Youths disillusioned due to political fatigue, says IDEAS

IDEAS chief operating officer Tricia Yeoh says Malaysian youths generally feel that both sides of the political sphere are corrupt.

KUALA LUMPUR: The majority of Malaysia’s youths no longer have the energy to care about current political events in the country, says Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) chief operating officer Tricia Yeoh today.

“Despite the fact that there are many weighty issues, there is a sense of political fatigue out there among the youth,” she said.

She said the youths generally no longer distinguished between different sides of the political divide.

“To them, politicians are all the same, they are all corrupt,” she told a forum entitled “Emerging issues in Malaysia for the coming GE14 (14th general election)” at the Wesley Legacy Centre here.

Yeoh added that the sense of apathy was not helped by the fact that religious and racial issues often took precedence in politics, and had the tendency to dominate the political narrative in the country.

“Racial and religious issues keep coming up, and small things get blown out of proportion. Because of this, neither side has the chance to talk about issues that really matter,” she said.

She also said the media’s tendency to cover such issues that undermine the more serious concerns only served to make the matter worse.

Yeoh urged youths not to give in to feelings of disillusionment as politicians needed to be pressured into doing the right things.

“Politicians follow sentiment. The only reason PAS is gung-ho about hudud (Islamic criminal punishment) is that they think that’s what people want,” she said.

“Politicians aren’t hearing the people’s voices clearly enough. If the voice is clear then they will follow the sentiment.

“If, however, they don’t feel their positions are under threat, they won’t move,” she added. -FMT