In a recent survey, almost a clean half of respondents from Kuala Terengganu indicated that voting for the opposition in this Saturday’s by-election could push the Barisan Nasional government to "correct itself".
In the survey conducted by the Merdeka Center for Opinion Research between Jan 1 and 11, 46 percent of the 408 Malay and 56 percent of 119 Chinese respondents said voting for the opposition, namely PAS, could affect such a correction.
However, that was the extent of the commonalities shared between the two groups that make up the preponderance of the 80,300 voters in Kuala Terengganu.
According to Merdeka Center, while the majority (70 percent) of voters in the Malay-majority constituency felt that things in the country and Terengganu were "headed in the right direction", only 36 percent of the Chinese respondents felt the same.
When presented with several issues and asked which they felt warranted the most attention by the state government, 21 percent of the Malay respondents cited "controlling inflation", 26 percent wanted to "strengthen the position of Islam", and 16 percent asked for "continued development".
Among Chinese voters, 53 percent wanted the government "to treat non-Malay communities more fairly", while 18 percent wanted it to concentrate on "fighting corruption".
On the question of the treatment of the Chinese community, 75 percent of Chinese respondents "strongly agreed" or "somewhat agreed" that electing a non-Barisan candidate could send a strong signal to the Barisan government.
The survey also found that voters were more interested in the quality of the candidates over other factors such as current issues, contesting parties or party leaders.
Seventy-seven percent of voters cited candidate quality as being "very important" as opposed to 55 percent and 67 percent for current issues and party capability, respectively.
Hudud issue not as important
On the contrary, the attempt by MCA to focus on the issue of PAS’ hudud ambitions seems to have hit a dull note as the survey found that only half of the Chinese voters in Kuala Terengganu considered the issue important.
Only 18 percent of the Chinese voters interviewed said the issue of hudud played a "very important" factor in the election, while 32 percent said it was "somewhat important".
Neither did the Malay respondents elicit much reaction to suggestions that Malay political power was under threat.
According to the survey, only 17 percent agreed that "Malay political power was weakened by demands made by non-Malay communities after the March 8 general election".
A whopping 74 percent of Malay respondents, on the other hand, felt that "corrupt and self-serving leaders" were weakening Malay political power - malaysiakini.com
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment