Youth must use votes to secure future - Ms Gbowee

A NOBEL Peace Laurette, Ms Leymah Gbowee, has challenged Ghanaian youth to use their votes to negotiate their future rather than accept handouts that tends to manipulate their conscience to violent conducts.

She similarly charged politicians and political parties not to limit the energies in young people for foot-soldier purposes.

“Do not follow blindly, rather ask questions and push for debates as you are major stakeholders who are often used as tools in gaining political power”, she advised.

According to her, the issue of peaceful elections were not a theoretical ones, but one that needed action plans to be achieved appropriately.

Ms Gbowee was speaking at a youth forum organised by the National Youth Authority (NYA), on the theme, “Peaceful elections 2012: the youth and the way forward”.

The programme, a curtain raiser for a series of nationwide engagement with the youth by the authority was meant to sensitise and provide information on the maintenence of peace before, during and after the December general elections.

She indicated that failing government structures across the African continent had seen the youth’s inability to create opportunities for themselves, thereby silently transiting them into foot-soldiers for the purposes of spearheading severe confrontations.

“Stories in newspapers and the airwaves in Ghana today clearly points in that direction”, she stressed.

According to her, although Ghana had become a model of democracy in Africa, economic and unemployment issues continue to plague its economy and these factors, she said, were a global phenomenon.

“Throwing stones for politicians would worsen your already impoverished situation and giving the politician who has all the resources at his disposal the opportunity to flee to a more developed country for his comfort”, Ms Gbowee told the gathering of young people who attended the programme.

“If you want to throw stones, follow me to Liberia for the repercussions of such actions”, she said.

While calling on young people not to allow the few minority seeking power at all cost to determine the trend of their lives through violent conducts, Ms Gbowee said that, “the power of life and death lies in their hands, since they were the biggest stakeholders in electoral decisions that defines true democracies”.

The Executive Secretary of the National Media Commission (NMC), Mr George Sarpong, said that there was the need for Ghanaians to reflect on the despair of Liberia from the cycle of peace and violence that led to a total destruction of that country.

He indicated that single electoral decision and the youth’s failure to be instigated with violent conducts by those seeking political offices at all cost would be a test case as December polls approaches.

Earlier in her welcome address, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the NYA, Ms Sedina Tamakloe Attionu said the forum had become necessary owing to the fact that the youth form the masses in the elections.

She stated that whereas political parties have a right, there was the need to equip the youth with relevant skills and tools that would allow them to resist attempts of manipulation and determinants of political trends in their communities.

Ms Attionu also announced that the forum would be replicated in all regional and district capitals nationwide in an attempt to lessen rising tensions associated with elections and expressed the hope that stakeholders and religious bodies would embrace the concept of peace building before, during and after the elections.

The Commissioner for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Ms Lauretta Vivian Lamptey, who chaired the programme commended the NYA for the initiative saying the youth ought to be the main focal point of thought in stabilising democracy.

Present at the ceremony were officials of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Deputy Minister for Women’s and Children’s Affairs, Ms Hawawu Boya Boriga, who cautioned politicians and individuals not to hide behind politics to settle individual, religious or political scores.

SOURCE: Della Russel Ocloo, Daily Graphic, Sat Jan 7, 2012