Malaysiakini | 01-July-2009: Race or religion shouldn’t be a criteria and if the candidate was a she, they really wouldn’t mind. This is the opinion of Malaysian youths when asked on the specifics of who should occupy the prime minister’s seat.
The Merdeka Centre for Opinion Research’s latest poll released today revealed that more than half of the Malaysian youths were open to having a prime minister who was not a Malay Muslim and that gender does not matter.
Slightly less than half of those polled said they don’t see being a Muslim a priority in selecting the country’s prime minister.
The Centre’s National Youth Survey was carried out last year among 2,518 youths whose age ranged from 20-35 years.
The poll proved that Malaysian youths are well-informed, with nearly half of those polled reading the newspapers more than four days a week.
The results also revealed that 53 percent of Malaysian youths tend to obtain their news and information from watching television.
Malaysian youths’ use of the Internet skyrocketed from 57 percent in 2007 to 70 percent in 2008. However, only 44 percent of them obtained their news and information from the web, spending an average of 45 minutes to two hours daily online.
Reactions towards the mainstream media tipped towards the more unfavourable side with 49 percent of youths claiming that they do not trust the mainstream media’s reporting as opposed to the 46 percent who do.
When asked whether they felt they could make a difference in solving community problems, only 36 percent of them thought that they could make an impact. This is a marginal decrease from the 39 percent registered in the 2007 polls.
Youths still not voting
Voting is still not a high priority for Malaysian youths, with a whopping 44 percent of them still unregistered.
Interestingly, the number of unregistered voters declines as the age bracket goes higher. Asked why they had yet to register, the respondents said they were ‘too busy’ or were ‘indifferent towards politics’.
The trend of having multiracial political parties seems to have been heartily embraced by Malaysian youths with 77 percent of those could vote saying they voted for a multiracial party which could represent all Malaysians regardless of ethnicity or religion.
Forty-six percent of youths want a political party that could improve the state of the country by managing the economy effectively followed by 29 percent who wanted corruption to be curbed.
On another front, most of the non-bumiputera youths polled expressed an interest in migrating to another country with Chinese and Indian youths leading the pack. This represents one in four youths who have thoughts of residing elsewhere.
A majority of the youths identified themselves as Malaysians first and foremost, followed by their religion while only a small fraction identified themselves based on their ethnic group.
There was also a slight increase of five percent of youths who believed that any government decision would impact their lives.
The poll also revealed a significant decrease in the number of youths who believe that their votes would make a difference in influencing the government. This constitutes a 16 percent fall.