GerakSikh

GerakSikh is an organisation set up to try and persuade young Sikhs to vote. I still can't work out how this works...

Tan Sri: You should vote!
Young Sikh: Why?
TS: It's important!
YS: Why?
TS: Because it's your chance to have a say in how the country is run.
YS: How does that work?
TS: Well, you cast a vote for the party that you think is best to govern the country...
YS: Hold on, but I don't want them to just govern the country, I want them to listen to my say on how the country should be governed... what if I vote for PArty X and they don't do what I want?
TS: THen you can change your vote in the next election!
YS: So, basically, I give someone the chance to govern this country, in my name, for five years, do what they like, and my only recourse is to NOT vote for them next time round?
TS: Well, yes.

YS: Okay, let's say I agree to this blank slate of power. How do I find out what the party in power has been up to...
TS: You read the papers.
YS: But all the papers are owned by the party in power....
TS: Ah. Yes. Well, you can go online.
YS: But we're told that all bloggers are liars, and how can I trust their information?
TS: Look at the Government websites!
YS: But they don't tell me anything.
TS: Ask your MP
YS: But when Samy Vellu was asked about Tamil schools, he refused to answer, and that was in PArliament!
TS: Well, that's his privilege....
YS: What are my privileges?

The young SIkh's only privilege is to put a little mark on a little slip of paper once every half decade. Sometimes more. In exchange, she gets to give the Government a percentage of her income in tax (but doesn't get to know how the money is spent), she gets to be arrested arbitrarily, is allowed to read censored news in the papers, and be subject to harassment if she starts dating someone from the 'wrong religion'. Ain't she just the luckiest person in the world to be born in a 'democracy'?

I say, boycott the elections. The Opposition may put up a good fight. But the system is so flawed that they need a stupidly huge majority just to cut the BN 2/3 majority. And most people are only given information through BN-controlled media, operating in a climate of fear.

In 1999, I helped to legitimise a BN majority. I voted. If I voted again, it would have the same result. With the guaranteed victory, despite barely scraping a majority of the vote, our PM (not this one, t'other one) went on to trample human rights, media freedom and the judiciary, as he had been doing before. And defending his actions by saying, oh but they voted for me.

I refuse to be a pawn of a system which conspires to make me legitimise the ISA, the PPPA, the Sedition Act. So I'm not voting. It is a political act, a refusal to allow the BN government to use my vote (either way) to say that the system is legitimate, that it must be fair because otherwise people wouldn't bother voting.