Parliament is set to become a training ground for future lawmakers under a revamped youth parliament programme, where young leaders will contest elections as prospective MPs.
In an exclusive interview with The Star, Dewan Rakyat Speaker Tan Sri Johari Abdul said the new format will require participants to form political parties and compete in special elections, adhering to the same rules as actual parliamentary polls.
WATCH MORE: https://thestartv.com/c/news
SUBSCRIBE: https://cutt.ly/TheStar
LIKE: https://fb.com/TheStarOnline
In an exclusive interview with The Star, Dewan Rakyat Speaker Tan Sri Johari Abdul said the new format will require participants to form political parties and compete in special elections, adhering to the same rules as actual parliamentary polls.
WATCH MORE: https://thestartv.com/c/news
SUBSCRIBE: https://cutt.ly/TheStar
LIKE: https://fb.com/TheStarOnline
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00When you're sitting on the bench, when you're looking at the rubbish discussion, and sometimes
00:12it's not to the mark, the expectation, especially the young MPCs. So we're expecting them to
00:21be more vibrant, more eligible, more tolerant, more articulate, more intelligent in putting
00:31across your ideas. And so to do something that finally brings me to believe that what
00:41is wrong in this equation. So finally I concluded that you can't blame them because actually
00:52they're absent on the system. The system is not there. So the system that trains our youth
01:02to be a leader, to train our youth to be orators, to train our youth to be future leaders.
01:11Now we have a programme we call Skolah Halimah, which we take off immediately after Hedaya.
01:20We planned some time, but we've been doing all this study, and we work together with
01:28Kabupiat Pendidikan. And finally what happened is that Kabupiat agreed that we would invite
01:40the head boys and head girls of rural areas, probably in Bali, in Kelantan, somewhere in
01:53Negeri Sembilan, those remote areas, whom we think on their own they will not come to
02:01parliament. Because these are rural areas, poor families, kids of poor families, stuff like that.
02:08So we organise them by taking them to visit parliament, then they get some idea what
02:16parliament is all about. Can you imagine a boy who never wears a jacket, or what you call it,
02:23blazer, come with blazer tied, he's proud. And that's important, that excitement. I think it's a
02:31key word, excitement. So probably that will be influencing that this is what Malaysia is all about,
02:40this is what democracy is all about. I've been there, I walked into the parliament, probably I spoke to
02:47the speaker, I took picture with them, blah blah blah. So after they finish their MPM, they go to PLKN.
02:58So mentally, they are prepared, why they are MPKN, PLKN, you know what I mean. Or L, they are shocked,
03:04because 70% of the curriculum, it's about military training, it's about pushing you to be a leader.
03:12But then if you don't have the pre-conditioning of the mind, then there might be a culture shock.
03:19Then now they are MPKN, as I told you, 70% of the entire curriculum for 45 days,
03:27about military training, meaning to say that it's not about to turn you to be a soldier,
03:32but the most important thing is that to tell you how do you develop yourself as a leader.
03:42These are the two, we're giving them all this exposure, what it takes to be a leader, what it
03:49takes to be someone that should command. Now among these 100,000 that we train,
03:55what I need is just 1% of that to become leaders. Political leaders, art leaders, SME leaders,
04:02whatever leadership. Now, 1% is about, say about 200,000, 2000 a year, then that is what we are
04:12preferring is parliament belayar. Youth parliament, then they can contest in the youth parliament.
04:19Then they can represent the youth, and we have modified the system to say everything is electronic.
04:30And starting with they got to form their own party.
04:36We just called the parliament belayar yesterday, talk to them, this is what,
04:41well they are supportive. So we will work with them, so that we want to introduce a new way of
04:48doing political business in Malaysia. Is there any other way? Yes, of course. Propositional
04:57representation. You need to say PR is the best, because everyone is not like PR now.
05:05When you said to form their own parties, that means, I mean how does it work? It's not a wing
05:12of the existing... No, this is where, because the Kementerian belayar has passed,
05:18this is a decision by the cabinet to pass this parliament belayar to Parliament Malaysia.
05:26So we need to say that it used to be under Kementerian belayar, but now the cabinet
05:31decided that this programme, youth parliament, should come back to parliament. So I had to form
05:38a team that looked at the whole entire thing. So what I'm saying is that if you do things
05:47year in, year out, doing the same thing and spread different results,
05:50I don't think it's the right thing to do. So there must be intervention. At the end of the day,
05:55let's change some of the objectives. The former objective was to produce youth leaders that can
06:03run youth clubs, youth institutions. I think it's a bit shallow. So I want to go deeper than that.
06:13What I'm saying is that the youth parliament should be a platform to train for the future
06:19leaders. They start from there and they end up here. Future MPs. But there must be a system.
06:28Number one is about exposure. When we say exposure, we mean to say that
06:36they must ask themselves, is there other options? We are calling all these university VC,
06:44explaining to them, why don't we start with university first? Meaning to say, as you said,
06:51they have to form a party. I don't want them to just use a regular party,
06:57Amno Apa, SKADILAN. That's not done. That's not outside the realm here. But I want them to start
07:04fresh. How do you form a party? What it takes to form a party? How do you draw your manifesto?
07:10How do you form coalition? For example, MU? Probably they want to stand on their own.
07:16Because they have alumni, thousands of alumni. I was from MU. Then probably UKM want to be on their
07:23own. But ITM want to associate with some other university. So this year, what we are doing now,
07:31we are setting up seven parties first. They can call Helam Merah, Merpati Putih, whatever you
07:37can. As long as I don't use Amno Apa, SKADILAN. Something that is not a religion,
07:44not a theory, something gigantic, more dynamic.
07:51Then they go and form a party, and they go to campaign. Who wants to join my party?
08:00As I said, they can stand on their own, or they can associate themselves with some other parties,
08:04or those kids who never go to university. Meaning to say that those 18 to 30,
08:10you have to register to be a voter. Not automatic. I want them to feel that they want to be in this
08:18program. So you must register. So I mean to say that the party leadership has to go down the whole
08:25country, using campaign, using media, why you should put Helam Putih, what are the reasons why
08:34we have multi-racial composition of leadership, democracy, etc. So I want to train them to do
08:45that. So you just don't get locked to the present system, which is, I think, no good. So that's what
08:54we're doing. So the elections is this year? Well, I hope everything will be done by this year.
09:01We'll probably start early next year. We've got to work with SPR, how they think, we've got to work
09:11with the system, media. I mean, we're putting all the resources together, so that it's going to be
09:17very exciting. And probably, certainly, we are proposing a proportional presentation.
09:28But yeah, we're not going to use normal constituency-based and first-party. We need to
09:35say party versus party, not individual versus individual anymore. It's a party list. But if he
09:40makes it, then he will announce his candidate, and hope to be MPs. So you fight. So you take
09:50away the heat between individual and individual, because there's no guarantee that you're going to
09:56be in the party list if your party don't win. So you've got to work hard for your party,
10:02it's not about you. You might be a hero, but your party lose. Nothing will happen to you.