Malaysia state polls: could TikTok domination give Perikatan Nasional the edge?

TikTok, used by an estimated half of Malaysians, is a connection point in the Malay heartlands to culture wars and criticism of Anwar’s government
Experts say Anwar could be in for a bruising at the polls if the opposition wins the social media battle, with PH’s strategy criticised as ‘all over the place’

Malaysia

Hadi Azmi

Published: 5:30pm, 10 Aug 2023

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Malaysia’s opposition appears to be winning the social media battle ahead of Saturday’s crunch state elections with paid-for YouTube and Facebook content and live TikTok videos partly replacing door-to-door canvassing, a contrast to Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s anaemic efforts to reach voters over the internet.

The polls, contested in six of Malaysia’s 13 states – including the industrial powerhouses of Selangor and Penang held by Pakatan Harapan (PH) – are widely seen as a barometer of support for Anwar’s eight-month-old administration.

Critics say Anwar’s administration has lost its fizz, bogged down by a sluggish economy, fissures in his coalition and a resurgent Perikatan Nasional (PN) opposition – including the Islamist PAS party – which has leapt on culture wars and accuses the government of failing the country’s Malay majority population.

PN’s dominance on TikTok, a platform used by an estimated half of Malaysians, has even irked communications minister Fahmi Fadzil, who on Sunday accused the opposition of paying to inflate view counts.

On stage in the leafy upmarket neighbourhood of Bukit Antarabangsa, Fahmi, who is campaigning for the government, told candidates not to be disheartened by the opposition’s winning social media strategy – particularly TikTok.

“When we look at TikTok, if Papagomo or Sanusi has tens of thousands of views, these views can be acquired by anyone who wants to spend the money,” said Fahmi, mentioning two top opposition figures. “They are lying with their view counts.”

His comments came after a live TikTok session featuring the enigmatic chief minister of the northwestern Kedah state, Muhammad Sanusi Md Nor, and political commentator Wan Muhammad Azri Wan Deris – popularly known as Papagomo – garnered more than 62,000 views on the platform, a number that PH is struggling to match.

The video pulled 16 million likes, owing to the platform’s feature of allowing viewers to like a live video several times.

Malaysia’s opposition leader Muhammad Sanusi Md Nor waves as he leaves a court in Gombak, where he was charged on July 18. Photo: Reuters

The platform is a connection point in the Malay heartlands to criticism of Anwar’s government, as well as culture wars stoking over everything from the position of Islam in daily life to what is shown in Malaysian cinemas.

If the opposition cuts through to those heartlands, experts say Anwar could be in for a bruising at the polls.

Pro-PN vlogger Nurpais Ismail hit back at allegations of juicing up social media reach.

“They [PH] cannot accept the fact that the people nowadays – on TikTok for example – are more interested in listening to PN leadership, especially Sanusi,” Nurpais said in his latest vlog across social media platforms.

Relatively unknown prior to his appointment as Kedah chief minister in 2020, Sanusi’s meteoric rise over the last five years has seen him emerging as the de facto “poster boy” of PN, eclipsing more senior leaders such as former prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin and PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang.

Anwar’s PH – and its previous incarnations – once led the way in social media outreach in the blogging era of the early noughties. But experts say the coalition has dropped the ball with TikTok.

Instead, PH has had a combative relationship with the platform, with Fahmi summoning its Malaysian representatives during the first week on the job, claiming TikTok hosted “so much extremist and racist content”.

This Week in Asia was unable to reach the minister for comment despite several attempts.

TikTok’s policy on Government, Politician, and Political Party Account (GPPPA) prohibits political advertising, including the use of promotional tools available on the platform which is imposed at the account level.

“This means that accounts we identify as belonging to politicians and political parties have their access to advertising features turned off,” the platform said in its published policy on the matter.

Similarly, political accounts are restricted from TikTok’s monetisation features, preventing them from giving or receiving any money through the platform.

PN has, however, been openly buying ads on other platforms, including Meta’s Facebook and Google’s YouTube.

Members of Malaysia’s Islamist party PAS members march with what appear to be swords, spears and shields in Terengganu in February 2023. Photo: Facebook

On YouTube, the party uses the platform’s skippable in-stream ads that play before videos, carrying election messages on the rising cost of living and stagnant wages.

Anwar and PH are more comfortable on Twitter, their platform of choice in two successful elections in 2018 and 2022, and are backed up by government media.

Political analyst James Chin criticised PH’s social media strategy as uncoordinated and “all over the place”.

“Even PN’s lousiest video to me is better than a PH video,” Chin said. “The question is how come they did not learn the lesson from the November 2022 election, when it was obvious that social media plays an important role among the young Malay voters.”

Social media strategist Zulfadzli Halim played down the impact of PN messaging after losing several prominent opinion leaders.

“They also have no new materials and are left repeating the same talking points,” he said, mostly on the cost-of-living issue.