The Pakatan Rakyat (PR) rule of Selangor: An opinion study of public servants in the state of Selangor, Malaysia

Compared with the private sector, the public sector has a more fixed code of conduct, a more hierarchical structure, and more rigidly binding rules, order and values that influence not only the employees’ perceptions and understandings of things but also the manner in which they (should) choose to express those very perceptions and understandings. This paper presents findings from a field study of 720 employees of federal and state government and local authorities establishments within the Malaysian state of Selangor .The focus was on their behaviour, interest, involvement and conviction with regard to the rule of the opposition Pakatan Rakyat (PR) government. The findings show that 58.8 per cent of the respondents referred to pro-National Front party (which forms the Malaysian federal government) mainstream newspapers, such as the Berita Harian, Utusan Malaysia and New Straits Times, as their main sources of political information. Only 25.6 per cent admitted to being a member of any political party; 56.9 per cent professed preferrence for new faces at the helms of state and federal administrations; and 52.9 per cent expressed satisfaction over the results of the 2008 general elections. Nevertheless, a high percentage of 65.6 expressed their unhappiness with the current Selangor state administration , stressing the point that it was not the state leaders’ capability that they were not confident of. Rather it was the state government’s policies which they could not identify with since they saw these policies as favouring only certain parties or groups of the society.