GETTING READY

May 14: A day to heal, to conquer fears, to hope again

by Ryan Edward L. Chua

It was noontime when I joined a huge crowd rushing to beat the deadline of the voters’ registration in my hometown in Laguna last December. Sighs and shouts of people who had been waiting there since early morning filled the jampacked municipal hall, and it certainly wasn’t a sight to behold for a first-time voter like me.

The very long line was enough proof that I was about to begin a long wait. One hour passed, then two, then three, then eternity. I left the place already at midnight, leaving hundreds of other registrants still waiting. After almost 12 hours, I officially became a registered voter, holding my voter’s stub, tired and sleepy.

It was an energy-draining experience, much like auditioning for a talent search because of the long hours I spent for waiting. But while I chose to “audition,” many people my age did not.

According to a Pulse Asia survey, more than 20% of eligible first-time voters did not register for the May 2007 elections. Most of them, according to the survey, said that they are simply not interested to vote. In a country where politics is often seen as a dirty game, this is no longer surprising.

This could mean that politics in our country has gone to such a sorry state that even our most potent force, the youth, no longer sees it relevant. Maybe lining up for hours to register is not worth the effort for many young people like me, even if it is a crucial first step in exercising the right and responsibility to vote. Maybe it’s better to audition for a talent search.

For many, it may appear a waste of time to register just to be able to cast a single vote that would be combined with millions of other votes anyway, and that can be stolen any time with a simple phone call. And what a waste that single vote would indeed be without enough good candidates to choose from.

What do we really get after voting? If what we always see in the news are politicians involved in this scandal and that, or one candidate vilifying another, then what’s the use of writing on the ballot and dirtying our nails with indelible ink? We would just be placing the same breed of people in the same old system that our elders have always been complaining about. Would a single vote make any difference?

As sad as it sounds, this is probably how many of today’s youth think about the elections and Philippine politics in general. That is, if they even still think about these things at all.

Many young people today are perhaps clouded with fear, a fear to go beyond themselves and step into a bigger world where they have a big responsibility. It is a fear that is not always noticed, but is constantly being heightened by the realities we face each day. It’s not that the youth today are selfish or apathetic, as they are often accused to be, but that they are afraid to engage in concerns they consider not their own.

What is frightening is that even during the elections, an event that supposedly promises new life and reform for our country, this fear persists, and even gets worse.

Seeing this fear frightens me personally. It scared me, for instance, to see many students ignore the Sanggunian’s Reg2Vote campaign last year, where they would have been transported for free to register as voters. It also scared me to hear my brother joke that he will register when he turns 18 so he will be able to sell his vote.

The way I see it, we as a nation are like a broken-hearted lover who, having experienced the same hurt many times, already finds it hard to trust and love again. She fears even a new suitor who promises to revive her, love her so much more, and bring back what she had lost. She’s afraid to risk it all again, and thus chooses to be indifferent.

She, however, can never grow that way. We as a nation can never grow that way. She needs to heal. We need to heal. And the best way to heal is to come face to face with the wound, to strike at the heart of the fear, to risk failing and experiencing hurt. Only then can we conquer this fear and move forward.

We, the youth, are the strongest force that can help our country heal. This is why it is disheartening to know that many of us did not register for the elections, and more disheartening that a lot are simply uninterested to vote. Many of us would often say, “Those candidates are all crap, and this country is hopeless. My vote will be wasted." I say this is evading and worsening the fear instead of healing it.

Today, May 14, we are given yet another chance to heal our country's wounds, to conquer our fears, and to hope again. The precincts are waiting for us.

Ryan is the Inquiry Editor of The GUIDON. He won second place in the Kabataan Essay Category of last year's Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature.

Season's greetings

by Karl Satinitigan
Sanggunian President

On a bus ride here in sunny Cebu, I would hear a young couple comment on every candidate whose poster we'd pass by. This would go on until the lady concluded: “Ngano mag-elections pa man ta uy nga sila-sila ra ma'y mandaug (Why bother with the elections when it's always the same people winning anyway).”

It's almost always true, especially for Cebu. But that's not what's so disappointing. What's more sad is the fact that a lot of us would really rather not bother with the elections.

Ever since I was born in 1987, we’ve been blessed with a venue called the elections. And elections in this country is a season in itself. Maybe in other countries too, but in the Philippines, there are interesting indicators that tell you this season's here:

1. You will notice a spike in ad spending—from Mr. Kiko’s noodles to some green leafy vegetable to some congressman flaunting his biofuel bill outside the campaign period. Add to that a mountain of print ads turned into wallpapers or tree ornaments. Make that “ugly and illegal tree ornaments.”

2. You will notice that your public market is under construction, including your access road, your footbridge, your waiting shed. Make that “finally under construction.” I remember thinking that I should not be so jaded and so posit that there’s a causal relationship between the two. Besides, maybe I was not just as observant as before.

3. You will notice people dying. I mean, people die all the time but I do not think dying for political reasons is remotely acceptable. I read how election-related violence this year was not as much as before (so far) but so what? An improved statistic does not raise the dead mayoralty candidate shot within Cebu Capitol premises or discount the possibility of having to jump off a car in the middle of Pasig City traffic.

4. Yes, a lot more are dying in Iraq or of AIDS but in my own country I call home, people are dying. Again, maybe positing a causal relationship is premature since all these are still under investigation. But come on: people are dying. No, people are dead. For so many reasons that include a thirst for power.

Worse, all these are not new, far older than us and they persist, and like the lady who notes how the same people keep on winning, we note how the same problems keep on coming back. We never learn to learn. Elections remain dirty, short-term and deadly violent. Elections remain as seasons all to themselves.

