Majority DO NOT want Sultan to have final say on MB: Poll shows disagree and inclined to disagree total 52% vs 48% who agree

SHAH ALAM - A majority of respondents in a one week survey conducted on the Selangor menteri besar crisis last month agreed that the Sultan of Selangor has the ultimate power to decide on who should be the next menteri besar.

More than 48 per cent of the 2,183 respondents polled agreed that the Sultan should decide on the next menteri besar compared to 36.4 per cent who are not inclined to agree while 15.6 per cent do not.

The respondents, who were selected through random sampling, had also blamed the state's political fiasco on opposition de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

More than 44.5 per cent of the respondents blamed Anwar, while another 17.9 per cent blamed Pas president Datuk Seri Hadi Awang and another 15.3 per cent felt Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail was to be blamed.

The survey, conducted by Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) Shah Alam associate professor Prof Dr Ismail Sualman, also revealed that more than 50.8 per cent of the respondents feel that the Selangor political fiasco will have an impact on the overall performance of Pakatan Rakyat in the next general election.

Ismail said the respondents, who comprised of 54 per cent male and 45 per cent female, had also expressed desire to see Khalid continue his job as the menteri besar.

"More than 36 per cent of the respondent felt that Khalid should remain as menteri besar while another 31 per cent wanted to remain neutral.

"A mere 3.8 per cent strongly do not agree with Khalid as the menteri besar," he said after presenting his survey at a closed-door dialogue session organised by the National Council of Professors here, today.

Ismail added that the choice of sampling focused on the differences in the opinions of urban and rural residents in Selangor. He said the 2,000 plus respondents are representative of close to a million Selangorians.

"From our survey we have concluded that if a state poll is called, Pakatan stand to lose a number of seats, especially in the Malay majority and rural areas," he said.

The new Selangor menteri besar will be sworn in on Tuesday. -NST