Sacking vaults Muhyiddin from low-key politician to people’s champion

KUALA LUMPUR — In the limited 140-character world of Twitter where celebrities and pets jostle for space with politicians and activists, the 68-year-old seasoned politician Mr Muhyiddin Yassin has been barely a blip on the radar of the public who spend their time tweeting their opinions and sharing stories.

But since his removal from Mr Najib Razak's Cabinet on Tuesday (July 28), Mr Muhyiddin has been transformed by the opinions of Malaysian Twitter users into a “champion” of the people for speaking up about 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), according to social media research firm Politweet.

“The response on Twitter was unexpected. Muhyiddin is not much talked-about on a regular basis, however following news of his sacking there was a dramatic increase in tweets mentioning his name,” Politweet told Malay Mail Online in an exclusive analysis of its early findings of the Twitter conversation on the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) deputy president.

Public sentiment in the hours after his unexpected removal from Cabinet has been firmly in Mr Muhyiddin's favour, with the majority of Twitter users expressing surprise, while many showed disappointment, pity and sorrow.

The Twitter responses ranged from support for Mr Muhyiddin to speculation of him quitting UMNO to join political foes Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) or the Islamist party’s splinter faction Harapan Baru, while some Twitter users criticised Mr Najib for being cowardly, Politweet said.

Only a few Twitter users expressed praise at his departure, with the prevailing sentiment instead shown by the most-shared photo on Twitter — where Mr Muhyiddin is seen hugging his wife after the news of his removal from Cabinet.

The Twitter response also cast Mr Najib in an unfavourable light for removing his deputy, with the prime minister perceived as “guilty” or “unreasonable” by choosing to drop Mr Muhyiddin.

“The effect was Muhyiddin being seen as a ‘champion of the people’ for pressuring Najib to explain the 1MDB issue to the public and answer the WSJ allegations,” Politweet said, referring to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report on Malaysian investigators finding an alleged money trail of US$700 million (S$959 million) into Mr Najib’s purported bank accounts.

Just two days before losing all his ministerial posts, Mr Muhyiddin had during the weekend pressed Mr Najib to satisfactorily explain the 1MDB, claiming that he and many ministers were not aware of the “real facts”.

This resulted in a rare public rebuke on Monday from the Prime Minister’s Office, which urged Mr Muhyiddin and other members of the administration not to pre-judge the ongoing investigations on 1MDB.

Mr Muhyiddin, who was mid-way through his second term as a deputy prime minister until yesterday, sparked more Twitter responses compared to recent events, garnering 201,969 tweets from 72,837 users yesterday.

This is in comparison to the lower figures of 52,538 users with 140,866 tweets about hudud during the March 18 to 22 period when the Kelantan state assembly passed a bill on the strict Islamic penal code, Politweet said.

It also noted that 53,886 Twitter users wrote 101,027 tweets about the Kelantan floods on Dec 26 last year, while 31,781 users wrote 79,778 tweets about then Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim on Feb 10 after he was convicted and sentenced to five years’ jail by the Federal Court on the same day.

There was a greater number of Twitter users discussing Singapore’s founding father Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s death on March 23, with 136,267 users writing 309,452 tweets about him.

But there was more intense focus on Mr Muhyiddin’s removal with 916 tweets per minute (TPM) from 802 users at 2.39pm, when compared to Mr Lee’s passing on March 23 with a peak of 770 TPM from 717 users at 4.52am and tweets with Mr Najib peaking at 152 TPM from 145 users at 3.15pm after a WSJ article against him was released on July 3.

Mr Muhyiddin’s new-found fame on Twitter after mostly falling under the radar belies his decades-long political career where he was Menteri Besar of Johor from 1986 to 1995 and helmed five different ministries since 1995.

Mr Muhyiddin, who has launched national blueprints for the country’s education system, is perhaps best-remembered for his decision as the then education minister to reverse a policy to teach Science and Mathematics in English and revert to the Malay language. THE MALAY MAIL ONLINE