PETALING JAYA, April 2 — Only five out of the 114 state assemblymen in Selangor and Perak communicate efficiently through the digital media, even in an age where the use of social media tools and emails have become the norm for getting in touch, an NGO claimed today.
The group, which calls itself Kuasa, said it was tough to get responses from most of the elected representatives in both states although their email, Facebook and Twitter accounts are made publicly available to constituents.
Kuasa said that some only responded after repeated messages while many others did not respond at all.
“There are almost 14 million Facebook users in the country and the internet penetration at a broadband level is national, the representatives have no excuse to avoid modern communication,” Kuasa chief executive Praba Ganesan said at a press conference here.
The findings were the result of a nine-day survey carried out by the public empowerment group last month, in which messages using “mystery guest” accounts were sent out to the emails, Facebook and Twitter accounts of all 114 elected representatives.
The pilot project was to gauge the speed of the response of every state assemblyman in each of the three mediums, and how easy or difficult it is for a constituent to send a message and get a reply.
Praba said the end result was that 67 per cent of the elected representatives in Selangor replied to at least one of the three channels considered in the survey, while Perak state assemblymen scored a dismal 23 per cent.
He explained that the results also showed that the younger assemblymen responded better, as well as those believed to be personally managing their social media accounts.
It was harder to communicate with elected representatives who held multiple posts such as the mentri besar and state executive councillors, he added.
Pakatan Rakyat (PR) elected representatives were also generally more attuned to communicating through digital media compared with those in Barisan Nasional (BN), but Praba stressed that it does not define the performance of individual assemblymen.
“It does not mean there are no PR aduns (elected representatives) who did not fail on all three counts. There are also BN aduns who were very proactive.
“There are gaps (in communication) for both BN and PR representatives.”
Praba said the results of the survey, which are available on Kuasa's website, were not to name and shame elected representatives but to emphasise on the need for them to improve on their lines of communication with the public they have pledged to serve.
He suggested that assemblymen work on consolidating their public communications network, such as narrowing down the number of accounts made under their names and updating their contact details, so that constituents will know which email, Facebook or Twitter account to go to for help.
“Our exercise helps them identify the issues so they can restrategise their operations... a clear path for communications is as important as communicating itself,” he said.
Kuasa is also working on publishing its first periodic report card on the electoral promises made by PR in Selangor and BN in Perak, a year on after the 13th General Election.
Praba said they have outlined 45 electoral promises made by each of the state governments, which will be rated on an upwards scale of one to 10 to measure how close they are to delivering on their promises.
The ratings will be evaluated by the state government itself (50 per cent), the state opposition (20 per cent) and stakeholders (30 per cent) who are directly affected by the promises, such as businesses and industry.
“The most important part of this is that we are not judging them, they are judging themselves. We have already met with representatives from both governments, and are hoping to get their responses by April 15,” he said.
