The Malaysian Insider | KUALA LUMPUR, 08-Oct-2009 – Umno appears headed for victory in this weekend’s Bagan Pinang vote, but a huge majority of voters in peninsular Malaysia disagree with Barisan Nasional’s (BN) choice of a tainted candidate, a new poll shows.
A poll by the independent Merdeka Center shows a whopping 87 per cent of voters surveyed disagreed with the choice of a candidate previously charged with vote buying.
The result of the survey suggests that a majority of Malaysian voters agree with the view put forward by former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad that Tan Sri Isa Samad should not have been nominated as BN’s candidate for the Bagan Pinang vote.
The former PM has been a vocal critic of the nomination of the former Negri Sembilan mentri besar who was punished with a three-year suspension after the party’s disciplinary board found him guilty of vote buying during the Umno elections in 2004.
But Isa has proven to be a popular choice in Bagan Pinang, a BN stronghold where the ruling coalition can count on a large bank of postal votes from army personnel.
Umno leaders are hoping that a convincing win this weekend will give the party a much needed boost as it would be BN’s first by-election victory in peninsular Malaysia since Election 2008.
Party leaders are hoping that a win would help rally the party faithful to help fend off Pakatan Rakyat’s (PR) challenge to BN rule.
But critics, chief among them Dr Mahathir, have argued that winning with a tainted leader like Isa would send out the wrong message to voters nationally.
Prior to Isa’s nomination, Dr Mahathir had said that nominating Isa would show that Umno had not learned its lessons. He also added that having a candidate like Isa, who had been involved with corruption, did not speak well for Umno and BN.
The Merdeka Center suggests voters agree with him. The same poll also showed that voters are intolerant of sex scandals. A whopping 75 per cent of those polled said they did not agree that a leader tainted by a sex scandal should lead a major political party.
This comes as MCA holds an EGM this weekend in which party delegates will ultimately choose whether to back Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat or Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek. Dr Chua was secretly filmed having sex with his mistress and the recording was leaked in late 2007.
Ong has also been affected by allegations of graft after he was accused of accepting a RM10 million donation and taking free rides on private jets owned by a company being investigated by his ministry.
According to the Merdeka Center, a total of 846 registered voters were randomly selected for the poll. The margin of error was 3.4 per cent.