CYLA Urges old Politicians to Stop Masquerading as Youths

The Centre for Young Leaders in Africa (CYLA) Communications Director Gerald Chiluba has accused old politicians of masquerading as young people for the sole purpose of taking away the appointments intended for youths both in government and political parties.

And CYLA Programs Director Robinson Chipili says the organisation which comprises of youths from all political parties has embarked on a project to find ways of using the legislative process to integrate youths in the governance structures of the country.

Speaking when the duo featured on ZNBC’s radio 2 Breakfast programme Chiluba who is also MMD Diehard National Youth Coordinator said it is high time that true youths reclaimed their positions from the old politicians who are masquerading as youths for the purpose of being appointed.

He noted that youths have not gotten what is due to them because old people are claiming to be youths when in fact they are not.

“Not all old people are wise just like young people not all young people are irresponsible. You will see that they are people who have been masquerading today in Zambia as youths in the name of wanting to be appointed. They masquerade as young people but when there is violence the same so called young people will be condemning and even threatening to deal with the real young people, so we want to put an end to this misrepresentation of young people because If you are 36 and above then you cease to a youth according to the definition of a youth in Zambia” he said.

Chiluba further said that young people in the country have been reduced to cry babies because they don’t have anybody to represent their interest and inspirations.

“Young people have been reduced to activism in political parties. Young people do not sit on the table so that they can be part and percel of decisions. Young people are not involved in making policy decisions at party level and when you talk of governance in nature currently as we are talking we have about 4.8 million of the population between the age of 15-35 are youths and when you go to parliament how many young people are MPs we only have 3. If we talk of Cabinet do we have representation of young people? There is non. If we talk of the MPs we have 8 which are nominated by the President there is no young person who was nominated and so we have a population of 4.8 which is not represented anywhere in the top governance structure of this country.

“How then do you expect to deal with the challenges of young people when you don’t have individuals coming from that population. That is why young people today have been reduced to being cry babies. We are crying of unemployment, we are crying of all sorts of things because there is no representation somewhere,” he said.

And Chipili who is one of the PF youths at the centre of the Mukula controversy said the centre has embarked on a project on how the laws of the land can be used to enhence youth participation in the governance of the country by using electoral reforms.

“As CYLA we have embarked on a research project were we are going to review the electoral act and all electoral documents which are in place. The reason why we have embarked on this project is that we want to take the legislative way of lobbying for youth participation in governance.

The new trend of money in politics makes it very difficult for young people to mobilise resources and subsequently participate in the electoral process as candidates, so what we are going to do from now going forward is that we are going to be taking a research and our key respondents are youths between the ages of 15 and 35. We will also use the media to senstise and collect data.

The theme for this project is enhancing Zambian youth participation in governance through electoral reforms.”