Youth vote shattered old shibboleths in Malaysia’s GE15

In Malaysia’s 15th General Election (GE15), our young National Alliance (Perikatan Nasional, PN) had performed well beyond expectation over the two older coalitions, National Front (Barisan Nasional, BN) and Alliance of Hope (Pakatan Harapan, PH), Many analysts had predicted that the incumbent BN would return to power. Even the Royal Malaysian Police’s intelligence unit, the Special Branch, could not accurately predict the undercurrents amongst the youth and the protest votes of the Malay population against both BN and PH. Buoyed by poll numbers and landslides in the state elections of Malacca (November 2021) and Johor (March 2022), BN’s anchor party, United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) successfully pressured Ismail Sabri to dissolve Parliament on 10 October 2022But UMNO’s president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi could not have been more wrong. What initially appeared to be a masterstroke quickly turned into his Achilles’ heel. The strongest revolt came from the country’s youth who happened to be the voters’ largest block. The mobilisation of youth since 2018 had continued in 2022. As compared to 2018, the electorate had increased by six million thanks to automatic voter registration and the lowering of voting age from 21 to 18, effective December 2021. What was initially predicted to be a walkover by PH in the Peninsula’s west coast also did not materialise. Meanwhile, in the Malay heartlands, young faces swarmed to PN rallies as the Malays were growingly becoming disillusioned by UMNO’s perceived unbridled hunger for power. As the results poured in, even I was surprised by PN’s overwhelming support from young electorates. I unseated Kelantan’s UMNO chief Ahmad Jazlan Yaakub in his party’s stronghold Machang with a margin of 10,154 votes (15.59% of the total valid votes), fuelled by overwhelming youth support in all 36 polling districts. Other traditional UMNO seats in the Malay belt like Penang’s Kepala Batas and Kedah’s Baling also flipped to PN, leaving UMNO with only 26 seats nationwide. Even PH leader Anwar Ibrahim’s daughter Nurul Izzah failed to keep her family’s impregnable fortress of Permatang Pauh. Nurul Izzah fell alongside Anwar’s old guards such as Abdullah Sani (Kapar) and Saifuddin Nasution (Kulim-Bandar Baru). Analysts call PN’s victory in 74 or one-third of parliamentary seats a ‘green wave’, referring to the colour of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (Parti Islam Se-Malaysia, PAS), PN’s largest component party which won 43 seats on its own. I respectfully disagree.