GE15 through the eyes of a first-time voter and trainee reporter

 

When former prime minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob announced the dissolution of parliament on Oct 10, I was unprepared.

Well, his announcement was not really a surprise to me since the 15th general election (GE15) had been on the tip of everybody’s tongue for a while by then.

I was unprepared because the very next day would be my first shift at Malaysiakini as a trainee reporter!

On top of that, GE15 was bound to be my first opportunity to exercise my right to vote - I was only 20 during the previous general election, when Undi18 had yet to be implemented.

The one-and-a-half month since then has been an eye-opening journey for me and I can’t help but reflect on it.

I knew there were going to be new fundamentals of my possible future in journalism and my duty as a Malaysian. I took it upon myself to test the waters and see if I’d drown or just feel a little chilly.

Here’s my point of view of GE15, from the perspective of a trainee reporter and a first-time voter.

D-day

I was assigned to shadow another reporter to cover the Lembah Pantai polling stations on Nov 19. Our first stop was SMK Sri Pantai and we arrived just in time to see PKR’s Fahmi Fadzil run in to cast his vote.

Fahmi Fadzil after casting his vote in GE15

The MP (who has now been named communications and multimedia minister) came out of the school to inform me and a few other reporters that he received complaints about several polling stations in the area.

I did not wake up that morning expecting to ride in a motorcycle convoy around Bangsar and Kerinchi with Fahmi, of all people, but that’s what happened.

“Come, we need to be there fast, we’ll go on a motorcycle, okay?” he said, which left us a little baffled but nonetheless, we hopped on his staff’s bikes and zoomed away on our merry way.

It was also my first time riding a motorcycle, so I won’t lie that I hesitated a little but when would I ever get a chance to be in a bike convoy with an MP?

After visiting a couple of them, we made our way to the last polling station, PPR Kerinchi, which had a few problems. According to Fahmi, this area held the most number of voters in Lembah Pantai, at least over 6,000 people.

Two medium-sized tents were set up on a football field within the compound but that was not the main issue.

Thousands of people lined up all the way from the back of the flat (which is up a hill, by the way). By the time we arrived, it was nearly 11am and people told us that they had been standing under the hot sun since 8am, with no chairs or tents to protect them from the heat and exhaustion.

I spoke with a few elderly folks who said that when they requested chairs from the Election Commission (EC) officers, they were told there weren’t enough.

What baffled me the most is that there wasn’t a designated line for senior citizens. In fact, the general line was barely a proper one. There were only two voting channels at the station so the line just split into two when voters reached the tents.

I remember one woman whose knees were buckling as she had been lining up for three hours. I had to hold her for a bit as Fahmi went to question the EC officers about the odd and unorganised arrangement.

Only after he made noise about the situation did they finally open up a senior citizen lane and gave out a few chairs to those who really needed them.

The whole ordeal left a bad taste in my mouth. Like it or not, the voters are the main heroes here. At the end of the day, the people are the ones to decide the new government but the authorities are not complying with their needs.

They did not ask for something unreasonable like an air-conditioned area with an expensive buffet. Knowing that we were in the middle of the monsoon season and that our weather will remain as humid as ever, some tents to provide shade and cartons of water bottles aren’t really that hard to provide.

It was also funny to me; it took a politician’s visit for the authorities to finally give in to the voters’ simple demands.

A change in perspective

I come from a family who had zero interest in politics. For the longest time, my family and other relatives believed that their votes don’t matter and that their lives will forever remain the same.

I couldn’t say much about their beliefs before this because I knew if I said something about voting, I’d just be shot down with the classic comeback; “What do you know about politics? You can’t even vote yet.”

Even my friends felt the same, but at least I had the power to convince them. So you best believe I peer-pressured a couple of my voting-age pals to head to their stations to vote during GE14.  

Though I think the political crisis from 2020 to 2022 riled up some of my family members. I had never seen any of them so pumped for elections.

