Ipsos Malaysia managing director Arun Menon speaks at a press conference in Kuala Lumpur May 2, 2019. — Picture by Choo Choy May

KUALA LUMPUR, May 2 — Malaysians’ concern over financial and political corruption have eased to the point of being surpassed by worries about crime and violence, according to a survey of public sentiment inside the first year of Pakatan Harapan’s governance.

The poll by independent market research company Ipsos found that corruption-related concerns fell to 32 per cent this month versus 47 per cent out of 1,500 respondents nationwide ahead of the 14th general election.

The findings are an indication of how much Malaysians’ confidence has grown in the war on corruption as their concern about crime actually declined between the two polls, going from 40 before the general election to 39 per cent now.

However, the study found a significant drop in the public sentiment on the direction of the government, with 57 per cent now agreeing this was correct when it had been 75 per cent previously.

“Right before the election, 60 per cent of the respondents think the government was heading in the wrong direction. But because of the expectations, post-election, the number was high.

“Though the public excitement has dropped over the one year, it is still positive as the number is more than half. But there is an upward trend of those seeing the government to be heading towards the wrong direction,” Ipsos Malaysia managing director Arun Menon said in his presentation here on the survey titled “What Worries Malaysia: Is Malaysia Moving in the Right Direction?”

“It is also important to note that this trend is common for all countries that have gone through an election. Recently we can see in Italy, Mexico and even Korea, all these countries had gone through having these expectations after changing the government in an election as well, which would later on drop.”

Arun said those who perceived the current government to be heading in the wrong direction were mostly from the young, urban, middle- and lower-income households, which also viewed inflation and cost of living as one of their top three concerns.

When met later, Arun clarified that the main concern for Malaysians when the survey was first conducted in the country three years ago in 2017 was on immigration issues, followed by corruption in 2018, and now crime and violence.

“Crime and violence as well as corruption is an issue that is a global concern, so what we can see now is that people are shifting towards the concerns towards cost of living issues,” he said.

The study was conducted through online and face-to-face interviews on a monthly basis across the country.