On voting for the candidate, not the party

It's a debate as old as democracy itself: should voters choose their leaders based on their party affiliation or on personal merits? In Malaysia, voters have historically voted along party lines since our first election in 1952.

Although this phenomenon is not unique to Malaysia, it is time Malaysian voters become more discerning about the individuals vying for their votes in GE15 rather than blindly supporting the parties that they represent.

An interesting case study on this is the Sungai Buloh parliamentary constituency. Umno is fielding Khairy Jamaluddin to wrest the seat from PKR.

One narrative making the rounds on social media is that Khairy needs to be voted out simply because a vote for him is a vote for Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, who's facing corruption charges. And purportedly BN's victory there could also secure the release of Najib Razak, who's serving a 12-year jail sentence for corruption and abuse of power.

The argument is founded on the "vote for party, not individuals" principle and is flawed on so many levels. First of all, denying Khairy the opportunity to be elected amounts to denying Malaysians a capable leader. 

Since his ministerial debut in the youth and sports ministry where he oversaw the 2017 KL SEA Games, to the rollout of the Covid-19 immunisation plan and the implementation of various major health initiatives, Khairy has proven to be an efficient minister. 

When we deny a leader of Khairy's calibre the opportunity to serve us Malaysians on account of political affiliations, we are just cutting off our nose to spite our face. Isn't democracy about selecting leaders who best serve us? 

While I am no fan of Zahid nor his Umno which Khairy is part of, denying Khairy the chance to be an MP means allowing Zahid and his ilk to continue riding roughshod over the party, and by extension, the country. 

As we know, Khairy is no typical Umno apparatchik. He stood against Zahid in the last Umno election and openly criticised Najib over the 1MDB scandal. If we ever want to see a shake-up in the country's most dominant party, Umno, then people like Khairy need to be given the space. In other words, if we detest leaders like Zahid, then there are more reasons for Khairy to win in Sungai Buloh.

Sungai Buloh is just an example of why voters need to be more perceptive about candidates and not be blinded by party loyalty. The argument applies to every contest in the upcoming GE, not just in Sungai Buloh. 

In every party, there are good leaders as well as rotten apples. As voters, our job is to – independent of party affiliations – pick out the good ones, so that they can serve us better, and reject the rotten ones as they could bring us harm.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of MalaysiaNow.