the consequence of blogging

careful how you blog. if you belongs to a company or an association or a party, you might just be sacked/expelled from your company/party. well UMNO member, zaharin yassin (picture left – taken from his blog) found that out yesterday when he was expelled from UMNO “for criticising the party leadership”.

zaharin is an UMNO member for bandar tun razak and his blog is at sang kelembai, which is also his pen name.

excerpt from the bernama report:

Umno secretary-general Datuk Seri Radzi Sheikh Ahmad told reporters later that the MT viewed Zaharin’s offence seriously and decided to impose a heavier penalty than recommended by the Disciplinary Board and Management Committee.

it doesn’t help at all that he put a disclaimer (in bahasa) in his blog (picture left) which basically says his writings in the blog is his own personal view and has nothing to do with his view as an UMNO member.

i (and i’m sure most people) have not heard of this sang kelembai blog before. when i read in bernama of his expullsion news, as his blog’s name was mentioned, i googled for his blog and sure enough i found it. i went through it, not reading everything but just trying to pick out the criticisms he had written. hey, me too like to criticise UMNO, thus i’ll be glad to read critcisms on UMNO. well, thank god for report of his expullsion – it made more people aware of his blog, and thus get to read his criticism! some of his interesting remarks can be found at the end of each post where he add his name in bold. one example:

Cara Abdullah Badawi menjawab isu semasa seperti seorong yang sedang berusaha bersembunyi di sebalik sehelai lalang dan beranggapan bahawa dirinya tidak kelihatan. Apabezanya dengan anak kecil yang menutup matanya, lalu berkata kepada bapaknya: Bapak, cari dimanasaya sekarang.

here he pointed out that the way badawai, our PM responded to current issues is like he is trying to hide behind the bush and think he is invisible.

well, ain’t that the truth! and poor zaharin was expelled for speaking the truth. oh well, what to do, we all know UMNO can’t accept criticisms, what more from… its own member…. ? *sigh*