INSPIRING people to vote and reaching out to young and rural voters in time for the 15th general election are Muda’s biggest challenges ahead of the next national polls, its secretary-general Amira Aisya Abd Aziz said.

This is the youth-based party’s main takeaway from its maiden foray in elections. It made its debut in the March 12 Johor polls, winning one out of seven state seats it contested.

Amira, who is the party’s sole assemblyman in the 56-seat Johor legislative assembly, said Muda’s main aim is to extend voter education and political awareness to the youth and rural voters.

Even after all the publicity about Undi18, the court cases and effort put into getting the voting age lowered from 21 to 18, she said many young people still do not know they can vote and need to be educated about their rights.

“In urban areas, there are no issues regarding Undi18, but when we go to the rural areas, we find low awareness among youth of their democratic right to vote,” she told The Malaysian Insight.

“Many of them didn’t know they could vote. They also didn’t know what the voting process was like.”

Last year, the government implemented the Undi18 legislation, as ordered by the court after Putrajaya delayed its implementation. The lowering of the voting age from 21 to 18 is now in force along with the automatic voter registration.

Muda, after being registered in December last year, contested seven seats in the Johor polls – Puteri Wangsa, Larkin, Parit Raja, Bukit Kepong, Machap, Tenang and Bukit Permai.

Amira won the Puteri Wangsa seat in a six-cornered fight by an impressive majority of 7,114 votes over her closest rival, from Barisan Nasional (BN).

BN still won the state polls and formed the state government, winning 40 out of 56 seats.

Muda had a pact with Pakatan Harapan (PH) and PKR, and combined, they have 13 seats. Perikatan Nasional won three seats.

To expand its reach, she said, Muda is planning to extend its workshops nationwide, and will announce details soon.

“It is our responsibility to ensure that the youth are aware of their rights to vote come GE15,” she said.

“We have started workshops on political awareness with youth in urban areas, but now we want to reach out to those in the rural areas.

“We not only want to show them how the voting process works but also make them understand why it is important for them to vote for the future.”

Muda has 75,000 registered members nationwide who will be mobilising their members to assist in the workshops.

Low voter turnout and inspiring voters

On inspiring people to vote, Amira said she recognised this as a challenge, especially after looking at the low voter turnout of 54% in the Johor polls.

She said Muda is now studying the voter turnout in each Johor constituency to identify any patterns.

“This is crucial as we move towards the next general election,” she said. 

“We are currently focusing on Johor as this is the area where Muda contested for the first time. We are not going nationwide yet, as we only have the data for the Johor elections.

“We have to ensure that the party’s candidates can inspire the people to come out in GE15.”

Amira said they are also working together with their friends in PH to look at all the areas they contested in during the Johor elections.

“We want to identify the pattern first in Johor before forecasting for areas in GE15,” she said.

Amira admitted that Muda will need to have better preparations for GE15 together with other opposition parties.

“We have always advocated a united opposition. So going into GE15, we will continue to advocate for that and we would like to call on the opposition bloc to stick together and discuss how we can move forward,” she said.

Amira said Muda’s machinery is ready to face GE15 but the party needs to know which other parties it will be cooperating with.

“We will need to know which seats Muda will be contesting so as to look at the stability of our machinery,” she said.

In the Johor polls, Muda cooperated with Amanah and DAP, which used the PH logo, in six seats. These seats were given to Muda by the two parties.

PKR, which used its own logo, gave one seat to Muda, and did not field a candidate there. But both failed to reach an agreement for the Larkin seat, resulting in PKR and Muda clashing and splitting the votes, handing the seat to BN, which won by a 6,178-vote majority.

Muda is hoping that the youth will attract other young voters, and that is why it has young people directly involved in campaigning work.

“In my campaign team, I had students as young as 16 years old wanting to get involved,” said Amira.

“They want to understand the process and what it is like to campaign and be at the forefront of politics.

“So that they have some experience on what’s happening when they go out to vote.”

As for the impact of Undi18 and Muda’s win in the Johor polls, Amira said more political parties from both sides of the divide are pushing a youth agenda as well as younger candidates.

“We can see that during the Johor elections, there were more young candidates being fielded, not only by Muda but all parties,” she said.

“Undi18 has created better chances for the youth to be in the front line of the political landscape in the country.” – March 19, 2022.