The current unstable political scenario has made the job of assessing the popularity of the Prime Minister difficult. Without a firm backing from UMNO, this has made his political coalition precarious and his Parliamentary majority being questioned by the opposition almost everyday in the media.
With the above political background in the country, let us together examine data that I observed from Facebook postings I made earlier this month. The first article was in English titled, ‘Muhyddin Yassin: One Year of Success as Prime Minister of Malaysia’ and this was soon followed by a Bahasa Malaysia version of the same article.
The two Facebook postings attracted 1,770 reactions and 82.4% of them read the articles. Further analysis indicate only viewers aged 45 years and above read them, while only a very small number of younger viewers did so.
This finding made it only possible to gauge political response of the older age group and it is consistent with the notion that younger generation don’t really read long feature articles. This data may also confirm the current notion that the younger generation have lost interest in political polemics altogether!
In whatever way one wishes to interpret the data, I feel the lack of reading habit among the younger generation make them vulnerable and susceptible to making impulsive decision when going to vote. They tend to lack loyalty to the political parties and can be swayed at the final days or hours of campaigning period. In fact, this happened in the 14th General Election.
As for the response of Malay readers (Bumiputera) above 45 years of age, the best responses are from Sabah, Johor, Sarawak and Kelantan. This may be interpreted as the top states that have warmed up to Tan Sri Muhyddin Yassin as the Prime minister. Apart from Johor, the other three states are non UMNO states and this is not surprising.
Bersatu is dominant in Sabah while Sarawak is governed by GPS, a PM’s ally in the Perikatan National government. As for Johore, PM himself and some Federal Minisers are Johorean and this is an added factor to his attraction there. In Kelantan PM has good relationship with the governing party PAS as well as the presence of two influencial Perikatan Nasional Ministers from there.
Attractions to him in Terengganu and Kedah, based on FB data collected, could be termed as rather favourable or average, likely because of being assisted by strong presence of PAS in these states.
Non Bumiputera readers in the country, particularly the Chinese, made 20 negative comments on him against only two who made positive ones. However, by comparison, there are 35 ‘like’ from the non Bumiputera viewers. These might indicate that some older Chinese voters are starting to open up to him.
It is important to note that these data only roughly indicate PM’s current level of popularity in the country. This popularity could grow over time with adequate exposure of his achievements among the general population including the younger generation. These include achievements in overcoming the covid-19 pandemic, in steering the economy and protecting Bumiputera business sector during crisis time.
He is also seen as continuing to respect the judicial freedom in the current high profile corruption cases against Najib and other political leaders.
With the above scenario in place, it would be hard for any established political party including UMNO, PKR or DAP to sweep aside the PM’s popularity without considering serious impact it would have on the future political power alignment in the country.
Perikatan Nasional will likely have the best chance to win the 15th General Election but, of course, they have to stand together and compromise. Otherwise, it will be free for all and hence, hard to predict the eventual outcome.
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DAH IKHWAN
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Sila baca juga: Tan Sri Muhyddin Yassin: Setahun Kejayaan Perdana Menteri
