Live Coverage of UMNO General Meeting On TV

29 Nov, 2012, Thursday.

In Malaysia, the current government is formed by a coalition of parties called Barisan Nasional, BN for short. In BN, the single biggest party is UMNO. The current prime minister of Malaysia is a member of UMNO, and more than half of his cabinet is made up of UMNO members.

Today is the 4th day of the annual general meeting of UMNO. The prime minister of Malaysia, who also is the party chairman, the one and only Najib, is addresing the party today. So RTM1, TV3, NTV7, 8TV, TV9, all 5 free to air tv channels are broadcasting the live coverage of the one and only Najib making his speech in the UMNO general meeting.

Malaysian parliament sessions are not broadcasted live, except for the budget report, and this only happened since the past few years. Many people from many sectors have been calling for live coverage of parliament sessions for years, but no television channel ever showed any interest in broadcasting parliament sessions, and the government is not giving green light.

In fact, other than sponsored major sport events, like Olympic games, or Datuk Lee Chung Wei is fighting for a gold medal, or his wedding, or national day parade and the likes, Malaysians see very little live coverage of any activities of any kind at all, so why the live coverage of a general meeting of a party? Yes, the chairman is making his speech today. But it is still a general meeting of a political party, how is that more important than parliament sessions?

This is the underlying message of the live broadcast:

the One Najib is the most important person in Malaysia, UMNO is the one party that controls the nation, so the speech by the One Najib in general meeting of his party is the most important event of the year, all Malaysians should tune in to understand and remember this. And remember to stay loyal to him, vote for him in the coming general election, GE13. Stray away from him, and suffer the consequences.

The One Najib is still delivering his speech as I am typing this. Looking at the screen, a book and 2 movies came to my mind:

1984(a book),

“V for Vendetta”, “Wag The Dog” (2 movies).

If you do not understand why they came to my mind, google for the summaries of them. Or actually go read the book “1984”.

General meeting of the ruling political party is more important than parliament sessions, scary. Only in Malaysia.