KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 24 ― The newly-passed National Security Council (NSC) Bill that empowers the prime minister to designate any place in the country a security area and subject the location to martial rule was not seen as an important national issue, according to a study by Politweet.

An online campaign under the hashtag #TakNakDiktator to galvanise Malaysians nationwide to stop the Bill ― dubbed by critics as the Dictator Bill ― from being turned into law failed to gain traction, based on the local social media research firm’s analysis that found a significant 71 per cent of its critics to be confined to the federal capital and Selangor.

Politweet noted that the numbers and the concentration of these microblogging activists in the Klang Valley was unusual.

Based on its past observations, government policy dissenters tended to be more spread out nationally, with critics located in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor usually numbering in at between 48 and 54 per cent.

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“The topic of the NSC Bill mainly drew interest from a relatively small, heavily partisan group of Twitter users in KL and Selangor. Their views are not reflective of the user population of each state or the country,” Politweet said in its report made available to Malay Mail Online yesterday.

Its initial findings showed a whopping 94 per cent or 376 out of 400 Twitter users in its sample were against the NSC Bill, and only nine or 2 per cent expressing support for it while 15 people or 4 per cent took a neutral stand.

However, Politweet noted that 74 per cent of participants in the #TakNakDiktator campaign and 89 per cent of Twitter users in its sample of 400 users from December 1 to 16 had previously joined in other anti-government hashtag campaigns earlier this year, like #KitaLawan, #MansuhAktaHasutan, #BantahGST and #Bersih4.

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The #KitaLawan cyber campaign in March ran in the wake of the sodomy conviction of PKR de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, while #BantahGST in May followed the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax a month earlier and #Bersih4 was in the same month as the simultaneous giant street demonstrations in Kuala Lumpur, Kota Kinabalu and Kuching in August.

Another driving factor for the campaign’s failure to take off, Politweet said, was possibly due to the choice of language used to convey the messages, with 64 per cent of original tweets posted in English, compared to a paltry 35 per cent in Bahasa Malaysia (BM).

“The most passionate campaigners against NSC tended to tweet in English. But you need a lot of people tweeting in BM to increase the odds of reaching the bigger all-BM speaking community in Malaysia, especially in other states,” Politweet researcher Ahmed Kamal Nava told Malay Mail Online yesterday.

He said each person on Twitter has his or her own reach, and the extent will depend on how wide the network stretches, “so the more tweets they write the better the odds”.

However, Ahmad Kamal said “there weren't enough popular users within that 35 per cent to really push the message out”.

At the same time, he noted there were significantly fewer users promoting the NSC Bill compared to those condemning it, and suggested that the lack of a counter message may have affected sentiment since any NSC-related content was likely seen as negative.

“These points lead us to conclude that the NSC bill was not considered to be an important issue by Twitter users nationwide,” the report stated.

The issues that appeared important to Malaysians at a national level on Twitter this month were the rising cost of living, increased price of public transport fares and the RM2.6 billion political donation to the Barisan Nasional government, Politweet added in its report.

The NSC Bill was passed in the Dewan Rakyat on December 4 while the #TakNakDiktator cyber campaign kicked off December 8.

The Bill has also cleared Parliament’s Upper House Tuesday night unchanged, after a two-day debate despite questions from BN senators on the constitutionality of the proposed law.

The senators were reported to have voiced concern over the wide-ranging powers the Bill gives to those in charge of areas identified as security zones, and those empowered to relocate persons in the area the right to acquire land and property, said to contravene Articles 9 and 13 of the Federal Constitution on freedom of movement and right to property.

The NSC Bill 2015 proposes to allow the NSC chaired by the prime minister to take command of the country’s security forces and impose strict policing of areas deemed to face security risks.

According to the Bill, the NSC’s jurisdiction takes effect once the prime minister designates a location as a “security area” — a status that is valid for six months at a time, subject to renewal by the prime minister.