On Twitter, Anwar is going, going…
(Malay mail Online) – Once touted as a possible prime minister-in-waiting, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has all but faded from the minds of most Malaysians.
Attention for the jailed PKR de facto leader has dwindled sharply with each day of his five-year prison sentence for sodomy since February last year, according to a recent study of local political trends on social media by Politweet made available to Malay Mail Online.
Once the most popular opposition politician on social media, the former opposition leader has slid sharply down the ladder, going from third to ninth, having been displaced by PKR secretary-general Rafizi Ramli as well as his own daughter, Nurul Izzah Anwar.
Worryingly for PKR that is still campaigning for Anwar’s release, the movements to call for his freedom are also gaining little traction on social media.
Despite at least five campaigns to demand for his release, attention for the one time deputy prime minister has dropped to less than a tenth of what it had been prior to his imprisonment last year.
“Since its peak at 12,505 users and 27,990 tweets in February, interest in the combined campaigns has dropped to 1,271 users and 1,660 tweets in December,” Politweet noted in its study.
There was a surge of tweets and mentions of Anwar in July, however, following the removal for Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin as deputy prime minister, although the attention then was due to parallels being drawn to Anwar’s sacking in 1998 also from the same post.
The Federal Court sentenced Anwar to five years’ imprisonment on February 10, 2015 when it upheld the Court of Appeal’s 2014 ruling that reversed the leader’s previous acquittal of sodomising former aide Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan.
Anwar was subsequently disqualified as a federal lawmaker for the Permatang Pauh seat.
He was replaced as federal opposition leader by his wife, PKR president Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail.
The Pakatan Rakyat pact that he led has also since broken up due to the acrimony between PAS and DAP.
