Political trust and political leadership legitimacy: implications on voters' behaviour

Abstract

This paper intends to reflect on the importance of political trust to voters’ behaviour. Political trust has a strong link to the political leadership legitimacy. Voters voted political leaders because of their trust to them or to their party. In the context of this paper, political trust refers to the performance of political leaders. In essence, political leadership performance of their duties will have a substantive effect to the voters’ decision on who to vote in an election. Political trust characterised the image of the political leaders as well as their party. Political trust is not easy to regain once broken. Voters will remember them. Adversaries will play the issue to gain support towards their party. Trustworthiness and reliability would normally result from good policy and programmes that the leader or party who lead the government initiate or implement. These programmes benefited the people and the country. Trust deficit in the realm of politics is in need of a serious repair. This work will speak of political trust and contextually relate it to political leadership. The performance of political leaders and government will be viewed from the economics, education, health, safety and religious points of views. These are some of the most important factors becoming the supporting pillars of political trust especially in the context of Malaysia. Their upright performance will gather voters’ support and consequently, the opposite will direct to political decline.