The Wilful Sunflower

General Election later today (it's about 2:30am now). Somebody sent this email through my website:

Undi BA. Hapuskan Barisan Korupsional. BA janji membuka kes rasuah Ling Liong Sik, Samy Velu, Rafidah, Mirzan Mahatir. Kami mahu Ikan Jerung bukan ikan belis berumur 70 tahun seperti Eric Chia.

Translation:
Vote for the Alternative Front (opposition). Get rid of the "Corruptional" Front (play of words on the National Front's name -- the ruling coalition). The Alternative Front promises to file cases of corruption against Ling Liong Sik, Samy Velu, Rafidah, Mirzan Mahatir (the first three are prominent government ministers and the last, son of previous Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad). We want "sharks", not 70-year-old "anchovies" like Eric Chia (the head of a large company who was arrested and charged with criminal breach of trust last month).

Of course, I have no way of knowing whether the person who left this message is someone from the Opposition, one of their over-zealous supporters, a person with too much time on his/her hands, or one of the National Front people employing reverse psychology. Whichever it is, I think it's quite true what these journalists said: Political parties may talk about using information technology to reach out to the people, but many of them either don't know how to do it, or don't care to learn. They are only interested in bombarding people with their messages; feedback is not welcomed.

Despite all the excitement about delivering manifestos by SMS and taking the fight to cyberspace, the reality is that most political parties view IT as just another medium of political communication, and one that as far as local practice was concerned, remained largely in the form of one-way traffic.

For instance, most of Malaysia's political parties have websites; as at press time, none had forums or other platforms inviting surfers to express their views and concerns, or to give feedback on party policies.

The parties that will benefit the most from the expected increase in technology use between now and polling day are non-political entities — the telecommunications companies, Internet service providers (ISPs), and companies that provide SMS-related services.

[...]

The general quality of political party websites suggests that their existence was a matter of keeping up with the Joneses rather than efforts backed by conviction to cater to the more IT-savvy sections of the electorate.

No one is anticipating a mad rush to access such sites.

Don't you think it's quite sad that political parties have websites that nobody will bother looking at? Then what's the point of having a website at all?