To Politweet, this suggests the cancelled forum cost the government more dearly publicity-wise than the controversy surrounding the debt-stricken state investment fund.
"When compared to other topics that we have tracked this year, the number of users tweeting about #Nothing2Hide in one day was greater than the number of users tweeting about 1MDB in the first quarter of this year (21,979 users)," Politweet said in a statement to Malay Mail Online.
In the opinion-based analysis carried out on Twitter users and not Facebookers, Politweet found 26,868 users tweeted 61,236 messages relating to "Nothing2Hide" on June 5.
Until June 8, a total of 35,600 Twitter users sent messages flying through the air on ‘Nothing2Hide’.
In comparison, 110,000 users posted tweets about Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, while 73,000 tweeted about 1MDB from January 1 to June 8.
During the same period too, 103,000 users tweeted about hudud while 77,500 tweeted about former Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
In the same analysis of 1,000 Twitter users who who tweeted about the "Nothing2Hide" event from June 5 to June 8, Politweet found that 95.5 per cent (955) of users responded negatively to Najib skipping the event.
A total of 67.7 per cent (677) of Twitter users made general negative remarks about the cancellation of the event, while 27.8 per cent (278) users attacked Najib directly on Twitter, tagging the prime minister’s @NajibRazak handle.
Some even used foul language to get their point across.
The same analysis found that only 2 per cent (20) of the 1,000 Twitter users were supportive of Najib's decision to skip the forum, while 2.5 percent (25) of Twitter users remained neutral.
The “Nothing2Hide” forum had been expected to become a face-off between Najib and his chief critic Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad but it was cancelled unexpectedly.
Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar ordered the event to be called off to preserve “public order”, and the Prime Minister’s Office later attributed Najib’s absence at the forum to the police’s advice and instruction over security concerns.
Critics have since condemned the police for disrupting and cancelling the event, saying that the authorities were aiming to silence public discussions on government scandals and literally save Najib from a humiliating confrontation with Dr Mahathir over 1MDB.
Organiser SukaGuam said the police ordered the event cancelled due to the group’s inability to handle the large number of attendees, while the IGP also denied that the cancellation was politically motivated.
