KUALA LUMPUR • The young in Malaysia are likely to get more power after backing 93-year-old Mahathir Mohamad to topple a regime that ruled the South-east Asian nation for six decades.
Malaysia is "very serious" about reducing the voting age to 18 before the next elections due by 2023, Youth and Sports Minister Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman, 25, told Bloomberg in an interview.
The two-month-old Cabinet plans to ask the Attorney-General's Office to look into what laws need to be amended, he said. Lowering the voting age to 18 from 21 would add an additional 3.7 million voters, Mr Syed Saddiq said, increasing the number of registered voters by about 25 per cent from the election in May.
Voters aged 21 to 39 make up around 40 per cent of the Malaysian electorate, twice the number of voters over 60, according to Election Commission data.
"That means the youth voter block becomes bigger and stronger, and therefore, they cannot be sidelined in the Malaysian political scene anymore," said Mr Syed Saddiq, a member of Tun Dr Mahathir's political party and Malaysia's youngest-ever Cabinet minister.
High youth unemployment proved to be a critical factor in a vote that ousted Najib Razak, who had championed economic policies favouring the Malay majority and now finds himself facing charges in a massive corruption investigation at state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad.
The former premier, who denies wrongdoing, had made a last-ditch effort to woo younger voters on the eve of the vote, pledging income tax exemptions for those aged 26 and below. Unemployment among Malaysians aged 15 to 24 stood at 10.8 per cent last year, World Bank data shows.
That is more than three times the national rate of 3.3 per cent.
Joblessness among local graduates, meanwhile, increased more sharply than among non-graduates since 2011, according to data from the central bank.
"The youth care about two primary issues," Mr Syed Saddiq said. "One is about bread-and-butter issues, which is cost of living, affordable housing, good employment opportunities, and quality of life," the minister said.
The second is getting their voice heard in the nation-building process. "Power should be returned to the people," he said. "That means opening up more democratic spaces, which means more young people can join and speak up."
About 75 per cent of younger voters backed the opposition during the May general election, according to Mr Ibrahim Suffian, executive director of pollster Merdeka Centre, which tracks voter sentiments. Merdeka estimated a voter turnout of 81 per cent for youth, with urban areas of Kuala Lumpur and Selangor seeing more young people outpace their elders in casting ballots.
"Young voters are the true kingmakers in the elections - they were the ones who brought us into government," Mr Syed Saddiq said. "But also a word of caution, they could also be the ones who take us out from government, because they are not loyal to any political party."
The minister, who has pledged to reshuffle youth associations to make sure they are led by people under the age of 35, also wants to phase out political appointees in sports and give more attention to student programmes that involve coding, automation and artificial intelligence.
Reducing the voting age will help break the "youth glass ceiling" and encourage young people to be more active in political organisations, Mr Syed Saddiq said.
BLOOMBERG
