With the 15th General Election coming up very soon, the majority of the public appear to still be deciding on who to vote for whilst some are even wondering whether or not to vote in the first place.
Whatever your political views are, voting is better than not at all because your vote matters more than you think as the past election showed that over 60% of seats had more people who didn’t turn up to vote than the number of votes that that seat was actually won by.
A Malaysian who used to live in the Netherlands recently shared her experience of voting during GE14 back in 2018 in hopes that it will encourage more Malaysians to vote.
A struggle just to vote
In an Instagram post which has garnered quite its share of attention, Queenie Wong said that during GE14, she was a first time voter as well as postal voter.
“My ballot paper had only arrived in the Netherlands 3 days before the election, there was no way it would have made its way back to Kuala Lumpur on time.”
She said that she was then added into a WhatsApp group with other Malaysians in the Netherlands, and people were super committed to help each other out to make sure that all our votes would arrive to where they are supposed to on time.
“Within the three days we all chipped in a little bit of money to send one runner to fly home, and self-organised the collection of the ballots. The runner took a train from Germany, collecting ballots along Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, with Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam as his last stop before he left for Malaysia,” she said.
“The level of coordination in the process was impressive, hundreds of messages were shot into the group every hour, people from all over Netherlands were helping each other to send their ballots to Schiphol.”
“On one hand it was utterly ridiculous that one has to put in so much effort just to vote, on the other hand it was really beautiful to witness what could happen if people just put their hearts and minds to help each other out in achieving the same goal.”
The effort was worth it
Fortunately, their runner managed to get their ballots back to Malaysia safely and Queenie’s vote was casted by her father at the voting station.
“Overall it was a very humbling experience and I am very thankful to every single person who helped me in the process of casting my one vote.”
For this year’s election, Queenie fortunately does not have to go through all that as she is back in Malaysia.
“But I am still in that WhatsApp group, witnessing again how people are self-organising to deliver their hopes back to their homeland, this time better prepared, with a Google Sheet,” she said.
Urged others to vote
Queenie said that although she hopes that we have a high voter turnout this time around, she understands why people are reluctant to go to vote.
She added that she hopes that in some small way her story could encourage people to cast their votes, or better, for you to help others to cast their votes.
“However, reflecting upon this experience now, I hope to provide a small glimpse into this group of people who are going the extra mile to make sure their voices are being delivered, even if it’s from 10,086km away.”
“Be it car-pooling with someone from the same hometown, or reaching out to people in the same city to be each other’s witnesses, or ajaking a lazy friend to yumcha after voting so that they vote,” she explained.
“Our votes in this GE is not merely about choosing among the 3 candidates available in our constituency, it’s about carving the space so that we can vote, and vote better, in the future.”
Checkout Queenie’s full post down below:
We hope that for GE15, Malaysians abroad manage to get their postal votes sent back to Malaysia safely. We also hope that we will see a high turn-out rate.