Maybe we can change that. Just maybe.

I remember telling myself how I should not look at Christmas as a season of love but as a reminder that it’s always, even after Christmas, the season of love. Maybe that’s too mushy an analogy but hey, I don’t think this election be a mere season in itself too.

It ought to be a reminder of a democracy we’re all counting on day by day. In fact, it is a reminder:

1. that anything illegal, those tree ornaments included, should not be tolerated;

2. that doing projects, lampposts included, is not a means to buy votes;

3. that people need not be dead to make sure who he believes in wins; and

4. that for every Serbisyo Eusebio I see in this city where I temporarily reside that I be humiliated of the fact that I allowed someone to label as his what is all ours.

This election too is ours and maybe we can start by admitting how nasty and gruesome it is. Then maybe we can all build on and figure out together a way to make this democracy work. Then maybe the conversations I hear while riding buses won’t be too much of a downer.

Why we should still care

by Leloy Claudio

Ateneo Debate Society (ADS)

Batch 2007 Valedictorian

I dislike a lot of things in Ang Kapatiran’s platform and a lot of what they stand for. For one, I think their conservative insistence on imposing Natural Family Planning on everyone is abhorrent – a blanket imposition of questionable religious beliefs (many Christian theologians approve of artificial family planning) to a secular public. I’m also not very impressed with the way they talk about issues. They moralize instead of analyze and abstract instead of engage. To be fair, there are issues they talk about with precision and clarity (i.e. when Dr. Martin Bautista talks about our debt problem), but, by and large, they have the tendency to sound like the trapos they love to criticize. In a debate which my organization, the Ateneo Debate Society, hosted, I saw the Kapatiran members get outshined by the intelligence and precision of Rep. Alan Cayetano (someone people should definitely vote for).

Despite all my misgivings, however, I don’t think it would be wrong to vote for Kapatiran. In fact, they might actually be good for the Senate. They seem honest, well-intentioned, and selfless. They’ve achieved a bare minimum that people like Mike Defensor, Butch Pichay, Richard Gomez, Tito Sotto, or Chavit Singson haven’t.

Voting for people based on a bare minimum standard is something we do in a country like the Philippines. This is simply because, as everybody knows, most politicians suck. One of the reasons why it’s so hard to focus on platforms is because, half the time, we’re trying to make sure the candidate we’re considering is not a jueteng lord.

Certainly, there’s something wrong. And we get a greater sense of how wrong things are when we compare ourselves to other countries. Many times, I entertain a sense of colonial mentality and compare the Philippine political system to the one in the U.S. In America, there are two parties, and it is easy to differentiate them based on issues. The Democrats are more socially liberal and more predisposed to a welfare/nanny economics, while the Republicans are more socially conservative and tend to love the free market more. If one were to place Kapatiran in the American political spectrum, they’d probably be Republican. And if I were an American, I’d be a card-carrying Democrat and would never dream of voting in Republicans. But, since I’m in the Philippines, I’m willing to vote for people on the other side of the political spectrum simply because they’re honest.

No wonder many of us become jaded and decide to withdraw. We don’t pick up the papers, we don’t lobby, we don’t vote, etc. We just stop caring. Or, we care, but we care in other ways. At the end of the day, however, I think our frustration with the way things are should not get in the way of the bigger picture. National politics is important, and we cannot give up on it no matter how bad it gets.

We have the power to change things, so it is incumbent upon us to respond. The system is not bad because there are stupid poor voters who don’t know what’s best for the country. This bigotry must be ended in favor a view that recognizes our (the middle and upper classes) complicity in the creation and maintenance of this system. Upon recognizing this complicity, we should also recognize that it is within our capacity to reverse what we have done. Trapos are trapos because our own families, schools, fraternities, etc. have bred them. If we seek culture changes in these institutions and if we ourselves imbibe these changes, the system will give. Trapos are also trapos because we have let them get away with pillaging the country, and, at times, even benefited from their pilferage. If we are vigilant against them and if we communicate this vigilance, they will eventually give. Trapos are trapos because some of us opt to join their ranks. If we are vigilant about ourselves, we will also give.

Change can happen, and change is already happening. People like our own Danton Remoto, parties like Kapatiran, and civil society networks like Volunteers for Clean Elections (VforCE) are evidence of this. They are part of a broader process of reworking the system.

The change in this system is happening through a large-scale culture change. Culture changes, however, accrue gradually and one can neither directly see nor measure these changes. This is very different from the wonderful community work which a lot of us have been used to. Building houses for poor people, for instance, is immediate gratification because you get to see how communities get uplifted rather quickly. Changing the political system, however, is a different ball game.

But this doesn’t mean it won’t have effects. A more transparent national government, for example, would be one which people could more easily hold accountable for acts of corruption (this is why the ADS, for example, will lobby for a freedom of information act). And, as many of you know, the Philippines would be a lot richer if our money didn’t go to our “public servants.” To rephrase this in the form of a challenge: people are stealing your money, are we just going to sit there and let them?

Hopefully we don’t. So what can you do? Allow me to close with a couple of concrete suggestions:
1) Vote.
2) Inform yourselves about candidates and tell people about those who you think should make it and should not make it to office. As I mentioned, I’m a Cayetano fan (please write his complete name, Alan Cayetano, on the ballot).
3) Find ways to guard yours and other people’s votes. Join VforCE (http://vforce.multiply.com).
4) Know about political issues even when it’s not election time. Just because it’s not voting time, doesn’t mean you can’t lobby.
5) Demand that television networks educate people about political issues through writing them. Watch and support the smart ones; boycott and complain about the dumb ones.
6) Love your country. Okay, that’s not concrete, but it’s what’s most important.