The People Ain't Happy: The #Lawan Protests
Public sentiment on Twitterjaya has not improved since our last post—developments on the political front, while interspersed with heart-warming achievements by all our athletes throughout the ongoing Tokyo Olympics, continue to chip away at the Rakyat’s patience.
Most recently, the drama is centred around special Parliamentary sitting, which culminated in the King reprimanding de facto law minister Takiyuddin Hassan for misleading Parliament after the latter made a startling claim that royal assent has been given to revoke the Emergency Ordinances introduced during Malaysia’s state of emergency. Interestingly, proceedings were then postponed indefinitely after Covid-19 cases were reportedly detected in the Parliament buildings.
After more than a year of questionable pandemic management by officials, public frustration has finally spilled on to the streets. 31 Jul saw #Lawan (fight) protestors gathering in Kuala Lumpur to voice their dissatisfaction against the Mahiaddin government. The use of #Lawan hashtag recorded an impressive total of more than 210,000 mentions on Twitter on the day of the protest alone. Other notable hashtags including #KeluardanLawan (get out and fight) and #LawanIntimidasi (fighting intimidation) also received significant attention, receiving about 19,000 and 11,000 mentions respectively. #Lawan received another spike when Opposition MPs staged a protest on 2 Aug in response to the postponement of parliament proceedings, recording about 41,000 mentions that day.
In contrast, the long popular #KerajaanGagal (failed government) similarly showed an uptick in mentions, albeit less dramatic compared to the aforementioned, more event-specific hashtags.
Note: #Lawan again recording a staggering number of mentions, further solidifying our opinion of the campaign potentially being one of Malaysia’s most successful online campaigns thus far.
#BukaDataran (Open up the Dataran) was used during the #Lawan protest when demonstrators were barred by police from entering the Dataran Merdeka. #HartalDoktorKontrak (contract doctors’ strike) refers to the nationwide strike on 26 Jul by contract doctors over unfair employment conditions; the hashtag recorded up to 146,000 mentions on Twitter on the day of the strike.
The pandemic has clearly made online campaigns increasingly popular as an outlet for public disapproval. Unfortunately, official response against these campaigns seem to generally consist of either threatening compounds against protestors, calling up individuals for police questioning, or arresting activists involved in these protests. Whatever it is the government is intending, these actions are unlikely to gain much candy points from the already irate public.