SHAH ALAM, 9 Apr: A survey conducted by The Malaysian Insider shows that more Malaysians are describing Umno-Barisan Nasional’s (BN) performance as “very weak” especially in handling the national economy.
More than half 1,005 respondents polled in a survey commissioned by The Malaysian Insider described BN’s performance since the 13th general election as “very weak” while 45% felt its lynchpin party Umno fared as poorly.
The respondents said the ruling coalition had failed to tackle rising cost of living or address economic concerns, displayed negative quality of leadership, and failed to keep election pledges and to tackle corruption.
Only 31% of respondents, who were polled via telephone, felt the BN, which won by a simple majority in the 13th general election, was doing an excellent job, while the rest were unsure or refused to commit.
Once again, Chinese respondents were almost unanimous in their disapproval of BN with Malay respondents slightly in favour of BN.
Both urban and rural voters said they were disappointed with BN’s performance with 53% of respondents aged 21 to 40 giving BN the thumbs down. Meanwhile, Umno’s performance from the last general election to March this year was described as “very weak” by 45% of the respondents.
Respondents were selected through random stratified sampling methods along the lines of ethnicity, gender and age, and covered all parliamentary constituencies in peninsular Malaysia.
The survey was carried out from March 7 to March 20, 2014 with the selection of respondents being proportional to the population in each parliamentary constituency.
The majority of Chinese respondents said that Umno’s performance had been weak while Malays and Indians were evenly split about the Malay party’s performance.
The survey did not give a rural-urban ethnic breakdown but said rural folk were split on the average over Umno’s performance while urban respondents were dissatisfied with the lynchpin of the BN coalition.
“The top issues which the rakyat are concerned about are cost of living, crime, corruption, national unity and employability,” the survey said.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s rating was good among the respondents with 42% saying that the Umno president had done an excellent job, while 39% gave him the thumbs down.
The survey also showed that Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi was considered by Malay respondents to be the top performing leader.
Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin was second, followed by Defence Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein third. Najib was in the fifth position, behind Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.
