Losing the perception game
Salleh Said Keruak
Politics is a game of perception and since the 1980s Malaysia has been a victim of bad publicity. For 30 years Malaysia and the Barisan Nasional-led Malaysian government has been the target of attacks by the western media — and since the 1990s by Malaysia’s alternative or social media.
This state of affairs came about soon after Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad took over as Prime Minister and is the result of Dr Mahathir not willing to bow or kowtow to the west. In fact, Dr Mahathir was openly very critical of Britain, the United States and Australia.
Malaysia’s GDP per capita is of over US$10,000, roughly twice that of Thailand and three times that of Indonesia. But the western media insists that the economies of Thailand and Indonesia are better managed than Malaysia’s. This is one example of biased western reporting and reporting not based on statistics.
Dr Mahathir was never popular with the west or with the western media. And this is because he called a spade a spade and exposed the hypocrisy and double standards of the west. And the west did not like this. Hence Malaysia could never do anything right. Everything it did was wrong.
Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak has inherited the legacy of the Dr Mahathir era — the western media’s hatred for the Malaysian government. Hence anything that Malaysia or the Malaysian government does is never right even when the country’s GDP per capita is twice that of Thailand and three times that of Indonesia.
That is good news. The western media does not like good news regarding Malaysia or the Malaysian government. They want to focus on only the bad news and if there is no bad news they can always create bad news regarding the country.
The Najib administration must take serious note of this. For 30 years since the 1980s Malaysia and the Malaysian government has been the favourite punching bag of the west and the western media. And the Najib administration does not have an effective perception management team to counter this.
Malaysia has failed to correct this negative perception regarding the country. To be fair, Dr Mahathir never cared much about what the west thought of him so he did not bother to do anything about it. But in today’s era of the alternative and social media, the Najib administration can no longer ignore this. This matter needs to be addressed.
It becomes worse when even the government-friendly mainstream and social media jump onto the bandwagon and take pot shots at the Prime Minister. Saying nice things about the government does not attract readers. Saying bad things does. So they prefer to carry negative rather than positive stories regarding the government.
