I am currently working on a project proposal regarding democracy development between Ulricehamn and Voi in Kenya. I want to bring in down to concrete projects where we do not only talk about democracy but actually work to implement it. Everyone knows what democracy is and most of us understand that a true democracy fosters development and is a way of fighting poverty, increasing stability and making business growth possible. Still, democracy is not a static phenomenon. It needs to be taken care of and fostered and in order to keep its credibility you need to critically observe it and make sure it changes according to the needs and wants of the mass. When we have an average age among politicians, which is far beyond 50+ we need to ask our self if our assembly is a true mirror of society. I am seriously concerned about the lack of initiative among politicians and political parties to increase the number of young members in political organisations.
In Ulricehamn we might not have the type of problem they have in Kenya (unfair elections, corrupt politicians etc) but we have a problem when people who nearly never uses the Internet or do not even have an e-mail address have the power to determine how much money should go to the educational services and IT within the schools. I am not saying that our politicians are not doing a good job but I am saying that we need more young people in the assembly. We need people with visions, who have a wider perspective and can understand what the future holds. We need people who can anticipate the changes in the world and who understands that these changes will have an impact on us weather we want it or not. I think these people can be found in Ulricehamn but someone needs to step down and pave the way for new talent and who is ready to give away power? I don’t think young people are not interested in social issues but they choose other ways to show their engagement. The system is not constructed in such a way that young people find their way into it and the established parties do too little to change it. It is too easy to blame the system and say that these are the rules and we need to follow them. We need to look at new educational approaches and maybe we need to elaborate on ways of communication or find other indicators for democracy involvement?
Well, in my project proposal I will work on these issues. In Kenya they do not have any problem in regard to the lack of interest among young people. But they have serious problems with transparency, with corruption and lack of funds to achieve what they want. They have less autonomy and serous development threats due to HIV and Aids. It is easy to make the conclusion that they are in more need of democracy then we are since we already have it and it has followed a stable pattern for quite some time. However, you conquer democracy but need to do it over and over again because the day you loose the trust of the people democracy is quickly lost. It will be interesting to see what our politicians will learn from our municipal partnership with Voi and what results we will see here in Ulricehamn.
We have enjoyed the visit of oma Nell and the Greeber family this week. I got the good news that a seconde project has been approved by the European Union this week so now the municipality has recieved 100 000 euro in the last 5 months. This week we celebrate Europe week with an EU evening for businesses and several activities at the local high school.
Take care!
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