As the country celebrates Malaysia Day today, a survey done by the Merdeka Centre found that ethnic relations had worsened and is a cause of concern, said its programmes director, Ibrahim Suffian today.

Ibrahim, who was presenting the survey done from Feb 14 to June 8, at the Ideas' Malaysia Day conference in Kuala Lumpur, said there is increasing pessimism in the country.

What is worrying, he added was that it had worsened and could affect national unity.

"Optimism on ethnic relations has been decreasing steadily since 2006 and it is getting worse in 2015," he said.

The survey was conducted by phone with 4,352 respondents aged 18 and above with a margin of error of 1.49 percent.

Ibrahim said in 2006, 43 percent of the respondents polled then had envisaged an improvement of ethnic relations but this fell to 37 percent in 2011.

“This year it decreased further to 27 percent, with 27 percent also seeing ethnic relations worsening, compared to 15 percent in 2006,” he said.

Besides this, many of those polled this year have a negative view of where the country is headed.

Ibrahim said 55 percent perceived that the country is headed in the wrong direction.

“Only 30 percent polled perceived that it is headed in the right direction.

This is in comparison to 2011, where 51 percent said the country is headed in the right direction, and 32 percent felt otherwise.

Ibrahim said economic concerns were uppermost at 52 percent, with politics and government next at 22 percent, and race and religion at four percent.

The Merdeka Centre also found that 63 percent of those polled were not satisfied with the way the government managed the economy and only 30 percent were satisfied.

It also found that of those polled, 58 percent felt the government programmes generally benefited the rich and politically connected.

“Only 23 percent felt the government programmes benefits everyone,” said Ibrahim in releasing the survey results.

'Some perceptions are true'

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia political science lecturer, Faisal Hazis ( photo ) said in terms of perception as represented in the survey, some were actually true.

“There are serious concerns at the structural level. Politically we are being fragmented, economically we are not doing well, the perception towards the government is not good and economic policies are not being fair.

“I think these are serious concerns that need to be addressed so that it would not affect the day day running of the government. In terms of politics, perception is everything,” he said.

Meanwhile, lawyer Shahredzan Johan felt that politicians keep harping on racial politics.

He pointed out that it is difficult to stress national unity when their political survival depended a lot on racial politics.

“That is why we have statements like ‘we agree to disagree on the red-shirt rally’. As a political leader of the nation, you should say that the rally is racial and we do not support it. Why can't we say that?

“If we want to address the problem (to achieve national unity) we need to get statesmen and not politicians,” he asserted.