My Virgin Experience on the 14th General Election of Malaysia

This week meant a lot to Malaysian as well as to myself. It is my first time to take part in the 14th general election for the country and surprised to see such outcome where opposition takes the majority and take over the long-reigning Barisan Nasional.

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This is the famous scene in the Matrix Trilogy whereby Neo was given a choice by Morpheus:

Blue pill: sleep and continue to live in the matrix
Red pill: wake up to the new world

Well, for Malaysia, most of us choose the Red Pill and ready for a new change in the country. A bold and wise choice by the people and I am proud of it.

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Some experience sharing on my first time voting. I went to the primary school that I was distributed to and queue up for the voting. There are different lines that are based on age group of the voters. I was at the very last line and queued for 20 minutes plus before my turn. The officer will check my palm and confirm my identity by reading out loud my name. Then, the officer stained my left index finger with indelible ink. After striking away my name from the list, I was handed the voting ticket of the parliament and state and directed to the writing booth where I cross the politician I choose. Once done with the process (making sure the ink not staining on the ticket), I folded the tickets and went to drop them into two transparent boxes. That was about the whole process and it was easy!

My queue when I first arrived.

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7 lessons that I learned from this General Election:

1. Prime Minister should not interfere with the justice department and also finance department. It is obvious that if the Prime Minister controls these critical departments, then the person will have absolute power with no one to question his or her authority. It was obvious that the past Prime Minister had done something wrong by making such arrangement. 3 of these crucial roles should be held by 3 different people whereby each of them can keep each other in check, not to cross the boundary of getting corrupted.
2. When the government had done something wrong which it is still able to cover up the incident and left the people unanswered, this is an indication of power corruption. This was very clear from the past government’s doing. There were a lot of cases which had became closed files after the interruption of the related departments.
3. The people hold the power to change the country. Even though both political parties do have their flaws, but we need to make up our choice to choose the one that we think could deliver the job better and bring more benefits. In this 14th General Election, it was clear that the previous government had failed to bring forth many benefits to the people. Example like BR1M did little to least impact on the people as it is one time and in comparison, to the living cost of the people, it does little help. To the people who are in extreme poverty, it does help but it does not elevate them from the poverty line. I do believe every vote count as this is part of our obligation to be a Malaysian. That is why we hold the Identity Card of Malaysia and entitle for different benefits from the country like stability in the economy, security, job opportunity and etc.
4. With the advent of social media, the new generation of politicians should utilize the platform to make the progress known to the people (fulfilling the promises). Despite throwing the opposition with different accusation and fight over small and petty matter, the people would like to see real development going on. In this globalized market of Southeast Asia, it is important for Malaysia to catch up with other neighboring countries like Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines and even Myanmar to become the leading role and become competitive economically. Malaysia’s population is one of the least in Southeast Asia, which means we will have less human resource and talents relatively to other SEA countries. Moreover, our market will be relatively small too which is one of our weakness to attract foreign investment to come forth. Thus, it is crucial for the new government to strategize our country to gain upper hand in this competitive era.
5. To the new government, I think they could utilize social media to engage the people more in a different conversation. There can be even educative session whereby they could explain about different policies that the government wanting to implement and open to the public for questions and understand what the people really want. This is one good way to break the silos between government, people, and even the corporates. When the government is open to learn from more parties, they could implement stronger policies and collaborative terms for the people and to the other counterparts, making all the stakeholders mutually benefited. Personally, I started to learn more about politics and the system like democracy, socialism, anarchy and so on recently which I was amazed on how the country will become with the different system implemented. It is good to understand the different system so that we can pick whatever good from others and implement, making our existing system a more comprehensive and inclusive system.
6. I believe most of us needed a certain level of supervision to keep our performance in check. I am one of them. With the lack of supervision, I found myself slag a lot and become less productive. I need to constantly motivate myself and keep my own schedule in check so that I could be disciplined and perform well. This goes the same for the government. It has to have a performance indicator whereby the people can keep things in check. The government should have more channel for the people to give feedback and suggestions for improvement so that they can consider the people’s voice into the policymaking.
7. We, especially the young generation should always stay vigilant and dare to question the decisions made by the government. Clearly, none of us is a perfect being and we all make mistakes. Hence, it is important for us to pick up some wrongdoing of the government and help them to correct the errors. This goes the same for ourselves whereby family members, colleagues, and friends can always critic us and we need to embrace the critics with an open heart and do some self-reflection for constant improvement.

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