In Malaysia, the term "youth" generally refers to individuals between the ages of 15 and 30. It’s a significant portion of Malaysia’s population and plays a crucial role in various aspects of society which including education, workforce, and especially political participation. In other words, youth is playing a crucial role in Malaysian politics and nation democratic system. Malaysia lowers its voting age from 21 years old to 18 years old same as mostly country in 2019 due to constitution amendment and implement voter automatic registration at the same time which allowed more youth to participate in politics.
“Prices for everything getting higher and higher!” - Chia Tao Ze
“Prices for everything getting higher and higher!”, a statement that released by Chia during his interview. A 20-year-old Taylor University student, Chia Tao Ze mentioned that the most pressing political issues that he currently passionate about is the cost of living. Cost of living in Malaysia is mainly caused by inflation. Inflation plays a significant driver of the cost of living during recent year in our country. It’s leading to higher costs for consumers which affected lots of youth that can’t afford for paying education fee, rental fee and even transportation fees.
Apart from that, another issue of youth currently passionate about is the climate action. Climate action has been a hot topic since the last few decades, but it’s reached the peaked during year of 2018, a 15-year-old Swedish activist named Greta Thunberg addressed the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference for calling each nation leaders to act for combating climate change. Its inspiring young people around the world to participate in climate strikes and demand action from their governments which included Malaysia.
In Malaysia, issue of climate action been addressed for a long time but only recently been an issue that people really take it seriously and some of the politician addressed this issue into their manifesto during the last state election. “Climate action seems to be the key campaigning point for some candidate.” Jonathan Lee said, who’s the 21 years old director of editorial team from YPOLITICS, a independent youth-led NGO that aims to generate a more politically aware Malaysian youth. “YB Rajiv (Rajiv Rishyakaran), who contested in Bukit Gasing. He run on a very strong urban sustainability kind of platform. Even MUDA candidate for Bandar Utama, Abe Lim seems very passionate about that course.” He added. It seems that the cost of living and issue of climate action been the most pressing political issues that the youth currently passionate.
“If you ask next door aunty and uncle, what’s the different between MP (Member of Parliament) and ADUN (State Assemblyperson)? They can’t give you a satisfactory answer also!” – Jonathan Lee
Even youth are a significant portion of Malaysia’s population and plays a crucial role in various aspects of society. But still facing challenges in engagement of politics. Stigma from old generation is the main challenge for youth engagement in politics. Young people are often biased as inexperienced or immature enough and even life-threatened to join politics from old generation, which lead to scepticism about their ability to contribute effectively to politics and deter youth from getting involved. “In Malaysia, the older generation have always dissuaded the younger generation from getting involved in politics because it was seen as dangerous and dirty.” Ong Kian Ming, the ex-Bangi MP said, during the interview. But still, Ong have an optimistic view thinking that more younger people are interested in politics due to an open political landscape which caused by the widespread of social media and the potential of politics to change and influence public policy.
However, Jonathan Lee provided an interesting point of view for this challenge that faced by youth to engage in politics. He thinks that stigma from old generation not the real question or real challenge that faced by youth to participate in politics today. “Maturity is not really an issue, the issue is how do we include different people, different age group in our nation demographic who have a chance to participate in democracy.” He said, during the interview.
He thinks that the real issue here is the lack of political literacy and its a cross generational issue. “Why? The simplest example I can give is, if you ask next door aunty and uncle, what’s the different between MP (Member of Parliament) and ADUN (State Assemblyperson)? They can’t give you a satisfactory answer also!” he added during the interview. Also, he thinks that the young people have its own set of concern differ with the older generation set of concern and it’s not fair to label young people “immature” due to this. Young people are voting on their own set of concern like climate change which the older generation might not be focus on it as much. “Does maturity here means voting along with different pattern?” Jon Lee left such a question before he done his point of view of this challenge.
Lack of awareness towards politics among youth is another challenge for youth to engage in politics too. This lack of awareness mainly caused by the nation education system. The Malaysian education system does not prioritize civic education and political literacy even though we have political education confined to Pendidikan Moral, Pendidikan Sivik, and MPU (Mata Pelajaran Umum) at the university level.
Students often graduate without a deep understanding of how the political system works, their rights and responsibilities as citizens, or the importance of political engagement. This lack of knowledge can deter young people from actively participating in politics. “Even that (with the political education existed), it’s doesn’t really touch on things like the parliament, the constitution. It still lacking (of civil education)!” Jon Lee said during the interview. However, it is not an unsolvable challenge. The education system of Malaysia should be more interesting and creative in political education to encourage student for critical thinking and debate to foster political awareness among the youth. As Ong said in the interview: “Making politics interesting and relevant to the younger generation starting while they are at school.”
However, youth can pick up a lot of skills by participating youth activism and activities organizational skills, communication skills and networking skills. Youths can bring in new ideas and fresh viewpoints into the political landscape as well.
So, isn’t it good that your friends surrounding you are start talking about politics, concerning about future of our beloved nation, and even seeing more and more young people get into parliament as an MP?
William Wong is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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