Listen to disgruntled voters

Sharon Ling, The Star

YOU know election season is near when political talk about candidates, dates and what not starts to dominate your news feed and conversations.

It’s starting to feel that way, at least in other parts of Malaysia. Here in Sarawak, things are still pretty calm and quiet.

As one political analyst observed, the mood is still “cold” in Sarawak, with barely any interest or excitement in the impending polls.

“Look at those people at the next table. I don’t think they’re interested in the general election at all. They’re more interested in whether the chicken wings they ordered are going to arrive in the next five minutes,” he said at a coffee shop the other day.

Since we hold our state election separately from the parliamentary election, unlike other states who hold theirs simultaneously, it means there’s an election here every two to three years. With polls happening at such frequent intervals, it’s no wonder we end up becoming a little blase about the whole process.

Or perhaps there’s not much excitement because the general election tends to be less interesting in Sarawak, with fewer close battles and a more or less predictable outcome.

Elsewhere, though, the rhetoric is being ramped up as interested parties lobby intensely for attention, trumpeting their merits and slinging insults at opponents. Nor is this confined to politicians and their supporters, as even Joe Public is getting involved in arguments and airing opinions.

This brings me to the #undirosak movement, which has been generating a lot of chatter over its call for voters to spoil their votes in the coming election.

It’s disquieting that much of the response has been one of outrage and outright dismissal. Worse still are the insults and threats of violence against the movement’s proponents as reported in a news portal.

Whatever you might think of them and their proposal, threatening and hurling abuse at them is uncalled for.

You can argue that spoiling your vote is akin to wasting it and will not lead to change.

You can point out that ours is not a presidential system, whereby we do not vote directly for the prime minister but an assemblyman or MP in our respective constituencies.

In other words, it’s about choosing the best candidate who you think should represent you in the legislature, so it’s missing the mark to spoil your vote because you disagree with the choice of prime minister.

But you can’t just call people stupid, self-centred and immature for wanting to spoil their votes without even considering why they feel this way in the first place.

If people really feel that they have no choice but to spoil their votes as a form of protest at the lack of suitable candidates to vote for, then political parties need to take a good look at themselves and think about what changes they might want to implement to engage this group of voters and their concerns.

To simply dismiss them with insults would serve to confirm their notion that political parties don’t care about them and therefore don’t deserve their votes.

I may not agree that #undirosak is the answer to our political problems but I can see where the proponents are coming from.

Ultimately, political parties and politicians need to come up with better answers to legitimate concerns than merely disregarding them.