KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 13 — Projek SAMA, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) has found that a majority of their recent survey respondents did not see the government treating everyone fairly.

In the respondents’ views, Malays and Chinese assigned unfairness more to class differences while Indian respondents assigned unfairness to ethnic differences.

Less than half of the respondents — 42 per cent Malays, 45 per cent Chinese and 31 per cent Indians — felt that the government and its agencies treated everyone fairly.

"Interestingly, those who felt that they have been short-changed, twice more Malays saw that from a class lens, i.e the government and its agencies normally side the rich and he powerful over ordinary people (41 per cent), more than the government and its agencies normally side the other race over our race (17 per cent).

"Likewise but with a small gap, more Chinese saw the government’s unfairness from a class lens (32 per cent) than from a communal lens (23 per cent).

"However, for the Indians respondents, more felt that ‘the government and its agencies normally side the other race over our race’ (37 per cent) over those who felt class-based discrimination and who felt that the government had been fair (both 31 per cent),” co-founder and Sunway University political scientist and professor Wong Chin Huat said in a findings presentation here today.

He said while citing a weighted sample based on West Malaysia’s ethnic composition, it shows that only 42 per cent felt that the government and its agencies treated people fairly while 38 per cent felt unfairness in favour of the rich and the powerful and the remaining 20 per cent felt unfairness in favour of the other race.

Respondents were posed these three statements and asked which of the statements was closest to their current experience.

The survey was conducted based on concerns on whether Malaysia’s ethnic relations deteriorated in recent years after democratisation when various socio-political forces were unleashed as the society opened up.

Projek SAMA, in collaboration with pollster Invoke conducted its first quarterly survey on ethnic relations in West Malaysia, where the challenges are the greatest.

The survey took place on from October 1 to 28, utilising Random Digit Dialing (RDD) and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Robocalls.

It obtained complete responses from a total of 611 adults of 18 years old or above: 306 Malays, 200 Chinese and 105 Indians.

The sampling method was stratified random sampling on ethnicity and gender.