You can run a rampant tiger in raucous, rumbustious democracies. Taiwan is surviving this recession best of all. The trouble for Malaysia is that it has become too successful. Local councils now want to be elected, rather than appointed by central government. Opposition politicians want to see their case on television too.
Newspapermen are sick to death with the nanny state.
Even China can experiment with the jury system while one judge sits alone in the case of Anwar. There is, fascinatingly, no way of holding back this tide. If the papers won't tell the story, the irresistible, business-imperative Internet will. Not a peripheral part of the equation, but a mute force at the core.