Beyond the Ballot Box

Road to GE is a show that explores your power in deciding who serves you in government. 

On our first episode, we discuss the whole idea of going back to your hometown to vote for elections. Every time there’s an election in Malaysia, there’s talk of needing to take a couple of days off from work, traffic jams and increase in prices of flight tickets, as people rush to make it back to their hometowns to vote. This is something very normal here, something we’re all accustomed to. But what if this practice could be hurting democracy a little bit. 

Danesh Prakash Chacko, Director, Tindak Malaysia, joins us to discuss. 

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A lot has happened over the past four years. What has been the impact of the political turmoil of recent times, not just on democracy, but also on the everyday lives of Malaysians? In this episode we discuss a few different angles, including youth movements, voter disillusionment and anti-party hopping law.

Image credit: Firdaus Latif

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, you’ve probably heard of the word ‘Bitcoin’. If you’ve paid closer attention, you might’ve also heard things like Ethereum, Ripple, Dogecoin, etc. These are all different types of Cryptocurrencies, which apparently can make you turn your RM 10 into RM 1000 over a short period of time. It’s said to be the currency of the future, one that offers freedom from the shackles of centralised banking systems. But what’s going on here, really? Is Crypto really a tool to liberate yourself or just another method for the super rich to exploit the masses? We speak to Arveent Kathirtchelvan, Youth Chief, Parti Sosialis Malaysia. 

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Healthcare is a human right. Yet, healthcare has become increasingly expensive over the past two to three decades. Those who can afford, take on expensive private insurances – not because they want to, but because the only other alternative would be to visit inaccessible, overcrowded, understaffed and poorly maintained public hospitals, which are bleeding specialists to the private sector – while those who can’t afford, such as the B40, have to deal with the aforementioned underfunded healthcare system. On this episode we discuss these problems, possible solutions and take a look at Cuba (which arguably has the best healthcare system in the world) and examine what we can learn from them.

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Tajuddin Abdul Rahman was sacked as an UMNO supreme council member last week. A few days after that, he held a press conference, in which he spilled the tea on some inner workings of his political party, including his disdain towards his party president, and that a number of Umno MPs had signed statutory declarations (SDs) to support Anwar as prime minister in 2020. On this episode, I speak to Dr Bridget Welsh about Tajuddin’s rise to prominence in politics and what his recent sacking and subsequent tell-all press conference means for UMNO moving forward.

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Karl Marx once wrote, “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.” We discuss what this critique means, if it still holds true today, as well as how we can restructure our education system to benefit the masses.

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Did you know that urban voters have less power to affect electoral change in this country than rural voters? What does this mean exactly? And how does it impact a nation where there is an increasing number of people moving to urban centres?

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There was a time where working a regular 9-5 job would enable you to buy a house (at the very least a single storey landed property) and raise some kids in it, if you so desire. After all, that’s what Baby Boomers and Gen Xs did. Unfortunately, that is not the case for most millennials today, not unless they’ve inherited some family wealth. You constantly hear about the average Malaysian, even degree holders, not being able to afford adequate housing, despite it being a basic necessity – a human right. One would think that the demand is so high and the supply is so low. But this isn’t the case in Malaysia -- there are new developments every day, you drive around neighbourhoods and see empty houses and luxurious condos, and yet, nobody can afford them. So, what went wrong? And how do we fix it?

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The unofficial results from PKR’s party elections are in. While there is no change at the highest position of the party, as Anwar Ibrahim ran and retained his President post uncontested, there are big changes in other leadership positions that could impact not just the political dynamics of PKR and Harapan, but also the landscape of Malaysian politics as a whole. I am of course primarily talking about Rafizi Ramli being elected as the deputy president of PKR.

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Why have our wages stagnated for so long, despite the cost of living being at an all time high? And more importantly, why are organisations such as the Malaysian Employers Federation (MEF) always against wages – especially the minimum wage – increasing? What exactly is the issue here and how do we solve it?

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