A look at youth disenchantment

Extracted from Aidila Razak 

POLLS FOCUS Hoping for a regime change on the back of youth disenchantment in the event of a snap general election? You may be disappointed.

However, according to analysts, brewing issues such as growing youth unemployment are bound to punch some holes in the ruling coalition's vote bank.

While Malaysia's unemployment figure has been at a steady low of three percent, the United Nations estimates that more than 10 percent of Malaysians aged 20-24 are jobless and looking.

More worrying, however, is the growing number of unemployed graduates, who make up 60 percent of the total unemployment figures.



About 60,000 unemployed graduates registered with the Malaysian Labour Exchange in March 2009, with the number growing to 81,046 in October the same year, not including the 70,000-odd diploma holders searching for jobs.

The reasons for this vary - poor employability and attitude of local graduates rank high on the employer side while low salaries top the list of grouses of job seekers - but the fact remains, the hundreds of millions of ringgit spent by the government on this has not borne fruit.

This is not a fact lost on the BN, with its Youth wing chief Khairy Jamaluddin acknowledging in a speech last year that about 80 percent, or almost three million new voters in the next general election, will be youth voters.

Apathetic and not politically-aware

This, he said, will bump the proportion of youth voters from 41 percent in the 12th general election to 49 percent, of whom 75 percent have told BN Youth researchers that they plan to vote.

Interestingly, Khairi had noted, 62 percent of these youth are fence-sitters, while a more recent study by the BN Youth wing found that about 60 percent of young people polled were concerned about their career prospects.

But whether or not this will result in a swing against the ruling coalition remains an open question.

In fact, the relatively low level of political awareness among Malaysian youth may indicate growing unemployment could have little impact on their voting decisions.

This is particularly for those in the rural areas, which make up the bulk of the state and parliamentary constituencies in Malaysia, said Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas) chief executive Wan Saiful Wan Jan.

"Young people in cities like Kuala Lumpur may be politically active, but I don't think this is the case outside of the big cities.

"(In the more rural areas) when the youth are discontented, they become apathetic. So the challenge is to get those youths to register to vote... but their apathy will not result in them voting for a change of government," Wan Saiful said.