Centre for Multiparty Democracy (CMD) has said politicians need knowledge and skills on how they can coexist in society for them to resist getting into conflicting situations that may spoil free, fair and peaceful elections.
In a two-day training workshop, CMD on Thursday trained Nsanje politicians in conflict management.
The politicians were drilled in engaging others in a peaceful manner without triggering violence and promote dialogue and peaceful co-existence.
In an interview, CMD’s team lead trainer Chris Mabwera said sometimes politicians fail to grasp what their people want and drive them astray in doing things that fail to unite them and therefore ignite them into violent people.
“We have invited governors from different constituencies and political district to enlighten them what political parties are, why we do politics and for whose benefit, we discuss what are issues happening on the ground so that we may find solutions and finally have peaceful elections,” said Mabwera.
He said people need to be prepared for peaceful elections since violent activities have started showing up and it is important to address such vices by training people on the ground who meet and engage the party followers in various ways in their daily political activities.
Mabwera said party governors are key to guiding their followers therefore they discuss problems they meet, generate success stories, give recommendations, and make a commitment to ensure peaceful elections.
In his opening speech, Principal Administrative Officer, Bissau Mtayamanja, sitting in for the Nsanje District Commissioner, urged the participants to take the training seriously in order to curb election-related violent activities that are now common in the district.
“If you, party members, in the name of Multiparty Liaison Committee, are trained in conflict management, you will be in a position to resolve you differences on the ground without engaging the police or the DC, so I ask you to take this training session seriously,” said Mtayamanja.
Mtayamanja encouraged the communities in the district to work together in resolving conflicts and differences amongst them in an amicable manner saying a chaotic approach to issues breeds hatred and low development in a society.
A participant in the training, Lukia Sattar, said the training will be instrumental, especially to the youth, since most politicians use young people to be in forefront staging acts of violence and that the knowledge will empower them to fight against political violence.
