YCF Declare Support For 2014 Young Aspirants

Edward Chileka-Banda (4th from left)
captured in June petition 

As a way of guarantee full representation of youth in every high positions of decision making in the country, Youth Consultative Forum YCF has vowed to support every young aspirant in upcoming 2014 Tripartite Elections.

The Malawi’s youth rights group has said together with other youth groups in the country are ready and have started supporting young candidates from various political affiliation. YCF Director Edward Chileka-Banda revealed this in an interview.

He said youth groups are providing moral and resource support to assist young candidates during the campaigns as doing so will provide more opportunities for young contenders to compete with other politicians without intimidation and other challenges.

Chileka added this will also help the country to elect more young leaders who can take youth issues and make right decisions hence putting to an end a negative portrayal and manipulation of youths as agents of violence in politics.

“As youth groups and youth leaders we are actually supporting that young people should contest, and there is a great opportunity if we can take advantage of numbers that we have as young people, we can go into parliament, become councilors.”

“We want youth to participate in politics and not mare politics but on youth governance. And these are policy spaces that we can claim and influence and participate in policy debate in Malawi” said Chileka-Banda

“We may not have resources to support them directly but we should be able to come together and say young people we are here and we want to save our communities to save our country and that’s of paramount importance” said Edward Chileka

Chileka (left in red necktie)

Chileka said youth eyes the upcoming elections as a greater opportunity to influence the direction this country should take, as they understand the majority of the problems that Malawi is facing because of poor leadership on governance and corruption issues.

He said it is displeasing to note that Malawi is now literally ran by young people working in various sectors yet have been pushed to the peripheral and they are no where in the decision and policy making process and that the youth group’s would help to reverse the trend. He has therefore called on young people to go to register if they want to see change as they would elect candidate of their choice

“More importantly elections are the important influence of holding our leaders accountable through the ballot paper. Therefore I wish to appeal also to the nation, to the voters themselves to make sure that they are also recruiting the youthful leaders that will also represent the present and the future Malawi.” Chileka-Banda appealed

The YCF Director warned young aspirants to refrain from in-sighting any form of violence during campaigns saying youth groups will campaign against every contender who would insight violence Chileka urged young aspirants to focus on issue based campaign.

“But we have also seen that the elections have been used as moments of fighting and we are saying no violence during elections. And no youth should be used to intimidate others. So we are all making sure that elections should be free and fair at the same time Malawians and young people should voice their concerns.”

Chileka said YCF is coming up with youth manifesto that young people can use to bargain on issues that should inform the direction of this country.

Young people who constitute the majority of Malawi population are calling for a transformative leadership which can look beyond personal interest but the agenda of Malawi. And that supporting and electing young people into decision making positions would help youth to be represented at all levels.