GE14 lost if Barisan still fails to impress young voters, warns Sabbaruddin Chik

By admin-s Last updated May 29, 2014

(TMI) – Barisan Nasional (BN) will lose Putrajaya in the 14th general election (GE14) if young voters remain unimpressed with the coalition and its handling of issues such as corruption and transparency, warns former Umno secretary-general Tan Sri Sabbaruddin Chik.

He said the younger generation was no longer stupid, and Umno and BN were in for an unprecedented nightmare should Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak and his administration carry on without any meaningful reforms.

“In the next general election, I am worried that if we do nothing, we will face bigger problems… most of the Generation Y are not with us,” Sabbaruddin told The Malaysian Insider.

The Election Commission (EC) said in 2013 that 70% of the estimated 4.2 million unregistered voters were between the ages of 21 and 40. Some 450,000 Malaysians turn 21 each year, the eligible voting age in the country.

Sabbaruddin did not rule out the possibility that BN would lose half the seats it managed to cling to in last year’s general election, which already saw the ruling coalition lose the popular vote in its worst polls showing in history.

“If there are no serious changes, we will lose half. Now, (we have lost the) two-thirds (majority),” said the veteran politician who served as the Umno secretary-general in 1996.

“Corruption, leakages and transparency must be emphasised,” he said, adding that these were the main factors behind the youths’ rejection of BN.

The Auditor-General’s annual report has laid bare the government’s leakages under the Najib administration since he took over from Tun Abdullah Badawi in 2009.

The latest report exposed several ministries’ huge mismanagement of funds in 2013, which ran contrary to Najib’s cry for transformation since he took over the country’s reins.

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) was forced to haul up five ministries to clarify the financial discrepencies reported in exhaustive detail in the first edition of the Auditor-General Report 2013.

Anti-graft watchdog Transparency International-Malaysia (TI-M) released a report in 2013 showing Malaysia had improved its ranking by just one notch, up from 54 in 2012 to 53.

Malaysia’s rank has not run tangent with the prime minister’s call for transformation.