PNPYO tells students party is best choice for Jamaica
THE People’s National Party Youth Organisation (PNPYO) kick-started its campaign for general elections due this year, convincing students at a forum at the University of the West Indies (UWI) Mona campus on Wednesday that the ruling party was still the best choice for Jamaica.
The PNPYO also used the occasion, which they said was the beginning of several forums to advance the case for a fifth term for the PNP, to renew its call for a youth advocate/ ambassador in government and a “one-stop shop” to deal with issues affecting the younger generation.
“[There is a need for a youth affairs headquarters] where every detail about youth issues can be accessed, instead of running from agency to agency and department to department,” PNPYO chairman Andrew O’Kola told the students at the forum in the Chancery Hall dining room.
“This youth affairs agency would also have a youth advisory board which would inform policies to government ministries,” he added.
On Wednesday night, O’Kola, along with other past and present members of the PNP youth arm and Vision 2000, urged the students to become part of the political process and all but called for politics to be taught at the secondary level.
“Schools have failed to politically educate the young people,” he told the gathering.
O’Kola, however, conceded that there was a “lack of trust of traditional political institutions and politicians in particular”, but said his party was committed to renewal, and pound for pound, was still the party of ideas.
Advancing discourse of the ideological “Third Way” political theory – which supports growth, enterprise, entrepreneurship and wealth creation – the PNPYO chairman said such an idea should be promoted among Jamaica’s youths.
The idea, described as a compromise between hard economics and social justice, is popular among European countries.
The PNP, O’Kola said, has always been guided by an ideological framework which further shapes its policies – especially those on social justice.
Other speakers at Wednesday’s forum included former chairman Basil Waite and Senator Kern Spencer.
