PAKATAN Harapan’s reluctance to use government funds to run its social media units is among the main reasons for the ruling pact to fail in promoting its programmes and policies, said party workers and social media influencers.

They said that unlike Barisan Nasional, PH refused to use taxpayers’ money to employ  cybertroopers.

“A media team needs money but the government is unwilling to pay for it. We know that Barisan Nasional used taxpayers’ money to fund its cybertroopers but Pakatan refuses to do that,” said Bersatu media volunteer Herman Haassan.

Herman told The Malaysian Insight PH did not have a coordinated media unit.

“All they have is staff to take care of the ministers’ Facebook pages,” he said.

“The only active official media channel is the Kedah Menteri Besar Mukhriz Mahathir Fan Club page,” he added.

Other party workers said PH needed to reactivate its media units to halt its decline in popularity.

“The opposition doesn’t really have a lot of negative facts or scandals to work with but the wrong perception it has planted is working.

“To combat this, PH’s media units need to step up and be more aggressive,” said Amanah’s Media Oren operations director Mohamad Hilmi Ridzwan.

Hilmi said the four PH component parties of Amanah, Bersatu, PKR and DAP were aware of the importance of social media in influencing Malaysian politics.

“Media Oren stresses on information dissemination through the phone. In the context of today, information is too easily obtainable and the ones who can control it will benefit,” said Hilmi.

Merdeka Centre for Opinion research shows PH’s popularity has fallen to just 39% in one year.

A poll by Ilham Centre shows that more than a third of Malay respondents get their news from social media sources.

Those who ran PH’s media campaign have also become too busy since the coalition won the general election.
 
A minister’s aide who declined to be identified said he hadn’t had the time to organise PKR’s group of social media volunteers since joining the government.

“There’s so much to do in government as we are new and there is a lot of fire fighting to be done. As such, I have not had time to work with our volunteers,” said the PKR member.

He said PKR leaders were aware of the party’s inactivity on social media since it won power and  hoped to rectify that soon.
 
What changed?

Prior to the general election last year, PH was the most active party in social media. It has since fallen behind the opposition led by Umno.

A reason for this is that the staff who ran the various parties’ media units have mostly taken up government postions, Hilmi said.

“Some of the Amanah volunteersare now the ministers’ aides and we have not been able to fill the void,” said Hilmi.

During the elections, Media Oren had up to 200 volunteers.

A DAP worker told The Malaysian Insight that the party was facing a similar problem of staffing.

“When PH took over, the ministers needed staff who were familiar with the party principles and whom they could trust to handle party matters.

“As such, the majority of our media staff had to be recruited to join the government. We haven’t had the chance to train up new people to fill up the gap,” said the full-time worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In Bersatu, Herman said schisms had appeared since PH took over Putrajaya.

“Before the elections, everyone was firmly behind Dr Mahathir Mohamad. Since then, the volunteers are split as some have begun to take sides, aligning themselves with different ministers.”

Another reason, said Herman, was that it was easier to attack the government than to support it.

“There are some issues we can’t even agree on. So it’s hard to be supportive.”

One example was Johor Bahru MP Akmal Nasir’s decision to hold a buka puasa event at a Sikh temple in his constituency, he said.

“Although PH has governed the country for just one year, some of its MPs have started to do strange things. As such, it’s unsurprising that it is finding it hard to win support.” – June 16, 2019.