In part two of this five part interview, the deputy minister of International Trade and Industry talks 1Malaysia, Twitter and Facebook in Parliament.

On 1Malaysia...
(1Malaysia means) moving away from this idea of 'tolerance' to 'acceptance'. The word 'tolerance' still has a negative connotation, in that you're forced to accept other people's differences. But 'acceptance' is something where you willingly accept how they are and they accept what you are too. Thereafter you move on to a next stage, which is to celebrate the differences.

Malaysia is not a melting pot. We don't assume to be one. We have never advocated a policy of assimilation, whereby anyone who immigrates to Malaysia gets assimilated into the dominant culture - in terms of language, culture, religion even - unlike some of our neighbouring countries. Some people say that there's a different approach and it may not be advantageous to us, if we continue to be (this) way. But we feel that it has been. Each of us has something good to put on the table. As long as we're taking advantage of everyone's positive points I think we could do well as a nation. I believe that's what 1Malaysia means.

On cyber communication...
I enjoy it (Twitter and Facebook) because I get almost an immediate response from anything I say. Whether it's positive or negative is another matter. As long as I know people out there are interested to know what I think, and they are willing to give me feedback, that is absolutely invaluable.
When the ministry announced the new automotive policy, it got all sorts of feedback (through FB and Twitter). Many were supportive but many too were critical of it, particularly on certain points of the new policy. We really took (them) into consideration. We discussed it in the ministry and we changed it.
I wanted to be committed to using technology as a means of communicating with people. (But) I felt that sometimes a blog seems impersonal or less committed, so a website would be more of a show of commitment that we're serious about this. That's why we came up with Mukhriz.com.

On blogger censorships...
I think it's important that we try to instil or imbue the right ethics so that it's self-regulated rather than imposed on them by governments. It's one thing to have freedom of speech in the conventional media but on the Internet it's automatically, free.

If we accept the fact that, even at this particular moment when it's quite free, there is more good coming out of it than those that are not good, that's good enough for me to not pursue this censorship thing.

Related Article:
Part I: YB Datuk Mukhriz Mahathir on matters near and far

Source: http://news.malaysia.msn.com/top-stories/article.aspx?cp-documentid=3835195