Numerous politicians have recently used the excuse of voter apathy to push for the anti-hopping law agenda, they surmise that the Malaysian voters are currently disillusioned by party hopping.
But is voter apathy a legitimate reason to push for the anti-hopping law?
Firstly, there has not single empirical evidence that has been provided by the proponents of anti-hopping law that can directly link party hopping to voter apathy. If the real reason to pass the anti-hopping law is truly to address the problem of voters’ apathy, it should not be too much to ask for them to provide evidence that voters apathy is a real problem facing the Malaysian democratic process.
It is worth noting that party-hopping is not a new phenomenon, there has been a history of party-hopping in the country spanning back decades. There needs to be a clear distinction made between party-hopping and political crisis as the two are not mutually exclusive. The most recent political crisis that toppled Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin in fact did not include incidences of party hopping as the 15 UMNO MPs that withdrew their support towards the Prime Minister did not hop from their party to cause the collapse of the government.
Party hopping is also commonly done in the past without ever previously causing a political crisis. In fact, it can be argued that most of the political parties that exist today are the result of party-hopping. Most recently we have seen the formation of Pejuang due to the party hoping of party leaders in Bersatu and even before that the formation of Amanah was formed due to party-hopping of party leaders from PAS. Each of these cases did not instigate a political crisis or a change of government.
Countries with voters that are apathetic would normally see low levels of voter turnout. That has not been the case in Malaysia. Based on the graph attached, it can be observed that the country’s voter turnout rate is still at very high levels. During the last election of 2018, it stood at 82.3%, the second-highest voter turnout in the nation’s history. The country is also ranked 8th out of 49 countries in Asia in terms of voter turnout during elections. This makes the case that the party hopping incidences of the past did not seem to have impacted voters’ inclination to go out to vote during general elections.
It is estimated that the country’s voter turnout will be exponentially higher in the next election since there will be millions of new voters that will be eligible to vote due to the passing of Undi 18. As such, these claims of voters’ apathy due to party-hopping are very much exaggerated if not blatant lies in an attempt to restrict the constitutional rights of freedom of association in the country amongst MPs.