AUGUST 10 — It’s likely around half the eligible voters for the six state elections won’t bother to show up on Saturday August 12, 2023 to vote.
In April 2022, 73.7 per cent turned up to vote for the French president. But only 47 per cent came out two months later in June to vote in France's national legislative assembly. Predictably, the 2023 Berlin state election in February, despite being the capital region, only drew 62.9 per cent.There is a distinction between Malaysia and developed democracies.
Voters may not be convinced with their institutions, legislators and political parties but when they show up to vote they exhibit their confidence in their democracy even if not as much in its actors. Pakatan’s earnest “make it work” with Barisan Nasional — Umno only actually, MIC and MCA as paperweight at best — appears whacky and unstructured. PN screams from all rooftops about Malays under attack as a genuine campaign — fortunately sixty years of confusion over a national identity assists the supremacists.
This is why the Maggi Mee explanations of politics and democracy found in TikTok inadvertently harm the consumers rather than inform them.