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LETTER | Going by a Chinese saying, the promoters of #UndiRosak have not eaten enough salt. In ordinary language this means they do not have enough years of experience to be able to wise up to the real issue in the coming “mother of all elections”.

They have not personally seen the Malaya and then Malaysia as from the 1950’ to the present. As such they lack the benefit of hindsight to make educated comparisons of the 50’s and 60’s with the present.

Nevertheless they are talking and advising voters as if with great wisdom. Their ‘advise’ is nothing but emotional venting of anger and frustrations.

This is obvious from #UndiRosak campaigner Hafidz Baharom’s frequent repetition of “I don’t care” during a recent forum.

He said, “I gave Pakatan 10 years to grow up, but they did not grow up. Now, just go out and vote, but ruin your vote. Just show that you have lost faith in them.”

Poor boy. He is throwing tantrums. What makes him believe that by spoiling votes the incumbent politicians (BN) will buck up and give better governance and that the opposition politicians (non-BN) will suddenly “grow up” to meet his expectations of them, whatever they are?

In throwing tantrums, #UndiRosak totally misses the real issue about the 14th GE, which PM Najib has called “the mother of all elections”. They appear like spoilt children.

It is simplistic to see only matters of parties and persons. If you don’t like this or that party, or this or that person, go and spoil your votes “to teach them a lesson”. They are not seeing the wood for the trees.

The mother of all elections is not about parties and personalities. It is about the system of governance. Which system do we want to be governing over us – the existing kleptocracy or the time-tested Westminster type democracy that we started with and which has been hijacked by kleptocrats?

By campaigning that voters who support neither this nor that party, or neither this nor that PM candidate, should spoil their votes, they are knowingly or unknowingly trying to keep voters under the tempurung.

This way, when will voters learn that they are the kingmakers? When will they gain confidence that changing governments is not the end of their world, or disastrous to the country in any way?

After all, the country has been running on autopilot for decades. A change of government cannot make things worse, even if the new government is unable to repair the damage done over those decades in a single term.

But by being bold enough to vote for a change (and hopefully it materializes) the voters would have learnt a very, very important lesson in democracy, i.e. the power to make changes is in their hands.

So if the new government does not live up to their expectations, at the next election they can vote it out. This will set in place a rotational system as in the UK and other working democracies.

Thus Malaysian voters would have come out from under the tempurung and learnt the real meaning of democracy. They would acquire maturity as voters.

Therefore they should be encouraged to vote, not spoil their votes. Voters must not fall for this simplistic “spoil your votes” tantrum of immature minds.

Voters must also rise up above pettiness and realise that repentance is not beyond human nature. Criminals have repented to assist law enforcement agencies. While leopards cannot change their spots, there are cases of leopards being tamed.

The mother of all elections is a golden opportunity to kick out the system of kleptocracy and bring back the system of democracy. If the moniker “mother of all elections” is to be justified, then GE14 should give birth to a healthy kicking baby and not a stillborn one.


The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.

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