Political party youths subscribed to the multi-party youth forum hosted by the Netherland Institute for Multi-Party Democracy (NIMD) are divided over the proposals by the National Youth Council to increase youth representation in parliament.
The proposal presented by the chairperson national youth council Jacob Eyeru seeks to introduce slots for both male and female youth representations for every region.
Jacob Eyeru, the chairman of the National Youth Council said that If the electoral commission has a projection of an increase in MPs with the creation of new constituencies, then definitely the youth population in parliament must increase.
"You have the majority of the population that is young, if you increase the number of MPs without increasing youth representation, that does not make sense" Eyeru stated.
However his proposals did not go well with other youths subscribed to the same Uganda National Youth Council, a section of youths were concerned such proposals would worsen the already existing burden of the high cost of public administration.
"Already the taxpayers are over-constrained by the high cost of public administration, by now we should instead be talking about how we reduce the number of MPs be it youths or non-youths," Kidega Moses a youth leader posed.
A similar view was shared by another youth leader Kakai Nimrod.
"If we are to be different leaders, we must be alive to the fact that the resource envelope of a country like Uganda cannot be sustained by the continuous creation of administration units" Nimrod lamented.
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Apart from the leading opposition party the National Unity Platform, all other political parties with representation in parliament like the FDC, NRM, JEMA, UPC, and DP attended the national youth forum organized by the Netherlands Institute for multi-party democracy.
The National Youth Council made other proposals of electoral reforms lowering nomination fees for youth from three million to three hundred thousand shillings.
However, the youth representatives in parliament who were also in attendance were open to the proposals but requested time to study the proposal so as to get more allies within the house to push the proposals.
Edson Rugomayo Western region youth MP said: "What is important is to sell the idea to other MPs who then become our allies, so we need time to understand the proposals further"
Electoral commission should prepare the youths even run for other seats since we are the majority, then the idea of increasing the youth representation in parliament" Odoi Benard Onen, Youth representative of Eastern Uganda reacted.
Regardless of the dissenting voices, acting country director Netherlands Institute for multi-party democracy Primus Bahigi vows to continue championing inclusive democracy.
