–if peers here disenfranchised at upcoming elections

MOVE on Guyana (MoG), a youth group launched Monday in New York, has a few words of advice for those here in Guyana trying to frustrate the electoral process.

And that message is that every youth has the right to vote in the upcoming and future elections, and anyone found to be working against this process will he held accountable.

Speaking at the launch on Monday, which saw among those in attendance Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo and his wife, Mrs Sita Nagamootoo; Guyana’s Consul-General to New York, Mrs Barbara Atherly; and Guyana’s Ambassador to the United Nation, Mr Michael Ten Pow, MoG Chairman Rickford Burke said that while there are several youth groups in existence in both Guyana and the Diaspora, theirs is one with a difference, as its goal is to engender change, particularly where youth involvement in governance is concerned, by way of engagements with top government and diplomatic officials, whereby policies to create avenues for youths to recognise their potential will be negotiated.

Top on the group’s agenda, Burke said, has to do with the current political situation here, whereby there are moves afoot to prevent youths from voting by not advocating for the renewal of the voters’ list.

And to counter this, Burke said, there is an aggressive campaigning in train to ensure that democracy prevails, even as we await the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ)’s ruling on the no-confidence motion.

Said he: “That’s a big, big problem! That’s a silent giant that has not yet awakened. And if people block these young people from voting, ‘Move on Guyana’ has plans to start a campaign; a campaign titled ‘Register every Youth’.”

“We are going to shake the place up in Guyana!” Burke promised. “Our young people must be registered to vote! Nowhere in the world would you find any politician campaigning to stop people from voting,” he warned. “We are going to fight them in Guyana as well,” Burke said, to loud applause.

He said that in the early stages of the founding of MoG, surveys were done and youths from all across Guyana expressed their desire to vote. He reasoned that with 56% of Guyana’s population being below 40, that means that the electorate is mostly youths, and any attempt to keep them unregistered is “anti-democratic”.

He said too that with democracy having been restored with the advent of the Coalition Government, and the worst thing to do is to allow regression. Voting, he said, is the first stage of engendering a paradigm shift amongst youths to be more integrated in the nation’s governance, and this will be pushed at all levels. “We will be pushing young people at every level of governance; every level of the private sector; every level of society in our policy,” Burke said.

“We are going to shake things up,” he reiterated.

A REBIRTH OF NATIONAL PRIDE
He also spoke at length of what he referred to as “a noticeable rebirth of national pride post-2015,” saying that not only was that fire awoken in youths here in Guyana but those in the Disapora as well, and was further strengthened by the expectation of the immense wealth to be derived from the petroleum industry, which will bring with it real economic and social transformation. It is the expectation also that the 28% of youth employment will be increased incrementally after first oil, and MoG will be preparing youths for this great transformation.

Burke said that with this in mind, a number of proposals have been tabled to top government officials, including the PM, which proposals, if implemented, will see youths benefiting in an astronomical way from the revenues of oil. Among those proposals, he said, is the amendment of the law to enable youths to purchase property from the age of 18 instead of 21. “We have qualified, solid young people who are capable of taking out loans and purchasing their own homes, and so we are asking to change the law, and that the cost to purchase the land be intergrated into the mortgage,” Burke said.

MoG is also pushing for an economic programme which will allow for a national income threshold, whereby youths falling below it will be integrated into social services, whereby they will be given financial assistance to put them on par. There is a catch, however, and that is that such youths must be either enrolled in a training programme, or pursuing tertiary education, so as to enable them to become better qualified for a higher-paying job.

Once this is done, they will leave the programme, thus creating space for others to join.
In closing, Burke encouraged the politicians in their midst at the function to move away from selfish politics; to bury the devisiveness of the past, and to advocate for unity amongst not only youths, but all Guyanese.