National debater turned political activist for the youth, Syed Saddiq Abdul Rahman, is on a mission. It’s the same mission youth organisers all over the world have given themselves. They want to galvanise youth sentiment into political capital. They want to reach out to the most informed and most judgemental generation in history and make them care about politics because the political process has shut out their voice and fed them bread and circuses to keep them docile.
We often forget that the “battle for the next generation” has come and passed without our politicos realising it. The tail end of Generation Y will be of voting age soon and have already formed concrete opinions about the government and the various political parties, thanks to the availability of information and the ease of access that the smartphone era has brought us.
It is quite amazing how youth values across Gen Y are largely shared across the board – a concern for the environment, a mistrust of government and big banks, a need to secure our mutual futures, and a general acceptance of different cultures. Analysts worldwide theorise that this set of values was determined by the epoch Gen Y grew up in, which was one of terrorist attacks and economic collapses.
Yet, Gen Y shows a great need to come together. What Syed is attempting to do in taking a youth group like Challenger to the fore is to bring back youth activism and youth politics, and the timing is good indeed. He recognises that it’s time that young people be given their own voice in the political arena instead of through the youth wing of any established political party.
A survey that Challenger conducted recently struck us with it’s findings. It turns out that we are fighting for the same things that the youth of America, Greece and the United Kingdom are fighting for – jobs and living wages, an end to the corruption of our governments and corporations and the preservation of our environment.
Whatever you may think of Syed, he deserves our praise for daring to be our voice. They should inspire us to speak up too. We must realize that there are now more of us millennials in the workplace than there are of our parents’ generation. We are the majority, and it’s time to care.