Popularity down by 19%to 53%, says Rafizi
KUCHING: Malaysians have given Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad an approval rating of only 53 percent in an opinion polls early this month.
This is a marked drop of nearly 20 percent from the 72 percent approval which he received in a similar survey last June.
PKR’s Rafizi Ramli, who heads pollster Invoke Malaysia, has warned that the post-election euphoria in favour of Pakatan Harapan (PH) was running out fast.
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but someone must bell the cat,” Rafizi said in his Facebook posting yesterday, warning that the drop in popularity could be severe “if not appropriately managed”.
He quoted figures from a survey conducted early this month which put Dr Mahathir’s ratings at 53 percent, a 19% drop from a similar survey in June, soon after PH won the May general elections.
Stressing this showed the decreasing popularity of the PH government, Rafizi said the figures were also reflected across all ethnic groups.
“The Chinese rated him highest at 87 percent approval (in the June survey), followed by the Indians at 84 percent.
“Even the Malay respondents gave him a high 66 percent approval rating, given that Harapan did poorly with Malay voters during the 14th general election.
“In a similar survey conducted two weeks ago, Mahathir’s approval rating as the prime minister has plunged to 53 percent. There is a consistent drop of around 20 percent across all races – Malays (from 66 percent to 45 percent), Chinese (from 87 percent to 65 percent) and Indians (from 84 percent to 64 percent),” he said.
Rafizi said that in some states, the newly-elected menteri besar, whom some of the sampled respondents could not name correctly, got a higher approval rating than the prime minister.
He said the most often repeated justifications for the plunging approval rating was PH’s failure to win a sizeable chunk of the Malay votes in the general election.
He said the plunging rating was due to unfulfilled promises by PH since coming to power, though admitting that the public was not expecting a miracle or a change within 100 days in power.
“From the first post-14th general election survey until this month’s poll, reducing higher cost of living and fulfilling election promises top the key concerns of the voters across the board.
“After a while, the public is losing patience with what is seen as mere excuses on the part of the Harapan administration.
“We can’t fulfil all the promises immediately within the 100 days (trust me, the public does not even expect that), yet at the very least the PH administration must be seen to be solely focused on laying the groundwork to fulfil them (election promises) at some point in the future,” he said.
He also took to task PH’s late payments of living allowances to Felda settlers which he noted was “a regular feature of our administration”.
“Not only we are not able to write off their debts that were questionably piled on them by the previous administration, we could not help to make things better for them when the commodity prices plunged.
“While reducing prices will take a while, any sudden removal of aids previously provided by the government, when implemented without a more effective substitute programme, helps the opposition build a negative narrative against the federal government,” he added.
