By: Steven Godfrey Mkweteza.
The National Youth Council of Malawi (NYCOM) says youth participation in elections process can be enhanced if only the stakeholders come up with a basket fund to support the youth.
Executive officer for the national youth council of Malawi Rex Chapota said this on Monday in Blantyre during the national youth conversations series 2.
Chapota observed that the youth in the country have been discouraged to participate in the elections process over the years due to bottlenecks such as poor resources.
“It’s high time that the development partners join together to come up with a basket fund to support the youth in the political leadership and other decision making position. We have therefore, embarked on the process of ensuring that the basket fund is initiated as soon as possible before the forthcoming elections,” said Chapota.
The executive director further said it was disheartening to note that despite the youth having a key demographic in the country, their participation in elections process and other decision making positions was poor due to financial constraints among other factors.
“It is a fact, that the youth will transform this nation into the middle income economy ought to be thinkers par excellence who are ready to ask the hard questions, navigate where and how they ought to go in all spheres of life and act with speed and agency,” he said.
According to Chapota, lack of resources to support the youth have turned the youth into violence objects during the elections process.
In his remarks, the deputy chief executive officer responsible for operations for the Malawi electoral commission (MEC) Harris Potani said the commission was proposing to discount the nomination fees for the youth in the forthcoming elections so as to encourage many youth to compete on various leadership and decision making positions.
“As the electoral commission, we haven’t been impressed with the participation of the youth in the elections processes so far. We have therefore decided to come up with a discounted nomination fees for the youth in the forthcoming elections in trying to woo many youth into elections participation on leadership positions,” he said.
Potani said even though during the last elections the commission came up with a 30 percent discount in nomination fees for the youth to encourage participation, there was still a poor participation.
According to Potani, the electoral commission will announce the revised nomination fees for the youth in November this year.
In a separate interview, Christie Banda, a youth representative said there was a need for the country to develop policies that are youth centric as stipulated in the Malawi 2063 Agenda.
Banda said the enabling environment has prevented the youth to participate in the country’s elections processes.
