PRIME Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob’s decision to allow underprivileged students to keep the free tablets they get under the Peranti Siswa Keluarga Malaysia initiative may backfire on his party’s election chances, said a political analyst.
Nusantara Academy for Strategic Research senior fellow Azmi Hassan said the UMNO vice-president’s sudden announcement yesterday (Sept 3) can be interpreted as one way to allure or gain the confidence of the younger voters.
“Since the 15th General Election (GE15) is already in the air, whatever the prime minister does or dishes out to the people that seem to be good will be seen as goodies for elections,” Azmi told FocusM. “No doubt about that”.
However, Azmi said it remains to be seen whether Ismail and UMNO will reap the political benefits during GE15 – regardless if that was the intention of the prime minister’s tablet announcement or not.
“No doubt this will affect Ismail positively but the question is will it affect the Government?,” Azmi explained.
“At the current stage, we cannot define who is the Government, whether it’s Barisan Nasional (BN)-led or Perikatan Nasional (PN)-led. We have no idea what the structure of the Government is currently.”
As for whether UMNO will benefit, Azmi said if Ismail benefits, then naturally UMNO will too.
“But I’m not sure if another ally in the Government – PN – will gain similar benefits,” he said.
“So, this is an interesting time because of the unique structure of the Government that makes it difficult to gauge who will gain the most benefit, not just on the tablet announcement but on any policy seen as goodies since GE15 is so near.”
Finally kicked off
After continued delays and tender problems over the rollout of free tablets to bottom 40 income group (B40) students, the programme kicked off yesterday with the first round of Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 LTE tablet distributions.
400,000 B40 students from across the nation will be receiving the tablets in stages, with 450 students from the first phase of the initiative receiving their devices yesterday.
Students were previously told to return the tablets after they graduate or according to the time period set by their respective programme administrators.
However, Ismail yesterday said the Government had decided the students could keep the tablets as a form of “appreciation” for them and in hopes that they will study hard and do well in their studies.
On the other hand, Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) senior lecturer Prof Lee Kuok Tiung disagreed with Azmi, saying there was no need for any effort to politicise the effort, which the former said was merely a way to deal with the issue of “digital poverty”.
Lee noted that the Government has provided assistance in terms of communication equipment to students since lockdown, which saw school students learning through home-based teaching and learning (PdPR).
“The latest programme is just an extension of previous initiatives, and the tablets are merely a learning and teaching requirement for students,” he told FocusM.
However, Lee said the Government must ensure that the tablets given are of good quality, noting that in the past, there were issues with the 1Malaysia computers, some of which were of poor quality. – Sept 4, 2022
