Syed, who runs OutSyed The Box, said the current system needs an overhaul, especially with the past and present ruling coalitions habitually retaining failed policies.
To do this, he hopes to convince voters, especially those in the same households, to split their ballots.
“Voters need to teach politicians a lesson by ensuring that they do not win with a huge majority, similar to the situation we have now,” he told FMT, referring to the current administration’s slim majority.
“We need politicians to come to their senses.”
Which is why he has kickstarted an initiative, literally called “Split Your Vote” or “Pecahkan Undi Anda”.
By doing so, he explained, it would force political parties to join forces to form a government as none of them would have secured an absolute majority.
Syed noted that Umno and PAS formed a pact after Umno lost power in the last general election, an alliance which was never thought plausible before.
But, he said, the fractured political scene “needs to be accelerated”.
“We need to break them up some more. I would like to see DAP and Umno team up,” he said.
Such an alliance, he said, would mean the politics in the country has matured.
And it would also compel them to come up with better “doable policies” which, in the long run, could also mean a brighter chance of being re-elected.
“They need to realise that it is their unworkable policies which lose votes. They can only win big by listening to the people and changing the policies,” he said.
Syed dismissed the notion that splitting votes could lead to MPs being bought over by rivals aiming to form a bigger bloc, saying “the more broken up it is, the more expensive of an exercise it would be for potential suitors”.
His push for votes to be split comes in the wake of another movement, called “Pangkah Burung”, which aims to disrupt the country’s political scene and course-correct democracy by pushing more independents to contest general elections.
But his call for votes to be split was also inspired by Israel’s political scene which saw Zionist political parties form an alliance with an Arab party following four elections in two years without a clear winner and the desire to oust longtime prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“When you cannot win big, you have to sit with people you don’t like and you are forced to think why you could not win a huge chunk of votes and assess what you have done wrong,” he said.