NAJIB MOST HATED MAN IN ASEAN, NO.2 IN WHOLE OF ASIA

After more than a year in development and testing, Facebook has expanded its popular “Like” button to include other “reactions”. Four days ago, people can see and choose “love,” “haha,” “wow,” “sad,”and “angry” gesture. There’s no “Dislike” button as requested because Facebook claims that the new mix of reactions has proven popular with users during testing in Spain and Ireland.

Since the newly introduced emojis, users wasted no time and have been busy expressing their opinions on public figures. Earlier today (Feb 28), Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying or popularly known as CY Leung has emerged as a winner, for the wrong reason. Highly unpopular in Hong Kong by virtue of him being a mainland China’s puppet, he had gained 150,000 scowling faces.

However, when we checked late evening today, his popularity, or rather unpopularity climbs to more than 170,000. What this means is CY Leung is more than 100-times unpopular than US presidential candidate Donald Trump despite Trump being called a racist for calling on the United States to ban Muslims from entering the country.

The measurement is based on the leaders’ Facebook profile picture or photo. On the same profile photo, CY Leung only garnered 5,400+ “Like” and 1,160+ “Sad” emojis. It’s not difficult to understand why the Hong Kong chief executive is presently so unpopular. He got the job for allegely “kow-tow” to mainland China and has been doing all the dirty work on their behalf.

CY Leung was accused of taking orders from China in suppressing and oppressing Hong Kong’s democracy hence was called an underground communist. During a crackdown on protesters in Oct 2014, he was accused of endorsing Hong Kong police in using pepper spray and tear gas, something rarely used on peaceful demonstrators.

If that was not bad enough, CY Leung had also allegedly used triad gangswho sexually assaulted and intimidated protesters. In a contract dated Dec 2, 2011, he was also exposed in corruption by receiving HKD 50 million from an Australian engineering company UGL. Beijing, of course, has since chosen to look the other way.

While there’s little doubt that CY Leung is Asia’s worst and most hated leader as far as Facebook angry emoji is concerned, for now, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak comfortably secured the most hated leader in South-east Asia or ASEAN. So far the most notorious prime minister Malaysia has ever produced – Najib Razak – is not far behind with 74,000 angry emojis, and counting.

As amusing as it may look, both CY Leung and Najib Razak are in a race towards an embarrassing award – who will be the most unpopular or hated leader in Asia, if not the world. Najib could give CY Leung a run for his money because earlier of the day, the Malaysian prime minister Facebook profile photo only saw about 10,000 angry emojis.

Towards evening on the same day (Feb 28), Najib’s “angry-face” button skyrockets to more than 74,000, and climbing. Just like CY Leung, Najib is highly unpopular in the social media due to his multiple scandals which attracted not only domestic attention, but also international community so much so that even his own brother Nazir Razak was ashamed and distanced himself.

However, the timing of the Facebook new buttons couldn’t come at a worst time when Najib Razak suspended his former deputy Prime Minster Muhyiddin Yassin as the UMNO deputy president until the next party elections – with immediate effect 2-day ago. In his latest outburst, Muhyiddin claims former Attorney General Gani Patail had briefed him on a “charge sheet” (warrant of arrest) for PM Najib.

Clearly, the suspension of Muhyiddin was taken as a retaliation towards critics who questioned Najib’s involvement in corruption, money laundering and misappropriation in the 1MDB’s RM42 billion debt scandal, RM2.6 billion donation and SRC’s RM42 million found in his personal bank accounts. Will Najib Razak overtake CY Leung in the “Unpopularity Contest”?

- http://www.financetwitter.com/