By: Natalie Shobana Ambrose
theSun, Malaysia (pg 12) May 22, 2013
http://www.thesundaily.my/news/columns/onpointe
How
do you quieten the voice of distrust? The past few weeks there have been many
accusations about foreign voters with Malaysian identification cards,
discrepancy in voting procedures, mystery yellow boxes appearing, blackouts at
counting sites and other allegations.
Some
of these claims were later refuted by citizens who gave their personal accounts
of the day while some came forward as witnesses adding weight to the
allegations. Both groups need to be applauded for speaking up for the truth.
Yet
something lingers through all this – trust issues. As a country, we seem to be
plagued by distrust and the question that needs to be asked is why. Why are so
many Malaysians willing and wanting to believe that all these allegations are
true.
Have
they been given cause to do so? Perhaps so. Our country suffers from many
unsavoury findings and is listed at the bottom tier of many surveys we should
not even rank on. Yet there is little real action to ensure that we do not
suffer the same fate over and over again. This causes distrust.
Then
there are too many corruption cases and inaction towards corrupt leadership.
People want swift action, not drawn-out court cases with little end in sight
and no real punishment enforced. This is a sure way to cause distrust. It is
not that voters were ungrateful or that a particular race caused a vote swing.
This
was an election where those who came out to vote were more informed and did not
vote by the race of the candidate standing – that may have been what happened
in the past but today's voter is much more mature.
This
is thanks to organisations like Bersih and Tindak Malaysia who championed voter
education vigorously causing Malaysians to look up terms like gerrymandering
and question the delineation of seats.
Ungrateful
people won't bother or take the time to come out and vote or even register to
be a voter. That perhaps is the group we need to look at – all seven million of
them (the unregistered and registered but did not vote group).
So
how do we make seven million people believe that their vote matters – because
their indifference still affects our electoral process. The story is the same
around the world; trust.
Building
real trust in political parties, leadership, institutions, media and processes
is key – and trust is different from perception.
In
the "Future of Europe" survey, respondents were asked to agree or
disagree with the following statement: Nowadays, there is a big gap between the
people's opinion and the decisions taken by the political leaders. 89% of Europeans
rested on the "totally agree" or "tend to agree" marker.
Political
theorist Ivan Krastev in his TedTalk further illustrated the point saying
findings from the survey stated that only 52% of survey respondents from the 27
EU countries believed their vote matters inside their country.
What
about the other half of the population? So, how would we as Malaysians respond
to this question? Our voter turnout of 80% might better illustrate the answer.
Even if we feel that there is a gap in what we want and decisions taken by
leadership, we still believe our vote counts.
It
may be a bitter pill to swallow and we can call it all kinds of names but this
is the loud voice of distrust – and it is not something that can be silenced
with threats or token book and phone vouchers.
It
is something that can be silenced by transparency, election reform, independent
institutions, better governance and doing away with xenophobic thinking,
statements and policies.
Yes,
that means more than just eating foods of other cultures, taking photos with a
myriad of races and talking about living as one in harmony – that still does
not deal with the real issue of distrust.
Natalie believes that it is time we
stopped spending money on perception but start working hard at the real issues
to build public trust.
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