Incumbent Indera Mahkota MP Datuk Seri Saifuddin Abdullah has recently come under fire from netizens after they noticed that his campaign video is an exact copy of one that was produced four years ago by an American politician, but with minor differences and translated into Bahasa Melayu.
Amid the upcoming 15th General Election (GE15), Saifuddin released a video that urges his constituents to vote for his Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition.
However, his speech in the video was just like the one in English by New York lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who promoted the video during her US Congress election campaign.
The matter was highlighted by TikTok user @tenteratrollkebangsaan as they posted a comparison of the videos on the social media platform.
In the caption, the user called out to Saifuddin for plagiarising the US congresswoman’s video from 2018.
The user compared the videos by taking snippets from both. Surprisingly, the results found that Saifuddin’s video appears to echo the messages of Ocasio-Cortez’s, with only minor differences.
For example, Ocasio-Cortez mentioned that she was not born into a wealthy and powerful family, and her parents were from Puerto Rico and South Bronx respectively. While in Saifuddin’s video, he said the same line, but in Malay.
“Saya bukan dilahirkan dalam keluarga yang senang atau berkuasa. Ayah saya seorang Ustaz dan mak saya seorang cikgu,” he said.
Can I copy your homework?
In the comment section, many netizens made jokes out of Saifuddin’s video, with some thanking him for releasing a ‘translated version’ of Ocasio-Cortez’s video, while others said this is like a student copying his friend’s homework.
“‘Can I copy your homework?’, ‘Yeah, just change it up a bit so it doesn’t look obvious you copied’,” a netizen said.
“Plagiarism. Maybe that was how he got his degree. What a joke for young voters to immulate to have a leader like him,” another netizen said.
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