LETTER | Trust our youths in deciding their future

LETTER | What if the six million new voters vote for the return of the kleptocrats? Yes, that is a possibility.

However, we should trust the young to evaluate and decide on their own given that in this digital world, they have access to various news sources as compared to the older generations who only read from traditional sources.

Today’s youth are more tech-savvy and engaged on social media. Whenever there’s an issue they feel passionate about, they take to social media to express their discontent as compared to the generations before them who practised having and keeping their thoughts inside their minds.

Even if the youths were to vote for the return of kleptocracy, they must have their reasons.

Yes, they are tech-savvy and engaged on social media but we, the older generations could help to create and spread wider awareness.

We should ask ourselves the following:

• Did we, the older generations, help to reach out in engaging and informing youths that they are automatically registered and that postal voting is an option for them?

• Did we help to reach out and inform the youths about their right to vote and how to exercise it?

If those who do not wish to see a return of the kleptocrats to govern this country, everyone still has another 10 days left to reach out, inform and present your case to the young people in your circle of friends and relatives.

It will help in driving first-time voters to the polls.

Discard the general apathy prevalent amongst the older generations towards informing and advising the youths of this country.

The older generations have an attitude of indifference to the extent that they don’t care.

It was the older generation, through their indifference to the electoral process in the last two decades, that contributed to the country going down the path it is presently gliding along.

Let’s be frank. This country was supposed to reach developed status in 2020, a promise made to the older generations by this same group of politicians that are now fighting tooth and nail against each other to obtain the mandate from all of us.

Instead, our legacy to the youth of today is a country that is not much better off in many aspects than it was a few decades ago.

Social cohesion is an alien word. Instead of a united population, relationships between the various races are frayed at the seams, pushed to the limits not by the people but by the same politicians who are supposed to unite all of us together.

Why put the responsibility on our youths’ young shoulders? The path and present predicament that the country is in was not of their making.

‘Older generation failed the young’

Instead of helping to steer the country back to its original path as envisioned by our first prime minister, the older generations expressed concerns about whether the youths will be able to make an informed and correct decision on Nov 19 or make the same mistakes we made, that is trusting the same group of politicians over and over again to lead this country.

Trust the young to decide. Even if they were to vote for the return of the kleptocrats, they must have their own reasons.

Maybe for the same reasons their parents and grandparents have when they voted for the same people to continuously govern this country disastrously for the last 60 years.

They are voting for their own future and not the future of the older generations.

If they vote for the return of the kleptocrats and if the country is weakened further, financially and economically, they are voting for their children’s future and their own, not the older generation.

We failed to take up our responsibilities. We abdicated our responsibilities to leave a prosperous and well-governed country to the future generation.

Now we are worried that the youths might continue on the same path as them.

Even if the youths do vote for the kleptocrats, it is the fault of the older generations. We failed in our responsibilities to educate and advised the youths of today of their civic duties and responsibilities.

It is not too late for the older generations to correct this. Let us not fail the young again.

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