Young Voters’ Participation: General Election 2013

Abstract

In the era of globalization, public concerns on young voters’ political participation is imperative. The purpose of this study is to examine three issues such as youth political participation, protest and radicalism including university students. The study of campus politics has been dominated by two paradigms which are political maturity and political consciousness to both party: proAspirasi and pro-Mahasiswa. This article argues in labelling pro-Mahasiswa as an antiestablishment party and have marginalized by the pro-Aspirasi, well known as the progovernment groups because they have been contested as the leftist or radical party. We first hypothesize that political campus has a direct negative effect such as protest and demonstration or a silent protest (abstention) because the deprivation of liberty is a cost. This type of effects may be endorsed under some conditions, it may be neutral, protest, radicalism or abstain. Some studies have found that the patterns and the trends of the young people’s movement since Independence has been marked with clearly outlined objectives, specifically to voice their concerns for some issues pertaining to the majority in society and in appealing to the government to address the said issues including democratization. Even though this group of people (young people) is a minority, but it is interesting to note that Malaysian young people’s movement set off with peaceful demonstrations. However, the movement eventually evolved to raise incentives for new form of protest. At the end, this study provide the concepts of protest and radicalism. For this purpose, the secondary data were analysed qualitatively. It is recommended that future research on students’ protest will take into account in comparing the perceptions towards the young voters’ participation in the election of 2013 and 2018.