Here’s a little hilarious moment I’d like to share. My grandfather still held onto the belief that voting cannot improve Malaysia. That morning, he sat my grandmother down and tried to talk her out of voting.

“If you vote, the ‘bad guys’ will still win! Who cares? You can’t change the country,” he said to her. It was at this very moment that fiery spite emerged within my grandmother.

When I arrived at my family home in Shah Alam after work, she pulled me aside and whispered, “Later, you have to bring me out to vote.”

My mother, my grandmother, and I went to cast our votes but see, the thing is, my grandmother lied to my grandfather and said we were just going out for groceries.

My dearest “Mama” came home to show her ink-stained finger to my granddad and proudly exclaimed, “Between the two of us, only I can speak about the government now!”

I do believe with the triumphs of GE14 and the plot twist of the Sheraton Move, Malaysians are becoming more and more politically aware.

Muhyiddin Yassin (centre) following the Sheraton Move

It almost feels as if they became empowered, finally having their voices heard and seeing that their actions do matter in government changes.

I guess, in a sense, I do feel the same. I have always stayed neutral when I considered the elections as an age-matter situation. I kept thinking, “Ah, I’ll leave that for 21-year-old me to deal with when the time comes.”

Though, I was moved. When Pakatan Harapan won in 2018, it wasn’t a matter of the party winning that made me happy. I was proud of Malaysians for changing a 61-year-long system. For making history.

It was amazing to see people go out of their way to vote on a Wednesday. Malaysians were helping each other, from providing carpool services to personally sending postal votes.

After the crisis emerged, I shared the same anger with millions of people. I asked the same questions, “Why do it (GE15) now when we were doing alright, especially doing it in the midst of a pandemic? For power? Was it worth it?”

An anxiety-filled election

Once I was done with the shenanigans of my family, my supervisor asked me to come into the office. I, as well as the reporters, editors, the social media and tech team of Malaysiakini, worked late to wait for the results to roll in.

The intensity of GE15 left us at the edge of our desk chairs, many of us were sweating despite being in an air-conditioned room.

We were calling anybody we knew for unofficial results, yelling out who won which seat every time the EC updated their website.

I stayed in the office until 2.30am before one of the reporters told me it was best I went home.

“You have been up since 7am and your eyes are bloodshot red right now. Please go home, Aisya,” my colleague stressed. Even as I left the building, the editorial side was still packed, the team’s dedication was truly inspiring for me.

Guess what? I did not go home. Many of my friends, who were also first-time voters, were still up at that late hour so we gathered at our usual mamak stall. None of us could sleep, we needed to know who was going to win.

The hung government was a surprise. Even though there wasn’t a black-and-white of who won and lost, I felt a sensation of defeat deep down. It was the dread of uncertainty, not knowing how this will end and then worrying about the state of the country.

We had been in a state of limbo during the 2020-2022 crisis and I, as well as many other Malaysians, hoped that the GE15 would pull us out of it… but it almost did not.

The post-election week was suspenseful. I did not get any assignments and was not told to follow a reporter - I had a feeling Malaysiakini only wanted their big guns to do the runs this time and I don’t blame them.

There were days of maybe’s, no confirmations, genuine confusion, and headaches that when Istana Negara announced Harapan’s Anwar Ibrahim as prime minister, I did not know how to react.

“Should I relax now or should I still wait for the unexpected?” was a thought that clouded my mind.

I know it had only been more than a month since I started working but thinking back to that day before my first shift, I know that version of Aisya would have had a migraine had she known the events that happened.

To summarise; I rode a bike, I watched my family become politically aware, and I was present when two historical moments went down - Malaysia had its first hung general election, and an opposition leader who waited 24 years finally became prime minister.

There’s more to come in my journey… and boy, am I excited. - Mkini

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PUTRI AISYA SIFUAN is a Malaysiakini trainee journalist.