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Youth in the Politics of Transition in Malaysia 137

questions of whether this is simply the latest approach by political parties
to engage with Malaysian youth, or a reaction to changes happening among
youth themselves.

Political Education as a Reaction to Changes among Youth?
To answer this question, we turn to political parties’ previous strategies,
which did react to changes happening among activist youths. e discussion
starts with the failure of BN strategies in the 12th general election in 2008
(GE12). en, youth participation in formal politics remained low, although
the government had allowed university students to join political parties and
several political parties had set up ‘student’ wings on campuses. By the lead-
up to GE14, in which youths were expected to be a signi cant political force,
political parties had changed their approach. ese ‘new’ approaches and their
impact are worthy of examination.
After a major shock to BN in GE12, the ruling coalition realised the
signi cance of youth as a critical voting bloc, focusing accordingly on the
13th general election (Mohd Azizuddin 2014; A f 2014; Dzuhailmi et al.
2012; Yang Razali 2014; Nga et al. 2014; Mohd Fauzi and Ku Hasnita 2015).
As such, leading up GE13, BN spent an historic amount of resources to win
the hearts of young voters. Apart from the targeted training programmes and
internships, as described above, the ruling coalition not only became more
active on social media such as Facebook and Twitter, in part to reach youths,
but also began producing short videos explaining current issues and criticising
Pakatan Rakyat. In fact, Prime Minister Najib amassed the highest number
of Twitter followers among political leaders. At the same time, BN organised
concerts throughout the country as part of their election campaign, in what it
called the Achieving Promises Tour (Jelajah Janji Ditepati), featuring famous
local and international artists, including bringing Korean sensation Psy to
Penang, a Pakatan stronghold (Haris 2014).
Nonetheless, despite all it had spent, not only did BN fail to maintain its
GE12 performance in 2013, it lost the popular vote for the rst time since
1969. Pakatan Rakyat maintained its grip on Penang, Selangor, and Kelantan,
while recording its best electoral showing to date across other states’ elections.
e situation forced BN yet again to reconsider its strategy to capture the
youth vote. It is therefore not surprising that the coalition launched several
new programmes to rejuvenate itself, including introducing online UMNO
membership-registration (Elly Fazaniza 2014), advocating a spirit of

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