SARAWAK’S ruling Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) reportedly has a healthy head start in the race to engage 18- to 20-year-old new voters for their support in the next state elections, observers said.

While the four-party coalition may have stolen the march on their political rivals, analysts agreed how the new youth voters will vote and which side of the political divide they will most likely be with is still a matter of conjecture.  

Their ballot in the coming polls is a sure bet after a Kuching High Court decision on September 3 ordering Putrajaya and the Election Commission (EC) to expedite the registration of those who are aged 18 and above. 

“We are in uncharted territory,” political analyst James Chin and young budding politician Simon Siah said. 

They said generally it is difficult to tell or predict now what impact these new voters will have in the state elections as there is no data or trend to rely on. 

While Chin said some public opinion surveys have shown “there is a powerful argument” that younger people are generally anti-establishment, they like politics to serve their interests and their general view is that politicians are not serving the interests of young people, that might not necessarily be the case in Sarawak. 

To back his claim, Chin said for example, the Sarawak chapter of Undi18 that took the federal government to court over the delay, is a pro-GPS outfit.

“They claimed to be independent but they are not,” the University of Tasmania’s expert on Asian governance said. 

Chin also added that “all” the organisations supposedly targeting young people are both directly and indirectly affiliated with the state government. 

Whatever it is, Chin said with a large block of new voters coming into the elections, it would mean all political parties will have to make a special pitch to these young people.

“They (political parties) can’t ignore them anymore. There will be items specifically targeting the young people.” 

Siah, the lead legal counsel for the Undi18 in the judicial review and who could run in the state elections as an opposition candidate, vehemently denied the new voters will have the tendency to support and vote for the opposition as speculated. 

“No data to actually show that youth in the age bracket will vote for the opposition.” 

However, he said data showed voters aged 21 to 35 in Sarawak years are generally biased towards the opposition. 

Sarawak’s new young voters will back anyone or parties that advocate their interests and issues that are important to them, Ivan Ong, the first applicant in the judicial review, told The Malaysian Insight.

The 19-year-old said the group also wants “a refresh in politics” by getting rid of the “old faces that encourage dirty politics”. 

“They want to have a say in (the proposed) reforms and new policies.”

Ong said the voices of 135,000 will definitely be loud enough to be heard and noticed. 

The Sarawak Youth and Sports Ministry had conducted a survey on the impact these young voters will have in the state elections but would not share the findings saying there are “too many sensitive things in it”. 

Parliament on July 16, 2019 unanimously voted to amend the Federal Constitution to lower the voting age from 21 to 18. 

The amendments were to have been completed on July 21 but the previous Perikatan Nasional government under former prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin delayed the amendments to September next year.

Ong and four Undi18 youths from Sarawak – Viviyen Desi Geoge, 20; Tiffany Wee Ke Ying, 19; Chang Swee Ern, also 19 and Sharifah Maheerah Syed Haizir, 20 – reacted to the delay by seeking a judicial review on the government’s decision. 

On September 3, the Kuching High Court ordered the government and also the EC to lower the voting age to 18 by December 31. 

Judicial commissioner Alexander Siew How Wai, who made the ruling, said the government and the EC had acted illegally and irrationally with the delay. 

Ong said personally he is “not hopeful per se” of the government complying with the court order by the end of the year. 

He said they would eventually have to do so. 

A failure or refusal to comply with the court order, he said, would not only be in contempt of court, but could also result in other repercussions for the government. – September 19, 2021.