Natia Shakaia

Citizens make the future of the country. Many things depend on us, citizens.  In my mind, every citizen can do something useful for the development of the country. It really doesn’t matter what sphere we work in, it is our duty to do everything we can to live in better conditions.

Citizen’s participation is a process which provides private individuals an opportunity to influence public decisions and to be a component of the democratic decision-making process.

Nowadays more and more people are taking the initiative to make their local neighbourhood more liveable, for instance by helping to maintain playgrounds or green spaces. As a result, the relationship between society and government is changing. Sometimes the government supports the engagement of the society but sometimes they don’t. Well, it depends on certain conditions.

The society can be involved in many spheres. From my personal view everything needs to be improved. Some people are eager to change something and what’s more important they really do that. The main aim of this kind of people is to improve the quality of life around us. This is called citizens participation. Some things might have more importance than we think. For example, we can keep the streets, districts from pollution, and therefore we can be examples to our relatives and friends.

This is what I wanted to tell you about citizen’s participation and involvement but what happens when we are not involved at all? How do we impact on the environment we live in? …  citizen’s participation has always vital impact on the development of the country as economically as socially. We vote for the president, for the government but what happens if we don’t go to the elections? It may sound weird, but we vote for the party and the candidate we don’t like by deciding not to go to the elections, which means that the society thinks if they do not go for voting the party, which they do not support, will lose the elections and this is completely wrong attitude. So we should think about why don’t we use our right to vote? For instance, 2016 was the year of elections for my country. According to the media sources about 49-50% of citizens didn’t go for voting. So, all I can say is that the involvement of the society is very low at this point, or to be more precise there is 49-50% of non- involvement.

We, as the citizens of our country have the full right to participate in governing our nation. And if you still don’t know how and where participate, simply follow my advice: look for information in newspapers, magazines, and in any important materials; vote in elections and try to encourage someone to vote; participate in a political discussion to state our opinion about politics and hear to other’s opinions.

My advice for people (mostly the people of my age) is to more citizen participation if we want to make our country the better place to live. Before deciding whether to participate or not try to think about several things, for instance, what is purpose of the government, how important your rights are to you and how satisfied you are with the way the government is working.

Natia Shakaia

Read this article in Georgian here.

The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of the author, and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of ALDA and the European Union.