Some statistics that we have pointed out earlier in the year: 63 percent of voters in Monday’s election are from the “Millennials” and “Generation Z”: voters aged 18 to 44.
I have two pieces of advice to the youth, especially those who voted for the very first time this Monday.
First: prepare to be disillusioned. Prepare to see your chosen candidate lose.
Democracy, after all, relies on accepting the will of the people. No matter how skewered the beliefs of the people, the fact is that for democracy to survive, we must accept that the people chose their leaders, that these leaders have won the mandate, and that they’re the ones we’re going to have to put up with for the next three years or so.
The dangers of the refusal to accept the will of the people is that it can turn decent people to monsters who want to tear the very fabric that binds us as a nation.
As what had happened in the United States in 2021 and in Brazil in 2022, the refusal to accept election results can degenerate into a mob that, in their zeal for their candidate, attempts to flout law and order and try to impose their own will on everybody else, leading to senseless violence.
The second piece of advice? No matter how disillusioned we may be with the results of the election, let’s carry on with our advocacies and principles.
Disillusionment with the result of the elections can put us into two diverging paths. The first path is rejecting democracy, rejecting the system that enabled us to choose, rejecting the system that allows all people – no matter what their beliefs or preferences are – to work together for a shared goal of peace and prosperity.
That path, unfortunately, leads some of us to simply “go with the flow” and abandon our principles entirely. What’s worse, it could lead us to either boycott elections entirely or resort to violence to get our way.
The second path – and one that I recommend the disillusioned to take – is to take the lessons from past elections and work with greater resolve to educate the public on the necessity of choosing the right leaders.
This task can sound Herculean in the age of social media, misinformation and disinformation, and a growing tendency among many to close their eyes and minds on ideas that run counter to their beliefs.
But here’s the thing: don’t lose hope. Don’t give up. Keep on carrying the advocacies and principles that will enable the masses, in time, to understand the serious implications of electing the right leaders. As long as there are people who believe that we can still treat the social cancer that has befallen our nation, we CAN make a difference, one voter at a time.
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