By: Mariama Njie
The National Youth Council has held a two days inter-general dialogue to ensure young people understand the basic of democracy and promote youth participation in the whole country’s political process.
The inter-general dialogue was held at NAQAA and it brought together representative from political parties, representative of youth groups from different region.
Speaking exclusively with this medium, Alagie Jarju executive director National Youth Council said the reason they want to engage the youth is because it is an election year and we will want to have young people meaningfully participate in the entire process, the pre-election, during elections and post-election.
“It is key engaging young people and political parties representative because it should be equipped in terms of understanding and appreciating democratic pluralism that democracy is about having various parties with different concept but we should be able to accept each other’s view and see each other as people with the same aim and objectives,” he added.
Jarju pointed out that young people should begin to appreciate each other as political parties, each other as national development and not enemies.
Moving on, he said by the end of the two days convergent will equally help political parties’ representative to better understand all what it takes in having a good manifestation and to also understand what it takes to really organize a very good debate at political party level.
Meanwhile, he said youth are important and should always be consider in any national development. “If you also look at electoral violence in the sub region you find young people at the receiving end and at the giving end that is they are both perpetrator and the same victims.”
So, we hope if they understand the meaning of political pluralism and of cause understand the need to maintaining a very peaceful society, it is going to help them, he stated.
However, Jarju revealed that after these two days convergent they will be having several other convergent down in the regions. “We will also have caravans going around the country just to continue talking to young people to understand that they need to participate in electoral process and also understand that if this country is to develop, they have a responsibility to maintain the peace and stability of this country.”