A campaign by young Malaysians to cast protest votes is picking up steam as the South-east Asian country braces for a potentially acrimonious national election between two candidates that must be held by August.
Prime Minister Najib Razak faces a challenge from his former mentor Mahathir Mohamad, who turned on him over a multi-billion-dollar scandal involving a state fund and now leads the opposition campaign to oust Datuk Seri Najib’s coalition.
Mr Najib denies wrongdoing.
But young people pushing the #UndiRosak, or spoil your vote, campaign on social media, say they refuse to pick between Dr Mahathir, 92, and Mr Najib, 64, whom they blame for building the current political system.
The plan – cast your votes, but mark your ballots wrongly to make sure no political party benefits.
“There is a democratic deficit… we want to leave the BN-PH binary because honestly, it’s getting tiring,” social activist Maryam Lee said, using the acronyms for the ruling Barisan Nasional and opposition Pakatan Harapan pacts.
Dr Mahathir has tried to reinvent his image on social media, but his reputation as an iron-fisted dictator over 22 years in charge as premier continues to divide opinion.
“The opposition are not entitled to our votes just because BN sucks. You have to work for my vote,” Ms Lee, 25, said on Thursday at a forum to debate the merits of the movement.
The #UndiRosak campaign gained momentum in the weeks after the opposition named Dr Mahathir their candidate for prime minister earlier this month.
More than 1,500 Twitter users have discussed the topic over the past two weeks, according to a survey by social media research firm Politweet. #UndiRosak is also the second-highest trending Twitter topic in Malaysia.
While the campaign is small – Ms Lee thinks it will only influence 1 per cent of the 14.6 million registered voters – it has jolted the opposition.
Dr Mahathir said this week that it was “shallow-minded” for the youth to not cast their vote.
“We need to change this country. If we didn’t need to, I wouldn’t bother getting into this because I’m 92, and I’m going to turn 93,” he said at a media briefing on Tuesday.
In the 2013 national polls, 2.6 million new voters helped push a record turnout of over 84 per cent and lose Mr Najib’s ruling coalition the popular vote.
But between 2013 and 2017, the number of new voters went down to two million, according to estimates by independent polling firm Merdeka Centre. Another two million have yet to register.
Mr Najib’s Umno party said the boycott only proved that Dr Mahathir and the opposition were not popular.
“A lot of people are disillusioned, those who do not come out to vote are not BN supporters,” Abdul Rahman Dahlan, a member of Umno’s powerful supreme council, was quoted as saying on Thursday by state newswire Bernama. “BN supporters still want us to remain as the government, so they will go out to cast their votes.”
Image Credit :Malaysians pushing the #UndiRosak, or spoil your vote, campaign on social media, say they refuse to pick between Prime Minister Najib Razak and former premier Mahathir Mohamad, whom they blame for building the current political system.PHOTO: AFP
