MIC’s Failure to Defend Kedah’s Cancelled Thaipusam Holiday

Despite Kedah’s cancelled Thaipusam holiday which have become an entangled racial dispute, it failed to get MIC’s attention to control the narration.

The influencer list for the Kedah topic shows that Kedah’s Menteri Besar Muhammad Sanusi Md Nor who announced the cancellation of the holiday, controlled the narration.

Although there were several individuals from the list who defended the cancelled holiday such as MIC deputy president M Saravanan, Najib Razak and Xavier Jayakumar, Kedah’s MIC state chief S Ananthan did not appear in the list.

Furthermore, Najib Razak and Xavier Jayakumar are at the bottom of the influencer list.

Most of Kedah’s top issues on the 20th and 21st January revolves around Thaipusam’s cancelled holiday in Kedah.

‘MIC for being Silent’ also appeared as one of the top issues during that period, which further proves Kedah MIC’s lack of assertiveness.

Meanwhile, the news sentiments for the Kedah topic shows that the amount of neutral and negative news sentiments are the same on the day of Sanusi’s announcement on the 20th January.

The following day shows that there is an increase in negative news sentiments but there were still more neutral news sentiments on that day.

Previously, several states such as Penang and Selangor where Thaipusam is celebrated on a grand scale have cancelled their Thaipusam festive activities to curb the spread of Covid-19 infections.

However, Kedah have decided to cancel the holiday since there were no celebrations other than temple visits with strict SOPs.

On a side note, the Thaipusam holiday is not gazetted as a public holiday in the state but as an ‘occasional public holiday’ as quotas for public holidays are full.