In a contrast with Seberang, where Ministers there are trying to clamp down on bloggers, Indonesian Minister Anton Apriyantono has become the latest Indonesian minister to start a blog. He follows a tradition begun by DEfense Minister Juwono Sudarsono who started a blog sometime last year and picked up by Housing Minister Yusuf Asy’ari.Apriyanto is therefore the third Indonesian Minister to keep a blog.
Anton appears to have help from Asia Bloging Network in setting up his blog. It remains to be seen whether this would herald an era where politicians would engage in conversations with their constituents and critics. Somehow Unspun thinks it will take sometime before we see that day come to pass as these blogs have entries that are few and far in between and they do not have interesting conversations going.
Still, a step in the right direction all round. Unspun wonders if Indonesia can offer to teach Malaysian Ministers to stay cool and consider blogs an opportunity rather than a threat. Not.
Unspun 
Dear Unspun,
Way to go, Indonesian Ministers!
If Malaysian ministers were to blog after this, I think it will not be because they think the examples of their Indonesian brothers are worth emulating, it will in all likelihood be because of an acute case of one-upmanship. Or, as we say it in BM, tidak mahu kalah! ;D
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Mekyam: Probably would be tak mau kalaship but it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if, for the wrong reasons, they stumble onto a good thing. I doubt if any of the Malaysian ministers have the requisite rhetorical skills to handle a blog tho.
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Good to see, but if it’s Anton Apriyanto, it might be funny if he did it in English. An amusing moment was when he embarrassed SBY in India (??!?), by mumbling incoherent sentences in English. 🙂
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