Sabah Memilih: Lowering flight ticket price to Sabah can boost voter turnout

PRACTICING democracy is insufficient without people being given an easy access to participating in an election as a voter to vote out candidates whom they know to be unreliable and useless.

I personally feel that this upcoming Sabah State Election isn’t just a grand poll for the country to witness, but also a live-or-die stage for prominent political figures like Bung Moktar and Shafie Apdal to stay relevant in the mainstream politics.

Speaking of democracy, I don’t really think that encouraging Sabahan people to vote on this Saturday will be impactful if the airlines operators are not told or pleasantly considered to reduce their flight-ticket price starting this week.

Travelling to the Borneo state isn’t the same as travelling from Putrajaya to Rembau, the future constituency of the deputy president of UMNO. It needs an airplane.

And as we do know, price tags for flight tickets are not as cheap as riding a Grab Car from Menara PTPTN to KLCC. It costs a passenger at least a hundred plus buck for a one-way trip.

If I were the Transport Minister, besides answering questions in the Parliament, I would responsibly find a way to encourage airlines operators with the likes of AirAsia and Malaysia Airlines to lower their flight-ticket prices for eligible Sabahan voters who want to go back to their state to vote.

Doing that surely needs a dedicated online ticketing system provided by the airlines’ websites for entitled passengers to purchase their flight tickets with their IC numbers verified as a registered voter by the system.

Therefore, a collaborative effort between the Ministry of Transport and Election Commission is needed to get the dedicated online ticketing system successfully done.

The Transport Ministry cannot simply ask for the airlines operators’ favour to blindly lower their flight-ticket price to Sabah without conducting a convincing and efficient ticketing system that can verify eligible registered voters who appear as a ticket purchaser in the system.

Instead of badmouthing opponents in the political speeches, the candidates, regardless of parties, have to jointly urge the government to drastically come up with an instant execution of mobilising the currently-in-Peninsular Sabahans to come back home before Saturday to cast their votes.

This is the right time for the newly-formed Sabah and Sarawak Affairs portfolio under the Prime Minister Department to sit down with the Minister of Transport and the cyclist minister, Tengku Zafrul, to get a concrete and decisive solution that can please airlines operators to consider lowering the flight-ticket fees for all to-Sabah trips this week.

It’s subjective to define a “cheap flight”, but RM150 to RM200 for a return trip could be an affordable mobility for Sabahan voters to go back home without worrying of how much money left in their pockets after voting for a yet-to-be-good candidate.

If the idea of organising a dedicated ticketing system for passengers who vote seems to be complex or not worth implementing, the airplane operators can be seasonally kindhearted by discounting prices for all to-Sabah trips this week.

That is much easier than having a dedicated system that seriously requires a collaboration from parties like EC in this very limited time when the state election will kick off in less than a week.

* Amerul Azry Abdul Aziz is an independent writer who now views politics as something that can be researched.

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