The Malaysian Insider | BANGI, 11-Jul-2011 — A new survey among Malaysian Muslim youth released today show a large majority back the idea for the Quran to replace the Federal Constitution as the country’s highest law.

The survey in Malaysia by independent pollster Merdeka Center revealed that about 72 per cent of Muslims aged 15 to 25 support the Islamic holy book as the highest law; 25 per cent disagreed.

About 71.5 per cent support the cutting off of hands as punishment for convicted thieves, and 92.5 per cent agree to the death sentence for murderers.

Support for whipping as punishment for those who drink alcohol is at 92.4 per cent.

While the young Muslims surveyed appear to be religiously conservative at first glance, their views in real life appear to contradict the show of support for this change.

Only 18.1 per cent confessed to read the Quran often; 8.6 per cent say they never do; and the rest say they read it sometimes.

According to Merdeka Center director Ibrahim Suffian(picture), the conflict is due to the perception among Muslims that the Quran, being God’s law, has a higher status than the Federal Constitution.Only 28.7 per cent say they always perform the compulsory five daily prayers.

“Why many see it so is partly because in Muslim life, the Quran is . . .  complete,” he told The Malaysian Insider.

“Many are also not exposed to discussions on the Constitution and the position of Islam within it in the current education system,” he added.

The survey polled 1,060 people between October and November last year.

About 70 per cent of Malaysian Muslims surveyed were ethnically Malay, while the remaining minority were mostly Bumiputera Muslims from Sabah.

The survey also included Muslim youth in Indonesia, home to the world’s biggest Muslim population.

In the same survey to find out their priorities for the future, only 20 per cent of Indonesian Muslim youth answered “Yes” when asked if the Quran should replace their country’s constitution.

The survey “Values, dreams, Ideals: Muslim Youth in Southeast Asia” was jointly conducted by Merdeka Center with University Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Goethe Institute Malaysia, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom and, on the Indonesian side, the Lembaga Survei Indonesia.

Todayonline.com | SINGAPORE, 27-May-2011 – Younger voters here tend to consider issues and political candidates more when it comes to casting their ballots, a survey has found.

Older voters, on the other hand, view the political party and its leadership as more important.

The Merdeka Center poll, conducted between April 27 and May 5, also threw up other distinctions in political attitudes between those above and below 50.

For instance, although the majority of the 611 respondents were satisfied with the PAP Government’s performance – almost three-quarters were of the view that Singapore was heading in the right direction – some two-thirds of them supported the idea of having a stronger Opposition.

Of these, those in their 20s to 40s in particular were three-to-one in support of opposition parties, buttressing the popular perception that younger voters, which made up a quarter of all voters this year, played a significant role in the swing against the ruling party in the recent General Election (GE).

However, this did not translate proportionally to them wanting more seats for the Opposition in Parliament.

The survey also found that the older one got, the less likely they were likely to find an Opposition party credible.

An overwhelming majority of of Singaporeans also turn to the mainstream media for political news. Newspapers, followed by television, comprised 83 per cent of respondents’ first source of information.

Asked to rank the important issues in GE 2011, over two in five put cost of living and inflation on top of the list.

Healthcare (13%) and housing (12%) were the next most important.

In spite of its prominence in media coverage in the months leading to the elections, immigration was ranked as important by only 5 per cent of the respondents.

The telephone survey randomly selected registered Singaporean voters and was designed to mirror the electorate profile in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, and area of residence.

The Malaysian Insider | PETALING JAYA, 27-Apr-2011 — PKR’s dismal performance in the Sarawak election is a disturbing omen of how the party will fare in the next general election unless it institutes painful changes, a political analyst said last night.

Political scientist Dr Andrew Aeria said the party organised a respectable pre-election training programme but it ultimately foundered in making use of those preparations during the campaigning period.

“The campaign itself was too leader-centric,” said Aeria, referring to how campaign materials often featured the faces of the party’s top leaders like Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and Sarawak PKR chief Baru Bian.

