'Only 11pct of Malay voters cared about Malay interests'

Only 11 percent of Malays polled just before the 13th general election said the protection of Malay community interests and the community's political clout was a concern for them going into the election.

Most respondents were instead more concerned about issues pertaining to the economy, independent pollster Merdeka Centre told a forum today.

"Generally, the election was driven by concern among the bulk of voters on issues pertaining to economic management.

"When we asked respondents what were the issues they wanted to be clarified in the election, most said the economy.

"And when we asked if there were other issues, they raised matters of security or protection of racial interests and issues of Malay politics. But of the Malays, this (issues of Malay politics) only made up 11 to 12 percent," Merdeka Centre director Ibrahim Suffian said.

Speaking at the forum organised by the Universiti Malaya Centre of Democracy and Elections, Ibrahim said that concerns over "practical" matters also cut across race lines.

One clear example of this was in Batang Kali, which strongly supported Pakatan Rakyat in 2008, but withdrew support in the 2010 Hulu Selangor by-election, and again on May 5.

"It will be clear when you drive around there. The roads are filled with potholes, lallang overgrowth and scary abandoned houses in Bukit Beruntung. These are practical issues," he said at forum held at Universiti Malaya.

All the same, Ibrahim (right) said, respondents who were leaning towards the BN did express concern over the lack of clarity over Pakatan's stand on the future of the New Economic Policy, which have greatly benefited the Malays.

He said voting patterns also differed within ethnic communities and was determined by economic class structures and geography.

Chinese voters who are from the lower-middle or working class, for example, were more supportive of the BN while upper-middle class and affluent Chinese were pro-Pakatan.

Spillover effect

On a separate matter, Ibrahim said Malaysian voters residing in Singapore also played a tremendous role in the Johor election results.

This was because 200,000 of the roughly 450,000 Malaysians residing in Singapore were registered voters and many crossed over to cast their votes.

"We were monitoring voter movements and found the traffic jam across the causeway in the two to three days leading to the election to be unusual.

"Bus tickets, etc, were sold out and people started chartering buses. There was a lot of voter movement and the spillover was all over the place," Ibrahim said.

He said movements across Malaysia's northern border were as not noticeable, however, as there are not as many Malaysians residing in the south of Thailand who are registered as voters.

Fellow panellist Keeran Sivarajah (left) from the Institute of Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas) said the spillover would have been more pronounced had the criteria and guideline for postal voting for Malaysians overseas had been released earlier.

"The overseas voting criteria was haphazard. They were released very late and were not very clear.

"And it was really not the role of the Election Commission to say that Malaysians in Singapore or in the south of Thailand can return to vote.

"If they were allowed to vote at the High Commission in Singapore, the vote impact would be different," said Keevan, who managed Ideas' election monitoring mission.