By Chang Zi Kang

A year after Pakatan Harapan government came to power, the Parliament tabled the motion for the first time to lower the age of voting to 18, which later saw the unanimous adoption by ruling and opposition lawmakers at the Dewan Rakyat this July. Following the passing of the bill at the Dewan Negara subsequently, the statutory voting age for Malaysians has officially been reduced from 21 to 18.

Nevertheless, the adoption of the bill has since triggered polarised debates among the public. Those supportive of the bill are of the opinion that young people at the age of 18 are matured enough to choose their leaders and should therefore be given the opportunity to participate in national issues by way of voting as early as possible. On the contrary, the opponents believe that 18-year-olds are not mentally matured enough to dictate the country’s destiny.

Bear in mind that young people in different age brackets are concerned about very different issues. Political Studies for Change (KPRU) researcher Xiao Jiaying is of the view that young people between 15 and 19 are generally concerned about opportunities to further their studies while those between 20 and 25 are more concerned about job opportunities, and those between 26 and 30 more inclined towards the health of the national economy.

Having said that, things from national politics to government policies in education, economy and culture have a lot to do with our youngsters, and it is therefore unfair to deny the right of young people reaching the age of 18 to vote.

Politically and culturally, Malaysia is a highly diverse yet complicated society. Owing to intensified racial and religious conflicts after a change of federal government, we have witnessed a serious regression during the early stage of the country’s democratic transition process. It will be difficult for us to move ahead towards the modern social values of democracy, progress and equality if this phenomenon is not given its due attention.

As a matter of fact, high quality civic education will groom a generation of young Malaysians who will form an important force to support our society’s continued progress.

The BN regime that has dominated the country’s political landscape for over 60 years has wreaked tremendous havoc to the country’s political culture as well as bureaucratic system, with corruption and abuse of power involving senior government leaders making frequent news headlines. To divert public attention from more relevant issues, it is not uncommon for politicians to play up sensitive racial and religious issues with the ultimate motive of keeping themselves continuously in power.

Malaysia saw its first ever change of federal administration since Independence in the May 9 general elections last year, and this unprecedented occasion was seen by many political pundits as a rare opportunity for our second nation-building. A deeper meaning for this administration change is to restore the country’s devastated political culture and bureaucratic system, which is itself an enormous reform engineering that entails one whole generation of people or two.

In the meantime, the bowing out of progressive citizenry following PH’s electoral success has given rise to a civic society vacuum which has emboldened powerful counter-attacks from anti-reform forces, posing additional resistance to the progressive reform movement.

As if that is not enough, such negative forces have also dealt irreparable damage to the country’s institutional reform effort. As a result, our democratic process has stagnated in the midst of endless ideological conflicts, and this to a very large extent can be attributed to the poor civic quality of our people.

Under the old authoritarian regime, Malaysia’s civic education has prioritised the production of law-abiding citizens but not those who can think critically.

As a matter of fact, the design of our traditional civic education curriculum has been steered towards educating our students to abide by the country’s laws and Constitution, and respect our multicultural society, among other things.

I personally feel that the citizens’ responsibility should not be confined to law compliance or the election of government by casting their ballots. More importantly, they must also participate in public affairs through civic society deeds.

According to the 2009 International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) report, citizens in countries with relatively high civic mindedness generally had lower tolerance for an authoritarian regime. The report showed that two of the four highest ranking countries, namely South Korea at third place (565 points) and Taiwan at fourth place (559 points), had the lowest tolerance for corruption. On the contrary, due to specific religious and political reasons, countries like Thailand and Indonesia had higher tolerance for authoritarianism, undemocratic regime and corruption. The situation in Malaysia today is such that we are unmistakably tilting more towards the latter.

We can see that civic-mindedness is of paramount importance to Malaysia now in the midst of a democratic transition. After young people aged 18 and above have been granted the right to vote, it is now imperative for us to seriously look into the issue of boosting our civic education in a bid to muster the progressive social strength to bring about long-term reforms in our political culture and bureaucracy. This is a very pertinent question that will determine whether the country will continue to move forward or backslide in our democratic process over the next 20 years.

This is the first in a series of five articles published in conjunction with the Chinese Education Day 2019.

More:

Towards the age of movement students

Making our youngsters more matured

From preservation to rejuvenation

Do we need civic education?

(
Chang Zi Kang
is Executive Member of Keadilan Youth (AMK) Pahang.)