…say SONA for youth was staged, fake…
Some youths who had an opportunity to interact with President Lazarus Chakwera at the state house yesterday in Lilongwe say they are very disappointed with how the whole event was conducted.
President Chakwera invited 100 youths from the central region to the state house. The youths were invited to interact with him and also ask him some questions related to the SONA he presented in Parliament last week Friday.
One of the renowned artists who was present at the event, Praise Umali, said it was pretty clear to the young faces present in the room that they were not happy with the line of questions being presented to the president.
“Quite frankly, by the end of the event, the whole room said, we have way more pressing questions than that which has been presented towards the president,” Umali wrote on his Facebook Facebook page.
According to Umali, it was very clear that young people had more pressing matters than what was being chosen online by the moderator.
“For us present in the room we felt the same of the questions “our fellow youth” posed in the room almost as if “they” aren’t seeing the situation on the ground for us young people to be able to ask directly of things that benefit us and how the president is trying to address what we as young people are going through,” he explained.
Responding to what Praise Umali wrote on his page, one of the renowned photographers, Jae Kav Ngumuya said, “Unfortunately, this will not even get to the President.”
Also commenting on Praise Umali’s post, Charles Mwale wrote, “I agree with you, Praise Umali. I broke into laughter when I watched Lazarus Chakwera’s live-streaming. You could read from his face that he was being fooled by youths from his inner circles. It’s disappointing that the State of the Nation address for the youth was more of a staged event than a genuine conversation. The fact that the questions posed to the president seemed orchestrated and didn’t reflect the real concerns of the youth is alarming”.
Another young man from Lilongwe who wished to remain anonymous and had an opportunity to attend the event said he was very disappointed with how the moderator picked people in the room.
“I was very excited that I would interact with President Chakwera and ask him burning questions related to what we, the youth, are facing. However, it seemed the moderator had already selected people who would ask the questions before the event. Imagine the president invited 100 youths but only 10 people had a chance to ask questions. I tried to raise my hand but the moderator never recognised me,” he said.
Another young person who wished to remain anonymous told us the event was staged and the president already had answers for the questions selected both in the room and on the internet.
“Nothing was real, man. I can assure you the people who were selected to ask in the room, the president already had answers to their questions and even the questions selected online it was staged, and I was very disappointed. We had burning questions that we wanted the president to respond to, but that never happened. We came back with nothing beneficial for our lives. The only thing we had was good food from the state house; otherwise, the whole thing was trash,” she said.
