The Malaysian Citizen ThinkTank

One of the hallmarks of the knowledge era is the so-called leveling of the playing field, especially in the political arena, both in as much as the near instant revelation of any political shenanigans (the watchdog role), and the harnessing of public opinion to effect a desired political outcome (the community participatory role). Both are made possible by the decentralizing role enabled by the ubiquitous access to information at a mouse click way, the Internet revolution.

This citizen-, or rather netizen-centric enterprise first took off with the Wikipedia project, which lately has received some negative feedback, and the more recent variation, the Citizendium project, which may be viewed as a spinoff from the former but with a professed better transparency in terms of authorship and editorship.

Concurrently, the pervasive nature of the blogosphere has taken us by storm, with budding bloggers emerging by the minutes, ranging from the politically savvy to those who just want a convenient space to chronicle their inner feelings and interact with like-minded people.

Sooner or later, some enterprising quarters, tired of the mainstream offering of news commentary that are perceived to be slanted toward the powers-that-be, and afflicted with a profound disconnect with reality, or more aptly, things happening at the ground, would seize this opportunity to galvanize, to muster, and to marshal the discrete voices of discontent, of disenfranchisement, of disillusionment, into a veritable citizen/netizen movement.

The latest addition to this clarion call to political action, to my knowledge, is CitizenThinkt@nk, spotting “Route to Knowledge Democracy in Malaysia” on their website. It came to me in the form of an email from a friend back home, choosing to focus their awareness campaign in the form of a chain email. The email admonished each recipient, in turn, to forward the email to seven other friends. Why seven? To coincide with the movement’s birth on July 7, 2007.


I’m not a particular fan of chain emails. But I do subscribe to their reasons of being, and believe in the democratic process of effecting change through the electoral system, voting. Hence, this blog is my own way of helping to spread the word, so to speak.

To make an informed vote, we need to filter the information we are bombarded on a daily basis. And that can only be achieved if we explore all information avenues, even the alternative ones. I particularly like the politician rating initiative, culled from citizen’s opinions across the board. Granted there will be die-hards and lobbyists who would try to tilt the scale through mass mailings, but on balance the outcome will be an additional opinion poll that we can factor into our overall assessment of political reality. Gone are the days we are passive observers, unilaterally fed by the mainstream media, which are influenced to varying degrees by the government of the day.

The Internet Age and the ushering in of the knowledge era have afforded us an opportunity to be discerning, to be discriminative, to be better informed. And to quote Bill Gates in his 2007 Harvard Commencement Speech:

“My mother, who was filled with pride the day I was admitted here - never stopped pressing me to do more for others. A few days before my wedding, she hosted a bridal event, at which she read aloud a letter about marriage that she had written to Melinda. My mother was very ill with cancer at the time, but she saw one more opportunity to deliver her message, and at the close of the letter she said: “From those to whom much is given, much is expected.”

Indeed we have been given much, the ability to read and exercise our thinking faculty, and the ready access to an incredibly powerful tool, the Internet. It behooves us, then, to exercise these endowments with the utmost care, for the collective good. The twin goal of accountability and responsibility that graces the website of Citizen Thinkt@nk, is as much the one we set for the politicians as for ourselves.