Shahid Bolsen responds to an attack video by a PH supporter in Malaysia

An apparent pH supporter has published a video against you in response to your criticism of the Anwar government. Have you seen it? And what do you think?

Yes. I saw it. It was actually sent to me originally by a pH supporter, who I think was disappointed by the slanderous response that pH supporters are offering to my criticism. This person, the person who sent it to me said that my criticism was useful and necessary. And this sort of response is very disappointing on the part of PH.

Now I'm not gonna attribute it to PH themselves. I'm not gonna attribute this to ANOIR or to the government. It's probably, you know, a supporter who thinks that they're doing something good by coming out and slandering me. Look. If anybody wants to know something about me, I have roughly 4,000 pages worth of writing publicly available online on Facebook.

I have roughly 600 videos on YouTube if you wanna look at them. I have, I don't know how many videos on TikTok. So if you wanna know anything about me, what I think, what I believe, and so on, I mean, there's there's videos of me and interviews with me from ten years ago. And all of the writing, everything that I ever said about Egypt is all available on on the Internet. It's all publicly available on Facebook.

Everything that I ever wrote or said about Egypt is there. So you're, you know, if anyone is curious about what I actually said, what I actually believe, you know how to find out. It's it's publicly available. But I'm not the issue. The criticisms that I made resonated with many, people in Malaysia.

Not because they didn't already feel that way. My video didn't make them feel a certain way. My video didn't, change their opinion. But a video like this can change people's opinion against you, against pH when you make a video like this because it shows that you can't respond to criticism. That your response to criticism is to slander whoever is criticizing you.

The worst part about that video, the most offensive thing in that video to me is the suggestion that I converted to Islam for the sake of marriage. I was Muslim for almost ten years before I got married. Alhamdulillah. So that that offends me more than anything else. The stuff about The UAE, all of that, I'm used to that.

Egypt was saying that, the Egyptian government was saying that all the way back when I was criticizing them. I'm used to this. Look, I was in jail. I had a manslaughter case. That's the thing that happened.

That was a tragic, terrible, catastrophic event in my life and a period of time that I went through for seven years, seven and a half years, until I was finally able to have the case overturned when I went to the Supreme Court in Abu Dhabi, to where, I was I was sentenced to to less time than what I had actually already served, and I was released from prison. So, any suggestion that I escaped from prison and that I'm on fugitive or anything like this, this. Obviously, this you're not doing your research properly. But again, none of that's important. You know, I don't even know if I need to address that because my background, even my, my goodness or my virtue or my otherwise is not the issue here.

I'm not the the government of Malaysia. I'm not the PM. My moral character, my background is not important. It's not it's it's irrelevant. I had a criticism of the government that I perceived that they don't have a plan for for managing the economy.

Now, the correct response, the appropriate mature response to that would be to show that you do have a plan and show show that I'm wrong. The answer to when someone criticizes you is to prove that they're wrong, to prove that they're bad. You know, that's not a response. Maybe I'm good, maybe I'm bad. Maybe I'm better than some and worse than others, like everybody.

But what relevance does that have to whether or not the government has a plan for managing the economy? What's the relevance? So no, I mean, I'm used to this. And I know every time I open my mouth that anyone who disagrees with me will be able to Google me and find defamatory material to use to discredit me. I'm used to that.

That's been happening to me for the last ten years. People have been doing that to me for ten years now. I've been dealing with these articles that are online for ten years and for longer than that, from when from from even before that. So that's nothing that's nothing new. Most of the people who follow my channel, who follow my page, who follow my Facebook account are all aware of this already.

Everyone already knows what the New York Times said, what foreign policy said, what the weekly blitz said. When your only response to criticism is to assassinate the character of the person who's criticizing you, you more or less are confirming that their criticism of you is correct. Because you don't have a proper response to refute the criticism. It's a very surprising response to what I regard again still as quite mild criticism of the government. Now, I had someone in the comments who's a pH supporter, who is very critical of me in my comment section saying that, Rafizi is going on regularly on live, and telling everyone that you should watch him.

Be better informed about what the government is doing or what the government is planning to do. Yes, you should. I agree with that. If he's doing that, then you should watch that. See what he's had what he has to say.

Become informed about whatever it is whatever the government's plans are. If he is elucidating plans by the government nightly in livestreams, yes, watch it. Become informed about what your government says, what they're doing, and what they say they're doing. Absolutely. Become informed.

But don't do this. This is this this kind of a response damages you more. It damages you more than it damages me. Look, I've had negative material about me online for over a decade. That's not going to stop me from talking.

Beating me with that stick, I don't even feel it anymore because I've been beaten with that stick for for ten years. Like I said, the one who actually originally, alerted me to the existence of this video is a pH supporter. But a pH supporter with with genuine, you know, authentic values and principles who doesn't believe in this kind of thing, you're gonna actually end up alienating more voters than were ever alienated as a result of my video. That's from from the perspective of someone who works in PR, this is a very bad response. This is a very, self destructive response.

If you need help with PR, can hire me. But, what I can tell you is that this, as a PR tactic, is a failure.