WATCH: New blood elected to youth parliament

Two new Shetland representatives for the Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP) have been elected.

Charlie Haddon and Sonny Thomason were today confirmed as the two successful local candidates in the SYP elections, which saw five young people standing to represent Shetland for the period June 2017 to June 2019.

Depute Returning Officer for the Shetland Islands Area, Anne Cogle, made the declarations at Islesburgh Community Centre this morning, in the company of the candidates, families and invited guests.

The result followed an online election in which young people aged between 12 and 25 were eligible to vote through a website powered by Young Scot. Young people across Shetland were encouraged to vote at voting stations throughout Shetland at secondary schools, the Bridges Project, Shetland College and Shetland Library.

Results showed that 1,059 young people participated in the election with 11 spoilt votes. The turnout was at 28.76 per cent is the highest online turn-out in any SYP election across Scotland, and is an increase of 5.4 per cent from the local votes cast in 2015.

Both representatives, who are pupils at Anderson High School, thanked the people who had participated in the election and said that they looked forward to representing young people throughout Shetland at the SYP.

I’m really grateful to getting the role of representing young people and I am not taking this lightly,” said Sonny.

Charlie said that he was “really excited” about being elected and was looking forward to working with his good friend in representing Shetland youngsters.

Martin Summers of the Youth Services Team of Shetland Islands Council said: “Congratulations to Charlie Haddon and Sonny Thomason on their success and well done to all the candidates for having the courage to stand for election, which is a testing experience for anyone.

I am sure that Charlie and Sonny will do an excellent job to represent the interests of young people in Shetland, both locally and at national sittings of the Scottish Youth Parliament.”

Current MSYPs Kaylee Mouat and Kelvin Anderson will continue to represent Shetland until June this year.

The Scottish Youth Parliament is the democratically elected voice of Scotland’s young people, consisting of 146 constituency MSYPs – two each from the 73 Scottish Parliament constituencies. MSYPs are aged between 14 and 25 years old and all MSYPs work for the organisation as volunteers.