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Opinion polls and why it cannot be trusted in Malaysia

WAS THE HIGH VOTER turnout in he recent general elections expected? Of course, says the New Straits Times in an analysis yesterday (NST, 26 March 2004, p2) the high voter turnout in the Malay heartland was not unexpected. The NST, after all, commissioned the Universiti Utara Malaysia, to conduct an opinion poll, and it more or less mirrored the results. The survey showed that 93 per cent of voters in Trengganu and 94 per cent in Kelantan would vote the National Front (BN). The voter turnout in fact was 89.72 per cent and 80.99 respectively. The other BN-controlled newspaper, the Star, had another poll to come to the same results: that the BN would recapture the Malay heartland under the great and glorius leadership of the man of the hour.

These polls, on hindsight, suggests only that it was part of the larger plan to hijack the four Malay states. Should international opposition to what happen surface, Malaysia now has "independent" polls, in a format the Westerners can understand, to divert criticism. That criticism would not come now: the Opposition PAS, in the worldview of those on the side of might and right, is more closely alighned to the Taliban than democracy. So, it is all right to defeat them by fair means and foul.

There is a fascination with polls in Malaysia. Partly it comes from the belief that we are now headed for the first world, the first world has regular opinion polls, and so we should have them too. When the PAS newspaper, Harakah, had its internet poll, not with any scientific basis but more to needle the UMNO leaders, the reaction in UMNO is one of shell shock. The questions are explosive, for instance, if Pak Lah is more popular than Tun Mahathir Mohamed before he stepped down as prime minister. But there is no basis to have one that is scientifically acceptable. Choosing a sample is difficult. People do not like to talk of their likes and dislikes to strangers, for fear they come from the government to find out if they are hiding something.

The idea of opinion polls is alien to most Malaysians, even in the cities. But Malaysians have studied in the United States of America is the hundreds of thousands, and those in power believe polls could sway voters as it does in the West. Those in power believe in it, which is why they are jarred by the unscientific and needling Harakah surveys, and believe so would the rest of the country. It is as false as assumption as it can be. But with the media in its control, it could get away with it, until one day in the future it is stopped in its tracks by relying too much on opinion polls.

We do not have a history of polling to find out what people think on issues of the day. So, this sudden explosion of polling and its remarkable conclusion that the people of the four northern states were about to throw the Opposition into the dustbin of history did suggest a self-serving agenda. And so it has proved. The sample is less than 1,000. We do not know how they were selected, who they are, and how they were polled. A man I spoke to who is involved in one insisted the sample was "scientifically selected" but would not give details. For such a poll to be of any use, its researches would have to meet the respondents personally.

One would assume that most of those polled were Malays, from the rural heartland, and unused to being asked intrusive questions like whom they would vote for. The pollsters would be well-dressed city slickers or others to whom the rural folk would not open their hearts to. The former Kedah mentri besar, Tan Sri Sanusi Junid, told me the difficulty he had, when head of rural banking at what is now the Standard and Chartered Bank, in getting the confidence of the farmers in the state. He found that anyone who came from the city stood out like a sore thumb, and he had to forbid his men to turn up in other than open collared shirt and trousters. Even then it took him a while to get the farmers' confidence to get the rural loan scheme working. This is when you want to give money away. How much more difficult would it to be go in cold to find out how you would vote.

The samples almost certainly is wrong. A BN-sponsored survey would not pay much attention to what PAS or KeADILan or DAP supporters think. In the short time it has, it would have concentrated on BN members. And the BN members have a vested interest in a BN victory, and their responses would fit into that. This is nothing more than a straw poll, as unscientific as they are, and does not point to a trend, unless it is part of a larger plan. That there was one is now clear. The high voter turnout in Kelantan and Trengganu was no accident. It was deliberately concocted by the BN and the Election Commission to throw PAS out.

That is coming unstuck as the EC chairman, Tan Sri Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman, rushes hither and thither to save his skin. As for the BN, it is safe and dry, it has the best result it could have hoped for. It won the elections with the opposition decimated. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. And it sets down to a fine meal savouring its victory. If the EC is at fault, it does not mean the election results must be vitiated. The BN did what the election survey found out. That it all that matters. The EC chairman will not call for fresh or fair elections. The time for that is over. From now on, the opposition will face a panopoly of irrelevant statistics and surveys to show it is fit only for the dustbin, that the BN is the party of the next half a century, that it would defy the harbingers of doom to show how relevant it it in the years ahead.

All that this surveys show is the extent of phantom voters. The BN has relied on them for decades. They are paid to vote in as many constituencies as possible. I know of one man who was paid handsomely to vote in as many polling stations up and down the country: his record in 1990 was 15. Phantom voters will not go away when the ruling party, to remain in power, would make use of them. The time around the BN would get away with it. Both Washington and Kuala Lumpur has the same enemy: Islamic fundamentalism. Besides, Washington now has an inside track with the prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

The SCOMI scandal forced Pak Lah to be at the beck and call of the United States. No previous prime minister has been so compromised. There is nothing Malaysia can do about it. This electoral rigging would have caused an international furore but it would not - for the moment anyway. There is another reason: Pak Lah wants the United States to sideline he who must be destroyed at all cost. Washington appears to have taken the bait. Why not, when it has a more important man in its grasp. In politics and public life, there are neither permanent friends nor permanent enemies, only permanent interests. Washington knows this only too well. Malaysia not at all. This cosy relationship will, in the future, be under strain. That is when Kuala Lumpur would realise it is too late to protest. Even opinion polls would not save it then.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@streamyx.com