Youth Parliament – a sure way of getting disillusioned with Politics!

When the concept of the Youth Parliament was first mooted and established, the aim was to provide a level of Civic Consciousness amongst youth and hopefully be able to create ‘FUTURE LEADRS’ for Sri Lanka from whichever party they so chose. Somehow this has NOT happened, and there has not been any youth leader emanating from this of any note since its inception.

Then should we consider this a total failure, and not waste time on it, or should we try and improve the way it is operated so that the worst forms of internal politics is avoided and a sense of Nationhood for one nation encouraged.

As usual party politics gets in the way of this, and during the Rajapakse administration, it was dominated by sympathizers of his administration, and now with the new Elections expected for the youth parliament on November 8^th, will it now be dominated by those of the ruling alliance?

The reason for its inability to grow future leaders, was the pettiness put off those who became members by the election, who became disillusioned by the system. It was almost recreating dirty politics, but without the money to be made, and so without pecuniary inducements to keep their interest going, they failed to get traction and a following amongst the general public.

The first step of democracy MUST be to engage as many youth as possible in the DS divisions which vote. Then each DS division must permit all candidates to state their case in 100 words at the polling center, so those who come to vote are able to make a last minute switch of allegiance depending on equal time for all in this policy statement. Unless it starts with this the Members appointed, no elected, will do so by stealth, only getting their supporters to come and vote for them, with most people unaware that there is an election and worse, not informing sufficient people, that they could hand in their nomination papers for the election.

I am afraid this happened again, and the party in power has access to information that the Youth Affairs Officer in the DS division generally publicizes ONLY to people of his own choosing. Sadly there is a repeat of that now, and I don’t expect much in the way of democracy.

The Media attention this has got is minimal and I blame the Ministry of Youth Affairs for this failure, and unless sufficient youth know and it is NOT even in FB, there is not hope for a proper election. From that point the whole mock parliament concept becomes a farce, and I am very sad that this Government let it happen, making no improvements, despite the rhetoric when in opposition.