"Somebody, please shoot this Jeff Ooi for good"?

On 20 June P Gunasegaram, group executive editor of The Edge, posed 22 questions to former PM Dr Mahathir, one for each of his 22 years in power. Gunasegaram’s combative queries of Dr Mahathir’s years as premier came in the wake of Dr Mahathir’s 4 probing questions to PM AAB, on Proton's sale of MV Agusta; the exit of the former Proton chief executive officer; approved permits for cars; and scrapping of the bridge project. At that time AAB had maintained his ‘elegant’ silence.

Then suddenly and, of course, coincidentally, as if to fill in the Grand Canyon-ish gap left by the sheer ‘elegant’ silence, the pro-Singapore government Straits Times picked up the Gunasegaram’s questions by devoting one full-page to them.

In my posting AAB's Unexpected (or Expected) Defender? I remarked that while some of those 22 questions had been pertinent, others have been nothing more than kacau nonsense, perhaps to disturb, as the Malay word would translate into.

I gave a couple of examples of those nonsensical questions, but because of their pathetic relevance or logic, what they did had been, in my opinon, nothing more than to muddy the waters of Dr Mahathir’s questions to AAB.

Well, Gunasegaram has been back recently with another unfavourable-to-Mahathir article titled ‘The myth of Mahathir’s invincibility’ which appeared in The Sun on Thursday. I won't bother to read it as I won't be blogging on that, but rather the ensuing events from another blogger's posting on it.

Jeff Ooi of Screenshots, the don of Malaysian blogosphere (some people hate this word – blogosphere, that is), had blogged on Gunasegaram's article, when one visitor named Imran posted a comment which read: ‘Somebody, please shoot this Gunasegaram for good’.

At that, Gunasegaram took umbrage or fright or ‘whatever’ - you decide but only Gunasegaram himself knows. He wrote to Jeff about that remark. Jeff subsequently removed it while attempting to do the right thing by inviting Imran, a bono fide visitor with full registered credentials at Screenshots, to clarify his remarks.

Imran has been upfront with the fact that he’s a Mahathir supporter and his remarks had been nothing more than a loose comment that Gunasegaram should shut up on his anti-Mahathir articles.

But Gunasegaram was having none of that. Instead, on the very same day, he reported to the Communications and Multimedia Content Forum (CMCF) agency under the energy, water and communications ministry.

When Jeff Ooi explained the situation to Malaysiakini, Gunasegaram immediately told Malaysiakini his complaint has already been lodged and could not be withdrawn, adding the posting was ‘extremely irresponsible’.

He said: “In a sensitive situation like this (just after Mahathir’s pepper spray attack), the blogger should be careful. The meaning of ‘shooting Gunasegaram for good’ in normal language is to kill him. I’m not comfortable with the posting and that it was allowed to be published […] he had the chance to block it but he did not. If the posting’s language is ambiguous, then it should be removed.”

He declined to comment on Malaysiakini's question as to whether the incident was maliciously motivated.

Well, at this stage I wonder whether I could draw the conclusion that Gunasegaram was not frightened by Imran’s purported threat because Gunasegaram’s reporting action on the incident has been to the CMCF against blogger Jeff Ooi rather than to the Police against Imran.

If my reading of the situation is not incorrect, it would appear that Gunasegaram seeks acquittal (through the CMCF) from Jeff Ooi for not removing the comment in a time to his (Guna’s) satisfaction rather than some assurance that Imran or another reader will not ‘shoot’ him. Imran has become incidental while Jeff Ooi is now Gunasegaram's target.

That he had reported the matter to the CMCF and refuses to withdraw it, even after both Jeff Ooi and Imran had clarified the latter’s comments (already removed), would appear to be an unusually extreme case of merajuk (sulking) for a professional media person. Surely Gunasegaram can't be that angry or vindictive over a petty issue which he has seen fit to not even report to the Police, for 'fear of his personal safety'. Does he want the CMCF to ‘shoot’ Jeff Ooi?

Now, Jeff Ooi is not new to such controversies. In his hard hitting and very readable blogging style he has invariably offended a few people. He has criticised various organisations for what he had deemed to be their poor adherence to governance.

One of his principal targets has been Kalimullah, group editor of the NST press. Kalimullah is of course the sidekick of the PM’s son-in-law, Khairy Jamaluddin. Together they form the 2 of the 3-K’s that Dr Mahathir had sneeringly criticised AAB’s administration as being lumbered with.

The 2-K’s had reported Jeff Ooi before in the now-infamous ‘oil & water’ saga, that arose from a remark posted by another Screenshot visitor named Anwar (no, not he who cannot be named).

Anwar's remark criticised AAB’s style of government as hardly Islamic, but had referred to a nasty fluid as an analogy. Jeff’s detractors seized on the mention of that 'fluid' to twist it into an insult against Islam per se, with of course Jeff as the alleged irresponsible blogger who permitted Islam to be insulted.

I have often wondered why a supposedly giant in the Malaysian media scene like Kalimullah allowed/allows himself to wrestle directly with a mere blogger like Jeff Ooi, notwithstanding the fact that Jeff is a very influential blogger.

Maybe Kalimullah would one day reveal that professional-social incongruity in his autobiography, or perhaps someone else would, in an unauthorised version.