KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 30 — Despite the trend of putting younger faces to draw youth votes, Umno could field more veterans as candidates in the 15th general election, a senior party leader said.
Mingguan Malaysia today reported Terengganu Umno communications chief Datuk Seri Ahmad Said said the main factor should be the candidate’s credibility and ability to garner voter support, regardless of age.
“If we want to give it to the young people, but people don’t know the candidates, that’s difficult too.
“Why? Because we need to have a balance between academic, background and their record of service in a certain area.
“Maybe it doesn’t matter for the state legislative assemblies as they are small. The estimation is about 20,000 to 30,000 votes, but not Parliament,” Ahmad Said was quoted as saying.
He gave the example of the Kemaman parliamentary constituency in Terengganu which reportedly contains four state constituencies and 140,000 voters.
He said that if a young person was chosen as its “poster boy”, the constituents might not be able to recognise the candidate’s face.
“So it’s not necessary that the poster boy has to be a young person,” he was quoted saying.
At present there are more than 21 million Malaysians who have been registered as voters for the coming GE15. From this number, there is a 12.2 million estimation of youth voters aged between 18 to 40.
