Zahid Hamidi remains under the radar although he had returned as UMNO president
At the end of June, Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi made his surprising return as UMNO president. His sudden return was opposed by former UMNO Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin. But the UMNO acting president Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan stepped aside for Zahid without making a fuss on the matter.
In August, it is noticeable that Zahid had been more active than Hasan in terms of media exposure. However, the latter did not completely disappear from the media. Despite having lesser media exposure, Hasan shared a similar exposure trend with Zahid.
Both leaders did not make many headlines in the media for the first 18 days of August. Zahid and Hasan were most active on the 4th, with 28 articles and 9 articles written on them respectively.
On the other hand, Khairy remains quiet in the media. Most of the days, there were only one or two articles published that mentioned his name. On certain days, there were none.
Looking at the influencers of the topic ‘UMNO’, both Zahid and Hasan only made less than 50 statements each.
Whereas, the top influencer is PPBM chairman Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad with 237 statements. In fact, most of the influencers are not UMNO politicians.
The most influential UMNO politician was former UMNO president Datuk Seri Najib Razak with 220 statements. In addition, former Second Minister of Finance Datuk Seri Ahmad Husni Hanadziah took the third spot (157 statements) for his testimony in the SRC International trial.
Along with Husni, other former ministers in Najib’s second cabinet, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin and Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal, also appeared on the list.