COMMENT | Can broad-based reset councils bring us out of this loop?

COMMENT | Young people are often reminded of the great promise of tomorrow, where they will be leaders of the nation. In the meantime, they live in the here and now, where every ringgit spent is a stressful decision to make.

There is no certainty, very little comfort, and not much to hope for. No one would like that.

The usual disclaimers naturally apply, some people (even young people) find themselves doing very well during this time of crisis, many still have a roof over their heads and food on the table despite the difficulties that they’ve faced in the past 18 months.

However, we cannot ignore the bleak waves of pessimism that have been beating upon our shores, just because shopping malls are slowly filling up with people again.

Some kind of normalcy is returning, but not one that ever was kind to younger generations. The problems amplified by the pandemic: precarious jobs, underemployment, low wages, unequal wealth distribution, weak bargaining power, malnutrition, and so on; will remain.

These frustrations have simmered and will continue to spread as successive generations of young people enter adulthood to similar situations. Can we afford to wait and see what happens when those frustrations finally boil over?

The hard questions need to be attended to, and that must start now. Our representative democracy should, in theory, be a means to raising and resolving these issues through our elected representatives.

However, the protracted political wobble has left little attention to issues beyond a government’s longevity or lack of it.

It is no surprise that a recent Merdeka Center youth survey found that 70 percent of respondents aged between 18-30 were not interested in...