“And they did not offer an alternative to the policies the Barisan Nasional was offering. If it was change, then change to what? That’s what people want to know,” Aeria told a forum here last night on the election results and its implications.

He added that if the party hopes to do well, the PKR also needed to replace its “re-recycled leaders” with new ones and have stronger grassroots machinery.

This, however, did not mean that BN could automatically defeat PKR and wrest back lost seats and Selangor, a state where the former is the dominant party in the Pakatan Rakyat government.

Aeria, of Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, said BN must also put through meaningful reforms if it wants to recapture the trust of a public weary of sloganeering.

The PKR fielded 49 candidates in the Sarawak election — the most out all PR and BN parties — but only managed to win three seats: Ba Kelalan, Krian and Batu Lintang.

Its PR partner, DAP, on the other hand, won 12 of the 15 seats it contested. Islamist party PAS won none of the five seats it contested.

BN was able to retain the two-thirds majority in the Sarawak state assembly when it won 55 seats. However, it only secured 54.5 per cent of the popular vote.

Aeria described PKR’s Sarawak campaign as “paradoxical” as it was organised and, at the same time, dysfunctional.

The PKR held pre-election training programmes for polling and counting agents, and for potential candidates.

It also had the support of local non-governmental organisations to tap into widespread anger among Dayaks over ancestral land disputes.

Yet when it came time to the actual campaign, the party was torn by factionalism and infighting between local influential figures over who gets to be a candidate, he said.

“Some candidates were even residing in Kuala Lumpur and flew back to stand in their area. In some places, there was not even a grassroots machinery to help them campaign.

At an earlier press conference, PKR strategy director Rafizi Ramli admitted the party was stretched thinly across the 49 seats. However, it was forced to do so because it did not want to give BN walkover victories in 24 seats.

Initially, PKR had only wanted to contest in 25 seats where it had established a presence and was confident of gaining support.

But it was forced to contest in these 24 other seats because neither of its partners wanted to step up and “share the burden” of standing against the BN, Rafizi said.

PKR’s final decision to stand in these “unwinnable” areas crimped the party’s ability to pool its resources and focus on the 25 seats which it stood an even chance of winning.

Aeria noted that a weakness in the PR campaign was that each party’s grassroots machinery did not work each other.

“There was a lot of co-operation between the leaders of each party in how they staged ceramah together. But there was no cooperation at the grassroots level”.

“Moving forward, all parties, whether in BN or PR need to reform and renew. The electorate is more interested in substantive issues but the parties seem stuck in the past,” Aeria said.

The Malaysian Insider | PETALING JAYA, 27-Apr-2011 — Political analysts have warned that Pakatan Rakyat (PR) could lose its momentum in Sarawak should Chief Minister Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud resign before the next general election.

In their analysis of the just-concluded state polls, the scholars pointed out last night without the “anti-Taib” rallying cry to unite opposition supporters, Barisan Nasional (BN) may regain its lost votes — particularly from the rural communities.

As such, they said all PR parties — including DAP — needed to quickly formulate a new strategy that would bring their campaign beyond the anti-Taib sentiment and penetrate deeper into the interiors of the hornbill state where BN’s vote bank lies.

Political scientist Wong Chin Huat said DAP could not afford to rest on its laurels and expect its victories to repeat in the coming polls without working hard to keep its message alive among its supporters.

“PR will go forward but can it continue to maintain its dominance in urban Sarawak?

“Taib is now seen as a ‘rural CM’. Will he go before the federal elections? If he does, the opposition cannot campaign against him [any] longer because you cannot find a leader more hated than him.

“But can they survive without Taib?” he said during a Merdeka Center forum on the April 16 Sarawak state polls held at the Hilton Hotel here last night.

Wong pointed out that failure to perform well in Sarawak during the general election would mirror PR’s failure to wrest control of Putrajaya.

This, he said, was because by remaining in the opposition, PR parties would find it hard to prove to voters that they could do better than the ruling government.

