Poll on Putrajaya’s transparency on M370 purely speculative, says Hishammuddin
Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein has dismissed a recent survey which showed only a quarter of Malaysians believe that Putrajaya has been truthful about the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, describing it as purely speculative and irresponsible.
He said the opinion poll was untrue and did not represent the views of the majority of Malaysians, adding that people wanted the federal government to continue “and we have done so with friends from all over the world”.
“There is a small group of people who may be cynical about how we are going to move forward, but the truth will always prevail. We have nothing to hide,” he said at a press conference today.
He was asked to comment on a survey carried out by the Merdeka Center, which found, among others, that 26% of respondents believed that the government was being truthful, while 54% said the government has been hiding the truth about flight MH370.
Out of the 1,029 respondents polled in the survey, 54% said Putrajaya was not transparent in releasing information about flight MH370 which vanished on March 8.
In response to the question whether they thought Putrajaya had been truthful or had been hiding anything about MH370, 54% of respondents felt Malaysia had been hiding information, 26% said the government had been truthful while 20% were unsure.
Chinese relatives of the passengers on board the jetliner have, since its disappearance, accused Putrajaya of withholding information on the plane.
Anger at Malaysia's handling of the investigation erupted on Chinese social media, and even on the streets with demonstrations outside the Malaysian embassy in Beijing.
Soon after the jet vanished, China's Foreign Ministry urged Malaysia to speed up its investigations and provide more accurate information.
The state-run Xinhua News Agency had complained of an “unforgivable” lack of capacity, effort or transparency on the part of Putrajaya. – April 19, 2014.
