Political parties must court youth vote

Due to the nature of politics, young people often struggle to remain politically effective amid complex political and social dynamics.

When it comes to political allegiances, we are always splintered and pack-minded. The expectation is that Kenyan youth will toe the party line and behave as one entity.

This is worrying because it creates the perfect environment for blind hate and irrational dislike of our political blocs. The common trend we see is to slowly allow young people to rise through the ranks in political parties, which takes a significant amount of time before they can actually progress to senior party positions and, subsequently, be elected into government office.

By the time these youths make it through the process, they are no longer youths. Therefore, they cannot possibly echo the sentiments of young people if they themselves are no longer young.

Political parties should encourage constructive youth participation and entrench them into the youth political system so that they can participate in mainstream politics and not vent their frustrations through alternative channels that are not necessarily part and parcel of a functioning democracy.

POLITICAL POSITIONS

More often than not, young people are damned if they speak and damned if they do not speak out their political positions.  Typically, they are stereotyped as having an inflated sense of entitlement, uninterested in civic participation and apathetic, and they are readily dismissed in very public ways.

Research has shown an entrenched ambivalence about democracy among some young people. The following questions should be answered: How do young people define democracy? Is it different from how others define it? Have the divisive and intensely personal politics of recent years shaped this view? There is need to have a clear, participative and accommodative political system. By political system, we mean a system of politics and government. It is usually compared to the legal system, economic system, cultural system, and other social systems.

CAREER POLITICIANS

Experienced, sober career politicians have a role to play. The wider evidence confirms that young people see politicians as remote and party politics as unappealing. They feel that it is almost impossible for young people to differentiate political parties from their members. Possibly as a result, party identification among youth is low.

Conventional methods of participation have been characterised by some young people as tokenistic, old, closed, controlled, institutional and irrelevant.

Maybe this is, in part, why the youth vote remains untapped by political parties. Political parties should treat this process as a rite of passage and show how the opinions of youth have evolved. 

NATION BUILDING

In most cases they are denied this rite of passage with so many seasoned politicians speaking of passion to make a difference and at the same time stifling it. The idea should be to provide a more familiar platform for youths to experience the political process and for them to visibly see how governments function, in policy and in execution.

In conclusion, Kenyan youth must properly understand our country’s founding principles before they are able to contribute effectively to our nation building through politics.

 Dr Kiambati is a management consultant and a senior lecturer at Karatina University. kellenkiambati@gm ail.com. Dr Kariuki is a social scientist, management consultant and a lecturer at Karatina University. [email protected].