New voters trust politicians more than cops, survey shows

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 19 — The police force is less trustworthy than political parties, according to the latest survey of first-time voters by the Merdeka Center.

The result of the “First-Time Voters Public Opinion Survey” carried out between November and December last year appeared to stun even the independent pollster.

“Trust in government and various institutions are marginal — are first time voters disinterested or simply cynical?” it remarked in its poll report made available to The Malaysian Insider this week.

File photo of policemen on duty in Kuala Lumpur to face a protesting crowd. The police force is the most distrusted public institution in the country.

Slightly more than half or 56 per cent of the 826 newly-registered voters in Peninsular Malaysia aged 21 and above polled said they did not trust the police, compared to 47 per cent who said they distrusted political parties, a nine-percentage point gap.

The distrust in the country’s top law enforcement authority stood above all other public institutions surveyed, including both federal and state governments, the Election Commission (EC) and the judiciary.

Slightly more than half of vote virgins polled indicated they put their trust most in the state governments compared to 49 per cent who believed in the election regulator, 47 per cent in Putrajaya, 46 per cent in the courts, 39 per cent in the police and 36 per cent in political parties.

Among race groups, the Chinese were the most distrustful of the police, with eight out of 10 saying they doubted Bukit Aman compared to 46 per cent of Malays and 55 per cent of Indians.

Distrust of political parties was highest among Indians at 57 per cent, followed by 52 per cent of Malays and 33 per cent of Chinese.

Pundits and opposition leaders had cautioned last month that the ongoing backbiting among former senior police officers over alarming tales of power abuse and criminal links has distracted the force from its duties, and added that the trend could cause crime numbers to spike.

They said instead of fighting crime, the police were now too busy defending themselves from the damning stories traded during recent heated exchanges between former Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Musa Hassan and former head of the Commercial Crimes Department Datuk Ramli Yusuff.

PAS’s Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad had pointed out that when a former top law enforcer rides roughshod over current and past police processes, it only lends credence to public fear over the force’s alleged inability to focus on keeping the country’s streets safe.

The police force has recently been taking a beating from the public and opposition lawmakers after a spate of robberies and assaults drew question marks over government statistics showing a significant drop in the country’s crime rate.

Last July, the DAP’s Liew Chin Tong revealed that 86 per cent of the country’s crime busters are not fighting criminals but handling paperwork, “spying” activities and logistics, further fuelling allegations that the authorities have been massaging crime data to paint a good picture of the force.

“Barely 14 per cent of the uniformed police force is in crime-related departments,” he had said in a July statement, referring to the criminal investigation, narcotics and commercial crime investigation departments in the force.

“Meanwhile, a whopping 86 per cent of police personnel belong to the non-crime-related sectors (like) management, internal security and public order, logistics, Special Branch and special task forces,” he added.

He noted that the Criminal Investigation Department made up only eight per cent or 9,346 of the total 105,929 uniformed police force.

“This means six times as many policemen are tasked with non-crime related jobs than those who are fighting crime. No wonder we feel unsafe,” the Bukit Bendera MP had said.