Gerakan National Youth chairperson Mah Siew Keong has welcomed survey findings that two-thirds of Malaysians want a single Barisan Nasional (BN) multi-racial party.

In a statement, Mah said the time is ripe for the 14 BN component parties to merge as a single multi-racial party.

Gerakan Youth had made a similar proposal at its National Delegates’ Conference last October but it had been rejected by many component party leaders who felt it was not the right time to do so.

“I urge BN chairperson Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and all component party leaders to study and consider our proposal seriously,” said Mah.

In the poll conducted by Merdeka Centre, a high number of Malays were said to no longer believe that voting across ethnic lines is a betrayal of their race.

Two in three voters surveyed (including a majority of Malays) believe that the BN component parties should merge.

The survey of 1,000 voters in Peninsular Malaysia also revealed that 27 percent had voted for BN and 14 percent for Pakatan Rakyat parties, while 49 percent declined to reveal their choice.

The findings also noted that the BN push factor was bigger than the pull factor of the opposition and PKR de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim.

Malay support for BN was said to have fallen 14 percentage points to 52 percent. More importantly, young Malays were about half of those who voted for the opposition.

Another finding was that voters themselves were surprised by the swing in the election, although they remained satisfied with the outcome.

On press and political freedom, Malays (68 percent), Chinese (87 percent) and Indians (73 percent) were in favour of looser control of media and the opposition movement.

Among the top three issues that influenced voters were inflation (38 percent), crime and public safety (11 percent) and ethnic affairs and inequality (10 percent).