New Sabah times | KOTA KINABALU, 01-July-2009: Malaysian youths in general appear to be well informed on current issues but they remain politically disconnected as found in a nationwide opinion poll released yesterday.
The poll found out that much as our youths felt that government decisions have a lot of impact in their daily lives, there is little their votes could do to influence the government.
The National Youth Survey 2008 was conducted by the Merdeka Centre for Opinion Research funded by the Asia Foundation to gauge youths views on lifestyle, values, current issues and politics, and their own levels of civic and social involvement.
The poll was carried out from Nov 13 to Dec 9 last year on a total of 2,518 randomly selected youths nationwide aged between 20 and 35 years old.
“This is the third consecutive year we have conducted this poll and we hope the data would help policymakers, grassroots advocacy groups and youth organisations to understand the needs of young people and address their concerns based on factual findings,” said Merdeka Centre for Opinion Research programme director Ibrahim Suffian.
On self-efficacy and politics, the poll identified 74 per cent of youths as having low and moderate levels of self-efficacy.
“Although the perceived impact the government had on their daily lives increased from 72 per cent in 2007 to 77 per cent last year, the confidence youths had in elections saw a decline of 16 per cent, in which 64 per cent believed their votes would make a difference last year compared to 80 per cent in 2007,” he said.
Ibrahim said ethnicity and backgrounds contributed to significant differences in the level of self-efficacy among the youths.
For instance, he said the majority of ethnic Chinese who attended Chinese schools were found to express lower levels of self-efficacy, where some felt there was not much they could do for the community.
“On the other hand, Indian respondents who attended Tamil schools and embraced Hinduism showed the highest level of self-efficacy; they felt there is much they could do.
“Malays and other Bumiputera held moderate views in regards to their ability to influence the government,” he said.
He said if voter registration was taken as an indicator of political involvement, the poll showed that such involvement was considered moderate as only 55 per cent of the youths interviewed were registered voters.
The poll also showed that young Malaysians had mixed views on political pluralism.
56 per cent said they would accept a female becoming prime minister and 57 per cent could accept a non-Malay Muslim prime minister.
On political diversity, 51 per cent of youths from the Peninsular favoured political diversity whereas 58 per cent of East Malaysian respondents favoured the idea of being united under the Barisan Nasional.
“Nonetheless, the survey finds that 77 per cent youths showed a stronger preference for a multi-racial party that is able to represent the interests of Malaysians regardless of ethnicity or religion,” said Ibrahim.