THE Alliance For Change (AFC) will be putting forward a youthful slate of candidates vying for this year’s Local Government Elections (LGEs) in time for the September 21 Nomination Day deadline.

The political party is in the process of fine-tuning its list of candidates and, although the names of these are not yet public, representatives of the party reported on Sunday that most have already been finalised.

“We have been signing up a whole host of young people throughout this process. We intend to put a very young slate forward. It’s to the point where we have our older executive members stepping back and allowing some new persons to take up the constituency representative seat.

“We’re very tactful in our approach to Local Government. It’s not just a wild process, it’s not just about getting votes but it’s about impacting the lives of people and we feel very passionate about it. We encourage young people to come out and be a part of this process because it’s their future, and it’s very important that they are a part of the decision-making team,” AFC Deputy Campaign Director, Juretha Fernandes, told the newspaper yesterday.

Her remarks were corroborated by AFC Region Four Campaign Coordinator, Michael Leonard, who stated: “We want to ensure that we have a good representation of not just AFC members but we want to make sure we have a lot of young people, we want to ensure we have a lot of women as well as candidates.”

He further commented: “We don’t have many executives that are vying for council positions but we are working with independent groups, we are working with a lot of persons who are not registered members of the Alliance For Change (AFC) because, as we’ve said time and time again, we don’t direct our members on how to vote. The only thing that is important is that you care about your community and that you make decisions after consulting with your community.”

Consultation with the citizens is an important aspect the AFC wants to better revive if elected, and one such case in which this will be involved is the parking meter issue.

Leonard says that transparency and accountability are actions the party takes very seriously. “We are against the parking meter contract, especially in its current form. Any decision or any project that the council wishes to undertake, that will directly affect the lives of citizens and visitors to Georgetown should have widespread consultation to ensure that we understand some of the negative impacts, some of the upsides as opposed to just implementing things and telling citizens that this is what you’re going,” he said.

Meanwhile, Fernandes stated that each Neighbourhood Democratic Council (NDC) and municipality is presenting youth programmes which will be advertised to the public. “As we go forward and we tackle Local Government throughout Guyana, every single municipality and NDC that we are contesting has similar heading in which they are going to be formulating plans. Youth and Sport is one of the biggest parts of what we’ve been doing. We’ve been trying to highlight via our TV programme that we have every two weeks that we don’t want Local Government to be about cleaning drains, fixing streetlights, [alone] it is about empowering persons and youths today, they are a very large number of our population and we must centre our focus around them,” she stated.

Leonard highlighted the need for better leisure spaces for young people to steer them away from idleness.

“We believe that there should be open spaces. We have persons working in various communities where the AFC is active, like Diamond, where we are working to ensure that there are open spaces so that youths can have a place to play. People call it green spaces or open spaces, but [it involves] basically fixing up these derelict play grounds to ensure that children can go somewhere in the afternoon and have something to do or something place to congregate as opposed to liming on the corner,” he related.

Through the party he is also advocating for the live streaming of Council meetings and the voting records among council members to be posted online to avoid ambiguity.

Besides future plans, Fernandes added that the party has been receiving much support although they have not yet launched into their campaign phase. With 62 symbols submitted to the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM); Nomination Day set for September 21 and LGEs scheduled to be held on November 12, she encouraged younger voters by stating:
“For the younger generation…Local Government is not something just for stats. It is about making very informed decisions and electing persons that you think are best to represent your community for grassroots leadership. I think it’s very important at this point in time that young people stand up and get involved.”