By Mohsin Abdullah 

Imagine a political party comprising the likes of Rafizi Ramli, Khairy Jamaluddin, Nurul Izzah Anwar, Hannah Yeoh, not forgetting Syed Saddiq Rahman naturally.

Add to that list Yeo Bee Yin, Nik Nazmi Ahmad, Fahmi Fadzil and even Syerleena Abdul Rashid. There are many more. Young and, well, not that young, but all youthful nonetheless, definitely not old. I would say such a party appeal to many, young or old.

We don't know if the present day young political leaders mentioned above will actually be members of a single party, but what you and I do know now is that 28-year-old Muar MP Syed Saddiq, who was Bersatu youth chief, is planning to set up a multiracial youth-based party or platform, as some want to call it.

Will a youth party work? At present people are definitely talking about it, quite excitedly.

Details are not available at the moment. Hence, we do not know the entity's concept, structure and what not. Also, if there will be an age limit for membership put in place.

How youth is youthful? Or put it the other way, how young is young?

A word of caution though, from political analyst Dr Sivamurugan Pandian, "A new party is not easy to be formed. It needs manpower and strong machinery and they must show that this party is unique and different from the existing ones."

Need I say existing parties have their own youth wings? And I wonder if the youths already in youth wings of various parties would leave or "be allowed" to leave their respective parties to join the new youth setup.

But as analyst Siva puts it, "We need more young leaders as well, and it is difficult for youths to come up the ranks in various parties which are dominated by seasoned warlords."

Nevertheless, the new party, according to Siva, should explore new pool of leaders although those who are now active in their respective parties can join as well.

"Quality is important as much as quantity," says the analyst.

Back to the earlier question: Can a youth party work? The current political landscape, according to Siva, is showing many — especially youths (with the exception of those in PAS and DAP) — moving towards a "partyless" situation rather than staying loyal to a particular party ideology.

"As there is some sort of vacuum as far as party loyalty goes," says Siva, "a party set up by youths might get support and become a third voice or the alternative voice, especially in urban constituencies."

Talking of urban constituencies, I would like to add that there can never be a "one size fits all" formula to win support.

Youths staying in low cost flats in an urban area, for instance, have different aspirations and needs compared to youths staying in an affluent part of an urban constituency.

In short, there are many considerations to be looked into.

Still Siva is of the opinion that even people who are above the age of 40 may support the youth party "if it shows a sense of leadership, brings changes and has a clear agenda and succession plan."

A political observer concurs, saying a youth-driven party has a good chance to find traction among Malaysians "who are fed up with the current state of politics in Malaysia".

As he sees it, Syed Saddiq has shown his mettle "as a principled leader in Bersatu and when he was minister". However, says the political observer, "It would be better if people like Syed Saddiq are joined by others like Nurul Izzah, Rafizi, Liew Chin Tong, (Batu MP) Prabakaran Parameswaran and other like-minded leaders of today."

They, according to the analyst, would be able to tap the support of not just youths but older voters as well "who are annoyed and unhappy with the antics of so-called political veterans from both sides of the fence who have polarized the country by harping on race and religion issues to win support while seemingly condoning corruption and power abuse."

Nicely put to nail it and I don't have anything to add except to say that quite a number of people agree with that.

Just take a look at the comments on social media, if social media can be used as a yardstick.

(Mohsin Abdullah is a veteran journalist and now a freelancer who writes about this, that and everything else.)