KLUANG, Nov 8 — DAP’s Wong Shu Qi, who will be defending her Kluang parliamentary seat, said the 50,000 additional voters in the constituency will be the kingmakers in the 15th general election (GE15).
Wong said that the new voters are made up of both the young and old, the latter being those who have never registered and are now first-time voters.
"Quite a number of them actually are made up of not just super young voters but a lot of the much older first-time voters. They have never registered themselves before this," Wong said when asked if the increased voter count will be the ultimate decision maker.
"They have never thought of registering themselves as voters, but now they automatically got the right to vote. So they will be the person to make the choice," she said.
Wong said she has also been working hard to convince the Malay youth that DAP is a multi-racial party that champions every one.
"The issues I bring are those beyond our ethnicity, our skin colour and our religious background. So this round, I will talk about city development, urban planning and so on, because I do believe that we cannot rely on the old model of development for Kluang anymore.
"We need to rethink how this city is going to be and how we can live with the natural offerings here. I also find that young people are more acceptive of such issues and are inclined to talk about it," she added.
Wong said that in terms of political literacy, more needs to be done to engage with the young, particularly on long-term civic education plans.
She said young voters need to be taught that voting is not a process that changes everything overnight, but rather, a progressive and democratic journey.
"We need to educate our young generation since young, about their rights."
She said this is why issues need to be brought to them as their current conversations revolve around who will be the next prime minister.
"That's why political leaders should talk about it instead of who should be in Putrajaya, who should be prime minister, who should be in what position. We need to talk about our plans for the next generation or even the generation now. TVET education and industrial reforms are crucial, but not many are talking about those which are not seen as sexy topics," Wong said, lamenting that the media too needs to pay more heed to such issues.
"We have leaders who know about it, but we just want sexy topics and those sexy topics are three 'R' issues; race, religion and royalty. Three 'Rs' are sexier than bread and butter issues and young people are concerned about bread and butter issues because they are the generation to come," she added.
Wong said there is also a need to look at what kind of economic activities are needed in Kluang, as not all cities are the same.
"We must have our own specialty, leverage on our existing advantage.
"For example, Bandar Kluang is the administrative centre of Kluang and we are a district full of agricultural potential. So the next industry that we should go into is agriculture technology. We should be the agricultural technology centre," she added.
