I know we are all focussed on the political campaigning and I want to highlight apparent student indifference towards the coming elections and politics in general.

After a survey conducted by The Star which found that at least 80 out of 100 students at Malaysian colleges and universities were indifferent to the coming polls and politics in general, the paper tried to find out why. Its March 14 article, 'Political awareness lacking', also noted that students showed more interests in the 1999 elections than the present one.

A few reasons were suggested. One which was telling was that the political situation has changed since the 1999 elections with Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak reportedly saying:

"I can see the trend today is very different from that of 1999 when there was a lot of anti-government and anti-establishment feelings on university campuses. Thanks to the hard work of the leaders, the atmosphere today is a lot more conducive and more students have accepted the Barisan Nasional."

What Najib is in effect saying is that when students support the BN, it is not considered politics. But when they are critical of the BN, they are showing political interest and this is considered politics.

Why the double standard? And what about the Universities and University Colleges Act of 1975? This law gives the BN government the power to control student activities in the political arena. It specifically outlaws student participation in off-campus political activities.

The law is premised on the condescending reasoning that undergraduate students are not matured enough to engage in politics. However, BN leaders are also known to have said, especially at the1999 election, that students on government scholarships who protest against the BN would be deemed ungrateful to the government and could have their scholarships taken away.

While the law empowers the BN government to warn and punish student involvement in politics, in practice, the warnings and punishments are meant for students involved in opposition politics.

This became apparent just before, during and soon after the 1999 elections.

Students seen or heard to have given support to the opposition or spoken out on the injustice perpetrated on Anwar Ibrahim were often told, even threatened, by the BN government to stop or

face punishment. A few students who protested against certain social injustices after the elections were arrested and even not allowed to return to their schools to continue their studies.

Is this what Najib means by 'hard work of the (BN) leaders' in the above-mentioned quote?

On the other hand, I don't recall the BN ever issuing such a response to students supportive of it.

Given the strict restrictions on student participation in politics, do they not create a chilling effect on our youth culture? Do they not discourage students from having interests, let alone engagement, in politics?

Further, given the double standard of the BN government in carrying out the restrictions, does this not persuade those students who do have interests in politics to play safe and engage only in BN politics? After all, BN politics appears to be considered non-political.

Sadly, The Star article omitted to mention all these points. This is not to say the reason having to do with the laws and the BN's government exhortations is the only one to explain students' political indifference.

But the article ended up giving tacit support to the BN government's policy of restricting students to only BN politics because this is deemed non-political. Anything outside of this sphere contravenes the law and is a criminal offence.