed before the general elections of 1999? Didn't citizen Mahathir attack fellow Malaysians in that luncheon held in US? 

Of course, Malaysians he attacked are affiliated to political parties not of his own. They are PAS and Keadilan Malaysians. This is of course no secret as the spy-spook and some paranoid people would like us to believe. It was all published in the mainstream media then. What sovereignty? What nationalism? 

Jokes and satire aside, it is important to know that the paramount criterion of judging a newspaper is whether it presents factual news and reasoned opinions that are balanced and fair to all parties concerned. It is also to be judged by the quality, both intellectual and moral, of its reporters and editors. 

Has any newspaper in Malaysia ever published regularly and prominently letters criticising itself, or correcting mistakes and errors it itself has made? I have yet to be enlightened by any veteran journalists. 

Of course, all these arguments are premised on the assumption that malaysiakini does receive funds from Soros and OSI, and that assumption is wrong. Funded or not by capitalist George Soros or communist Frederick Engels (who really funded Karl Marx), I still enjoy reading malaysiakini and regard it as an intelligent choice for smart Malaysians.