Bloggers getting fed up with dirty politics

Sunday July 6, 2008

Fed-up blogger Rocky takes 48-hour break

PETALING JAYA: For the next 48 hours, Ahirudin Attan will not blog on anything about the Altantuya Shaariibuu murder case and the alleged sodomy accusation against PKR de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, saying he is fed up of the mudslinging in cyberspace.

“I am not going to blog on both Altantuya and Anwar because there are other issues to talk about,” said the blogger, also known as Rocky.

» It is making me fed up how real-life politics is being dumped on us in cyberspace « AHIRUDDIN ATAN

“Filthy comments have been posted in the blogosphere. It is making me fed up with how real-life politics is dumped on us in cyberspace.

They are throwing dirt on each other.”

He also posted his intent to “go on strike” on his blog, http://rockybru.blogspot.com/ yesterday.

After the 48 hours, Ahirudin said he would set new rules on his blog where comments would be more strictly moderated and that he would post only important developments on the two issues.

The blogger, who constantly writes on political issues in Malaysia, added that the current two “hot topics” were not lightweight issues and it was wrong to trivialise them.

Another blogger, Datin Paduka Marina Mahathir, also expressed her exasperation over the matter.

»There are more important things in life, like how someone is going to feed his family « MARINA MAHATHIR

“I am fed up. There are more important things in life, like how is someone going to feed his family. There is just so much rubbish going around,” Marina said.

“I will not blog on issues that I do not know about. And there are people who insist they know what is happening.”

In her blog (www.rantingsbymm.blogspot.com) on Thursday, she wrote that she would go on strike and refrain “from reading the news”, being interested in what politicians were up to and the “so-called analyses of what’s happening by people who don’t really know anything”.

“I don’t know anything at all and I’m quite happy to admit that. And I don’t care to offer an opinion either.

“I just have more important things to do in my life. And I will blog about things that I hope will make us smarter, not stupider,” she wrote.