YOU may not care now, but you might in four to five years’ time.

You may feel that choosing an assemblyman or MP to represent you is not something that affects you now.

You may not be struggling with issues like education loans, finding a full-time job, putting food on the table or worrying about your children’s education.

For most of you, adulthood brings new challenges – marriage, buying a house, paying for your own health insurance and/or starting a business – all of which can radically change your perspective on political issues.

While you cannot predict who or where you will be in four to five years, you can be sure that the elected politicians and their policies will impact your life in the coming months, if not years.

Why not have a say? Speak up, make a choice and take part in the next general election and the polls thereafter to protect your interests in your first few years in the real world.

Education loans and a lack of employment opportunities will deal a crippling blow to your future even before you land the first job in your life.

The situation will not change with you sitting idle while others make major political decisions. No one else is going to vote in your interests except yourself.

The Millennial and Gen Z electorates will be the first demographic groups with the ability to challenge the existing two-coalition system.

As such, you should seek political representations that can represent the needs of a diverse population through a more inclusive agenda.

In the next general election, there will be four million of you voting for the first time – along with 15 million voters who have voted at least once.

Your vote may result in an election outcome that will address the needs of your generation for years to come.

Almost all Millennials and Gen Z are equipped with either a smart phone or laptop and have a Facebook, Instagram or Twitter account, so there is no excuse to not vote because you do not know enough about candidates.

Your vote does matter

Every vote counts. Millennials have been credited with the decisive vote in the 2012 election in the United States, which saw Barack Obama voted in a second term as president. Both presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, singled out initiatives to target the group in their 2016 campaign.

If you truly aspire to vote for the outcome that is ideal for the country, considering everyone’s well-being in an impartial way, you are more likely to succeed at that goal than the other voters who are not even trying.

Each of you must understand and believe that you have a significant and powerful influence in the next general election.

The #Undi100Peratus organisers think their goal of having 100% youth participation in the next national polls is audacious.

Show them it is not. – April 20, 2022.

* FLK reads The Malaysian Insight.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.