“Like in Sarawak… can DAP do better than SUPP in government? They need to be remembered… they need to show that although they are in the opposition, they are really driving the state forward,” he said.

Wong said PR needed to offer “something” tangible to Sarawak voters to keep their support from dissipating, stressing on an often-raised point that the political expectations of east Malaysians vastly differed from those of the peninsula voters.

“PR does not have a policy for Sarawak. Its urban centre is stuck now as there is a stagnation in development so PR needs to offer something.

“(Penang Chief Minister) Lim Guan Eng came in to speak about offering free WiFi to Sarawakians but that is a West Malaysian thing; it’s different in Sarawak,” he pointed out.

Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas) Associate Professor Dr Andrew Aeria agreed, noting PR’s message to voters was to “change” but that the pact had failed to explain the alternatives.

“You tell them to change but change for what? Do not forget, BN has an economic policy in place and whether we like to admit it or not, people have benefitted.

“PR has not come up with an economic programme for Sarawak… so if you want to dislodge their programme, you need to come up with something better,” he warned.

He agreed that while many voters were unhappy with Taib’s 30-year rule, they still voted him into power as they were comfortable with doing so.

“True, it is always better to be safe than sorry and voters are very rational that way. Until and unless you can provide them with a better alternative, they would not want to risk it.

“This sentiment may not be shared by the urban communities but for those in the rural areas, losing BN is seen as very risky,” he explained.

Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas) lecturer Dr Faisal Syam Hazis concurred with his fellow academicians, adding that all three PR parties needed to pool their resources and begin working the ground immediately to prepare for the general election.

He said DAP needed to move beyond its representation of the urban Chinese communities while all PR parties should share in the burden of taking on seats in BN strongholds.

“In the polls, DAP was obviously very well-equipped but the other PR parties were struggling with their campaigns.

“There is a need for PR to formulate strategies together,” he said.

Aeria agreed that the Sarawak state polls had seen a divided campaign among DAP, PKR and PAS, resulting in imbalanced victories between the parties.

On April 16, DAP emerged the biggest winners by securing 12 of the 15 state seats it had contested. PKR trailed behind, winning three of its 49 seats, while PAS failed to win a single seat.

Aeria said PKR’s biggest weakness in the polls was its lack of co-ordination and groundwork among candidates. He added that PR was still arguing over its manifesto even after nomination day.

“There was also no sharing of campaign machineries. It did not happen. Every party went out on their own.

“It is true that the leaders came together — Lim Kit Siang, Guan Eng, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, Datuk Nik Aziz Nik Mat — but the machinery at the lower ground level… that was another story,” he said.

Faisal agreed that PR needed to stop depending heavily on the anti-Taib vote in the coming polls, particularly to prepare for the possibility that the chief minister stepped down before it is called.

The 13th general election must be called by April 2013. During the Sarawak state polls, Taib had promised to leave in “two or three years’” time, bowing to public pressure and the growing disenchantment among even BN leaders against his lengthy leadership.

The opposition had centred most of its campaign messages on calling for Taib’s early resignation, capitalising on the numerous allegations of corruption and abuse of power made against the country’s longest-serving chief minister.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak also spent six days in Sarawak urging voters to believe Taib’s resignation plan, an unprecedented move that PR had described as a desperate attempt by the ruling pact to cling on to its fixed deposit state.

“So if Taib goes, what’s next? The challenge is for PR to penetrate the rural seats. Overcome the struggle between the opposition factions,” said Faisal

However, the analysts also agreed that with Taib’s thumping victory on April 16, it was unlikely that the chief minister would relinquish his post before the national poll.

BN managed to triumph in 55 seats during the state polls, retaining its two-thirds majority in the state and safely recapturing government.

Of the 55, Taib’s PBB topped the charts by winning in all 35 state seats that it contested while PRS won eight of its nine seats, SPDP in six of its eight seats and SUPP in six of 19 seats contested.

The ruling pact’s popular vote, however, dipped considerably — from 63 per cent in 2006 to 55.5 per cent this year.