Penang Institute’s Wong Chin Huat said that a high voter turnout could help thwart election fraud, including gerrymandering.
But the challenge now, according to Wong, was that people cannot see why they needed to vote.
“We can’t go on telling people that it is dangerous if you don’t come out to vote. That is not enough. We need a positive push,” he said at a forum organised by G25 at the Ideal Convention Centre here.
Wong said that while the opposition has improved in terms of offering a better vision, it needed to do more, especially in Selangor and Penang, the two states currently led by their component parties.
“We cannot always talk about, ‘only when we change the federal government, then we have reforms’,” he said, suggesting how the two state governments needed to be innovative in pushing reforms themselves, especially those related to public funding.
Wong’s comments on getting people to vote come on the heels of a movement urging voters to spoil their votes in the 14th general election (GE14).
Recently, Suaram adviser Kua Kia Soong wrote that PH leaders have consistently failed to tell the nation how the reforms that they have proposed are any different from those of the Barisan Nasional (BN).
Last week, Wong cautioned the opposition that BN could even win GE14 with a two-third majority if the voter turnout was less than 70%.
Analyst: Two-thirds victory for BN if voter turnout below 70%