OCTOBER 28 — This may sound somewhat incredulous, but the #UndiRosak movement still exists.
Four years after Malaysia’s Opposition parties achieved a momentous victory over Barisan Nasional in 2018 — the first in more than six decades — there are still people who have decided to (and who go around telling others to) purposefully spoil their votes come November 19.
The rationale is, so the argument goes, that there is no substantial difference between Barisan Nasional and the Opposition so our votes don’t make a difference; there’s nothing new any political party can offer and so on.
So on Polling Day, we are going to see some folks who would have cleared their mornings or afternoons on that Saturday, who may have to brave bad weather to travel to their respective polling stations, queue up (together with hundreds of other people) only to deliberately (and creatively?) scribble something on their ballot paper in a manner which makes it impossible to decide which candidate or party this individual is voting for.
All that time and effort spent to essentially ruin a ballot paper in order to make the point that, uh, no party deserves their vote.
I asked a person intending to do this: Why not just stay at home? Why clog up the queue and take up people’s time at the polling station? Why waste the efforts of the vote counters?
This person’s answer, quite consistent with the #Undirosak movement as a whole, is because a) they have the right as voters to do that to the ballot paper and b) they want to send the message that they are not happy with their political options.
Nobody can argue with (a), of course, and nobody intends to. The issue is not if they are allowed to rosak their undi but why they would want to. Simply replying that they can is, therefore, no answer at all.
On the matter of (b) — i.e. sending a message of their dissatisfaction — I’ve pointed out that in fact nobody will know how many of the total spoilt votes were “creatively destroyed” to make a point.
To my knowledge, no sub-division of the Election Commission registers any distinction between someone who spoiled their vote because he couldn’t hold her pen correctly and someone whose idea of political posturing is to go all Picasso on the sheet of paper.
Coupled with the fact that no one is allowed to snap a photo of their creative drawing, it essentially means the act of intentionally spoiling a vote is witnessed by only oneself.
Wouldn’t it be more significant and memorable for a voter to shave his head and paint “#UndiRosak” on his scalp because at least this way the public can see you?
It’s like Bersih asking protesters to send yellow envelopes to the post-office — unless Pos Malaysia reports it to the public, who would know other than postmen and so what if they did? In the end, nobody knows how many spoilt votes were because of #UndiRosak, so why bother?
This sounds to me like an absolute syiok sendiri waste of time.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
