Muzaffarabad: Around 350 youth including lawyers, academicians, political parties’ representatives, students, civil society activists and media persons today while urging political leadership of Pakistan administered Kashmir (PaK) “to shun menace of dynastic politics and casteism” called for youth representation in the political process in context of upcoming elections in PaK.
The demand was raised by youth in PaK in a day-long seminar on “role of political parties in promoting decision-making spaces for young people”.
The seminar was organized by PaK based think tank Centre for Peace and Development and Reforms (CPDR) in Muzaffarabad.
For the first time in PaK history, political leadership from the mainstream parties including leading civil society activists presented their vision for young people, which is estimated to be 2.9 million out of four million populations.
President Pakistan Muslim League-N(PaK), Raja Farooq Haider Khan, Finance Minister PaK Chaudhary Latif Akbar, Amir Jamat-e-Islami PaK Abdur Rashid Turabi, President (Women Wing) PTI PaK Gulzar Fatima, and Deputy Speaker PaK Legislative Assembly Shaheen Kausar Dar, shared their vision for young people and spoke at length on party manifestoes regarding empowerment of youth.
Waqas Ali, Faiza Inayat and Adnan Rehman Mir also shared their perspective on issues, challenges and the emerging trends of young people towards political system.
Raja Farooq Haider Khan stated that youth deserve more representation and opportunities in the current political, social and economic system as it make of 65 % of the total local population.
He pledged that if PML-N gets power in the upcoming elections he would immediately announce local bodies elections with 20% dedicated quota for young people and restore student unions, which according to him is considered as nurseries of politics.
Chaudhary Latif Akbar said PPP gives highest priority to education of youth that is why his party has set up a number of higher educational institutions and medical colleges in the State. He offered Raja Farooq Haider to work with the PPP government to amend PaK Constitution known as Act 1974 for more prosperous PaK.
Abdur Rashid Turabi said that Jamat-e-Islami provides equal opportunities to young people and its top leadership comes from the gross-root level. He underlined the need of sustained dialogue between youth and political parties to bridge the perception gap.
Shaheen Kausar Dar urged all political parties to ensure intra-party elections and capacity building of the youth on regular basis to nurture new leadership.
Ershad Mahmud, Executive Director of CPDR announced that before elections his organization will be arranging three more dialogues that would be held at Mirpur, Rawalakot and Islamabad aiming to provide platform to young people to talk to its elected leadership for better future.
After deliberation seven consensus points were put forward to all political parties’ reps like political parties should discourage casteism, nepotism and dynastic politics in PaK.
While explaining his six years long engagement with the youth of PaK, academician Waqas Ali held that youth was one of the most important segments of the society and well informed and vibrant youth of PaK if given opportunities can play vital role for its development.
Another academician Adnan Rehman, while explaining his experience with the young people of PaK said that government should make policies to address the youth issues and involve them in policy making, legislative institutions to address their concerns otherwise they might be attracted to radical ideas.
Source: Rising Kashmir News
