Role of Youth in Democracy

Facing a world in a vertiginous transformation, the social and personal construction in East Timor is indispensable. In a process of transformation that will lead East Timor to peace and tranquility and eventually to a true democratic country, a country that really belongs to all the Timorese people, depends mostly on the participation of the Timorese people itself, especially the youths, to rebuild the country from the total devastation.Participation is the noblest action of exercising democracy. Participation means taking part in decision making to build the future and making decision means having responsibility to whatever the risk as the outcome of those decisions. To make all these become real, there might those in power grant opportunities. The achievement of new spaces of political and cultural participation of youths, through their juvenile organizations, should play, in this context, a decisive role.

These existing organizations should free themselves from any influence or interests (politically, ideologically, or any religious believe) in other to maintain as important social and cultural movements, which take the conscious responsibility for pushing the process of changing and society building. The timorese youths are fighting for gaining a new space of political and cultural participation. In their National Congress, the youths presented a number of alternatives for the solution of some fundamental questions for the future of East Timor. Alternative such as the official language for East Timor is one of the examples.This is a clear indication that the timorese youths are responsible for their own future that the youths denied to be put aside for believing that the future belongs to the youth. The structural changes will not be possible with passive agents neither with the disruption movements. The latter even endanger the development of democracy.

The social and cultural evolution of modern societies produce effects over the life and behavior of the East Timor’s youths organizations demanding them to be more dynamic and able to give adequate answer to the evolution of mechanism of participation and dialogue with the governments or those in power.The models of participation, demanded by the modern societies, will impose the youths’ organizations new forms of exercising the partaking democracy. A partaking democracy can only be possible in East Timor if the youths and all the timorese people, whatever their age, should always be young to work for the construction of their future, to take part in this great job and accept this mission of constructing a free East Timor: an East Timor for the happiness of all.The main protagonist of the accelerate process of social transformation lived in this threshold of the third millennium is that the youths now have more opportunities and other privileged means in relation to other previous generations to consolidate the values of democracy and have more spaces of participation or in possessing more ability of taking initiatives. Nevertheless, the youths’ participation must be done in political level, in the level of decision-making process.The more the political participation of youths, the bigger will be their responsibility and will be easier to be mobilized to participate in finding solutions for the whole problem of the country. If taking decision is viewed as a choice, then this choice must be based on responsibility.

If democracy is more than a way of life, then there only be reason for living in democracy when it is chosen: and the choice can only be rational when the alternatives are known and is based on relevant characteristic of the way of choice