Our Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak’s no-show at the 1MDB Nothing2Hide forum on June 5 was one hell of a hot topic on social media because the former Malaysian prime minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad was stopped from giving a speech and PM Najib was absent from the forum.
Politweet have recently posted the results regarding this incident, by Twitter users in Malaysia. This is what we can learn from their analysis.
20 Internet users (2.00%) were supportive of the PM’s failure to show up
Some of their reasons were:
- Support cancellation of the event as Najib Razak does not need to deal directly with media/bloggers/public. Because he is the PM and he is way ‘above that’.
- Felt that the negative backlash was over-blown and they felt the need to express support for the PM
- Supportive of Najib Razak’s statement of having a dialogue when it’s more peaceful and secure
- Saw no value of seeing Tun Dr.Mahathir and Najib Razak debating
- Trusted the police statement that the venue was not secure
25 Users (2.50 %) were neutral towards the incident
- Open to the possibility that Najib Razak had good reason not to come
- Hopeful for a rescheduling of the event
Majority 677 users (67.70%) were negative, their tweets consisted of insults and they were making fun of the PM
Other common types of remarks included:
- Disappointed by the PM not showing up as they had been looking forward to it
- Disbelief on the security issue
- Demanding right to know what is going on with 1MDB
- Lost faith/respect for UMNO/BN
- Pity Najib but feel he needs to go
- Najib needs to go to save BN
https://twitter.com/ame_ech/status/606726227496333313
Additional Opinions by Twitter users
Others also used the #Nothing2Hide forum as an opportunity to tweet their thoughts on related topics. Here’s a summary of some of the interesting tweets that were making rounds on Twitter. This list was formulated by Politweet after manually reading the tweets of a sample size of 3,036 Twitter users in Malaysia.
1. Tweets of support for Tun Dr.Mahathir for speaking up
Chants of "Long live Tun" as Tun Dr Mahathir enters hall where @NajibRazak was meant to have a q&a #Nothing2Hide pic.twitter.com/zg8JkNcRtX
— Sumisha Naidu (@sumishanaidu) June 5, 2015
2. Tweets filled with pity and outrage when the police stopped Tun Dr.Mahathir from speaking
Tun Mahathir's speech been cut off by the police just like that? Where's the democracy?
— PU Tera (@HilmanHashim) June 5, 2015
3. Some used the #Nothing2Hide hashtag to make personal confessions. It is worth noting that many of the users we saw engaging on this meme were also retweeting other tweets about the event along with criticisms of Najib Razak. This shows that they were aware of what was going on.
Sebab Najib xdpt dtg event #Nothing2Hide harini. pic.twitter.com/W2G4dlFLlv
— Yazreen Yazeed (@BenedictArian) June 5, 2015
https://twitter.com/soulzoul/status/606662070566723584
4. A minority of users were paranoid and they felt that pitting Malays against each other was exactly what non-Malays and/or DAP want. Whether they were referring to debates between Mahathir supporters and Najib supporters or criticism of Najib by Malays was not always clear.
We usually use our own Facebook friends to gauge if most people are ‘for’ or ‘against’ a certain issue. If most of our friends give positive responses, then we’d automatically jump to the conclusion that that particular issue has a lot of supporters. In the case of #Nothing2Hide, I guess we now have an even clearer idea of what the public thinks.
For a complete list of the analysis, please click here.