Monday, 13 August 2012
By Chhay Channyda
Phnom Penh Post
Young people rallied to support political parties at June’s commune
election, but few have been rewarded with paid internal positions as a
result, election watchdog Comfrel says.
The
Kingdom’s political parties are lagging when it comes to developing
policies that reward young people for wanting to be involved in party
politics, despite many of them being highly educated, according to a
Comfrel statement released on Friday.
“A number of teenagers . . .
were activists for political parties during the commune election and
the number of teenagers who voted was a much larger number than the
previous [election],” it says. “However, the activities of youths have
no bearing on the decisions political parties are making.”
According to Comfrel’s data from the June 3 ballot, 54 per cent of Cambodians voted in the commune election.
A large percentage of those who did were aged between 18 and 35.
Sin
Tithseyha, a teenager involved in a Comfrel seminar in the capital on
Friday, said more than 300,000 more youths voted in June than at the
previous election, but political parties were continuing to operate as
usual.
“We see that youths are paying a lot of attention, but
there is no exact structure or policy that allows them to make any
decisions,” he said.
Seng Rithy, president of the Khmer Youth Association,
said most parties had a youth membership of almost 10 per cent, but
only about half of those youth members were actually voting.
“Many
faced difficulty travelling to election stations, or faced
complications such as their name being removed from the voting list,” he
said.
CPP parliamentarian Cheam Yeap said his party was focused on developing the next generation of political leaders.
“We
have to strengthen youth participation in the middle level, such as at
provincial, town and district levels,” he said. “But at the moment,
officials in this middle level offer us a lot . . . thus we can’t simply
replace them [with youths].
“However, if the next generat-ion is competent . . . they are a very good source of human resources for us,” he said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Chhay Channyda at channyda.chhay@phnompenhpost.com
1 comment:
Good job girl,Bravo to you from a distance!....we need more khmers women like you please recruit some more,loves one another take care each other as a nation working togethers.Stop all of these:Nepotism,favoritism,(i-ism) or communism,all these things describes above were the cancers that destroy our society.
I'm very proud of you young lady,also believing in you,may god show you the way.Thank you.
Kmenhwatt.
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