Sex video may damage Anwar, Pakatan support, poll finds
(The Malaysian Insider) – Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and his Pakatan Rakyat (PR) pact may be in trouble with voters due to the latest sex video scandal, according to a Merdeka Center survey taken last week.
The independent pollster found that while most people rejected the video’s authenticity, purportedly featuring Anwar with a foreign prostitute, a significant number were unsure.
Adding to the bleak outcome, many of the 504 respondents surveyed also felt that the entire episode that first came to light on March 21 would affect their confidence in PR.
“A lot of grey areas with the public, denoting possibly uncertainty, some hesitation or simply the lack of information when talking about Anwar, given that most publicly available news about him tends to be one-sided and negative,” Merdeka Center director Ibrahim Suffian said of the survey results.
The telephone survey between March 24 and 27 has an estimated margin of error at ± 4.40 per cent. A total of 504 respondents were selected via random stratified sampling method along the lines of state, ethnicity, gender and age.
According to the survey findings obtained by The Malaysian Insider, of the 504 respondents polled, 85 per cent were aware of the existence of the video while 15 per cent were not.
In total, 51 per cent did not believe that Anwar was the man in the 21-minute recording while a significant 29 per cent were unsure.
A total of 17 per cent believed in the video with three per cent saying they strongly believed that Anwar was the man in the recording.
When asked if the video would affect their confidence in PR, 48 per cent disagreed and 14 per cent said they were unsure.
Despite this however, a whopping 41 per cent agreed that the latest caper would tarnish their view of PR.
Corresponding to that, the respondents were also asked if they believed that the video would eventually lead to PR’s destruction.
While 45 per cent disagreed, 38 per cent predicted that it would while 16 per cent said they were unsure.
Anwar and his PR comrades has been on damage control-mode since the release of the controversial video, but many have predicted that this latest scandal would cause a chink in the pact’s armour.
Anwar has himself denied that he was the man, and called the emergence of the video recording a “scurrilous attack” against him, his family and PR.
But the video, coupled with Anwar’s ongoing Sodomy II trial and several revelations made by his arch-nemesis former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad in the latter’s latest book, could very well become the last straw for opposition supporters, who are said to have grown increasingly disillusioned with PR since Elections 2008.
