limsipin.com

18 January 2010 | Socio-Political | Si Pin

 It’s easy to watch and criticise on the side, but do you dare to be in the field doing the work?

In this new era of internet-media-savvy Youths, it has become a trend that many young citizens whom are interested in politics or ‘think’ they are interested in politics resort to only talking and criticising by the way-side (via blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Malaysiakini, MalaysianInsider, Lakshou etc) without spending much time or resources attending to genuine gatherings, dialogues, discussion groups and/or action taskforce like Rukun Tetangga gatherings and gotong royong, etc.

This scenario is made worst, as internet technology improves and broadband becomes more and more accessible that many young-at-heart will join the fray (across the political divide) by criticising and complaining about each other and how hopeless the other side is. But are any of these Youths doing anything constructive to help the worsening situation?

One of the major trends that is brewing in the dark and I think it is becoming a sign of the young giving up hope or just plain lazy is the fact that whenever there is political gatherings or annual conventions, the turnout is always bad!

I have written elsewhere on this website that in the AGM for our National Gerakan Youth on 31 October 2009, the percentage of eligible delegates who made it a point to turn up for the National Delegates Conference was 38.4%

Anthony Loke, the National Chairman for DAP Socialist Youth Movement (DAPSY) also had the same sentiments when he said this on 27 June 2009. At their annual DAPSY Convention 2009 last year, the turnout at DAPSY Convention 2009 was a mere 40% of eligible delegates. Anthony blasted the tardy delegates for its poor turnout (http://dapsy.dappg.org/?p=4)

This year at its 2010 Annual Convention in Ipoh, the DAPSY Annual Convention saw a further drop in their delegates turnout. On 16 Jan 2010, the DAP Youth National Conference in Ipoh had 130 attendees only when the qualified delegates were 600. The attendance record was 21%, the worst in the party’s history.

At the end of the meeting, 90 members were present and it was ended half an hour before the sceduled closing. There was no obvious serious debate.

This clearly exposes that the Youths of today clearly do not have much organisation or political thought. They live and propsper on issues and emotion. But most never had any independent thought on how to regenerate or lead the country forward, for all races and for all Malaysians.

The more we see this kind of trend continuing (ie Blaming, Complaining, Denial, Excuses, Criticism, Pointing Fingers) the more we need to understand why this is happening, lest we all fall into the trap of only inciting hatred but never being able to come up with tangible solutions or antidotes for the country’s ills and problems.

This does not in any way mean that the internet/alternative media does not have a role to play in the emerging socio-political landscape of this country. In fact, the word ‘alternative-media’ would soon be turn into ‘main-stream media’ (and vice-versa) as more and more young people read the news on the internet and less and less on traditional printed media.

The issue is that, one cannot only live in a vacuum and forget that there is a real waorld out there that needs human-attention. Apart from reading what is written (but sometimes unconfirmed) online, we need to occassionaly go out there and verify that what we have read matches with the reality out there, to the point that if we have an opportunity, go and attend conventions of Party’s from both the political divide.

Only and only this way can we be informed-citizens of this country and not be subjected to the brain-washing and propaganda of feuding political parties.