ON Twitter, there have been trolling and sarcastic tweets on “pampers kids” since a senior politician from a ruling political party said it in her controversial speech last Sunday.

I feel called to write this expression of thought because I don’t really think that calling or labelling youths, be they fresh graduates, new parliamentarians or young corporate managers, as “pampers kids”, “immature”, “underaged” “less-knowledgable ” is acceptable and civilised.

Doing so is obviously a form of underestimating young generation who are hopeful of inheriting presently-held-by-eldest leadership.

Youths of today aren’t not the same as boomers when they were youths.

Today’s youths are intelligently energetic that our country will be nothing without us aspiring what we are capable of acting.

In this modern era of politics, the existence of youths in the mainstream political landscape must be made relevant with more spaces widely opened for us to voice out and contribute.

Not many realise the fact that most “experienced politicians” who always egotistically boast about being “greatest person to lead” are mostly derailed by their blind political survival of “staying alive in this game” despite knowing the fact that there are many alive young talents who are much more deserving and fit to supersede them.

But the problem with the modern democracy is that the democracy itself isn’t democratic.

When a democracy isn’t democratic, hopeful and idealistic youths are sidelined, and only those who have ‘strong cables’ to top echelons can be bypassed to pursuing certain political positions without having pleasant credentials.

Democracy will be dead if youths are blocked from being a visible figure and listenable voice to lead, regardless of capacity.

Until when we would hypocritically shout “long live democracy!” and “youths are powerful!” if we keep hailing same-old-faced leaders who always shamelessly claim to be the only medicine that can heal the people’s suffering. (Laugh out loud).

Politics will forever remain in its old-fashioned stagnancy and boredom if antique politicians still inconveniently feel threatened about giving way to potential youths whom they think as “threatening livings” to their political survival.

“Youths are future leaders” would be just a plain and meaningless phrase if they are still being excluded from telling what’s good and what’s bad for the country.

Greta Thunberg was just announced as the “person of the year” by the TIME magazine for being the loud voice in boldly fighting against global climate change.

Even Finland has just been respectfully applauded for having the youngest prime minister on earth whose age is just 34.

Youths are like gold. Our preciousness can’t be gauged without our specialties being mined.

Until when we want to be ‘served’ by old-aged politicians whose parliamentary speeches are done like a pupil reading school textbook in classroom after being asked by the teacher?


* Amerul Azry Abdul Aziz is an independent writer who now views politics as something that can be researched.

**The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of Astro AWANI.