Political Pressure Group Issue Analysis

Pressure groups are defined as a group of people who seek to exert pressure on legislators, public opinion, and others in order to promote their own ideas or welfare (Dictionary, 2014). In contrast to common confusion, pressure groups are not equally the same as political parties as pressure groups do not seek to occupy any position in the government or to compete in elections. Although it is commonly heard and seen in the news on the relations of pressure groups and political parties, this situation happens as pressure groups would pressurise political parties in order to implement changes to the government policy in accordance with their own agenda. According to Aliran (2014), there are various pressure groups which are active in advocating

Political pressure groups have indeed affected Malaysian politics in the eye of the locals as well as foreigners. With the existence of various pressure groups such as Malay right-wing outfit Perkasa and Bersih, have placed the government in the lime light in a bad way (Augustin, 2014). This is because organisation such as Perkasa gave the impression that the government as extreme in the context of defending religion and Malay supremacy issues. Other than that, pressure groups nowadays are seen to be taking over the role of a political party as they engage more actively in executing their agenda through influencing certain government policy. According to Augustin (2014), it is also a norm to see that certain pressure groups do not really distance themselves from a specific political party while giving their statement which resulted in giving a bad image towards the political party itself such as Perkasa with UMNO and Bersih with Pakatan Rakyat

For example, the coalition of non-governmental organisation, known as Green Surf won in 2009 over the 2 year long protest against a controversial plant to build a 300 MW coal-fired plant in Lahad Datu, Sabah (Augustin, 2014). It proves that there can be a positive outcome from the efforts of pressure groups to achieve their goal. Political pressure groups would usually have a good cause to fight for but when their actions are getting in the way of the people in power, that is where the protests and rallies come in and generally, it gets ugly. Citizens would get hurt and even authorities like the police could get injured as people tend to follow their emotions when they are