Finally, after years of delays and postponements, the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections are set to occur on October 30.
As the last barangay and SK elections had been held way back in 2018, everyone would agree that a change in the leaderships and youth councils of Laguna province’s 681 barangays is WAY LONG OVERDUE.
This will be a very interesting study into how a whole generation of our youth who came of age during one of the biggest crises the world has ever experienced – the three-year Covid-19 pandemic – will express their newfound right to elect their own peers, their own leaders.
Philippine elections have always been hotly-contested, but the barangay and SK elections are even more personal in nature. Because the barangay is the smallest (and most easily accessible) form of government here in the Philippines, the stakes are higher in a locale where everybody knows everybody and the “Mariteses” are more apt to talk about the latest scandal of their neighbors than the controversy surrounding the recently-passed Maharlika Investment Fund.
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The barangay and SK elections, in my opinion, is an ideal starting point for our youth to exercise their right and duty in a democratic society – and start them right.
Our youth will tend to know more about their friend who’s running for SK chairman than the average presidential candidate (I remember that one episode during the 2022 elections when a first-time voter told OpinYon Laguna that she was voting for President Bongbong Marcos purely “on a whim”).
And since they will be the ones who will be more directly affected by the projects of the SK, they are more in a position to determine whether that friend will carry through their promises or just pocket the funds entrusted to them and then spend their terms on travel junkets abroad.
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One argument for the abolition of the SK is that they have become “training schools” for corrupt public officials who learn early on the tricks of embezzling public funds (and getting away with it).
But here’s the thing: our youth, who had displayed enormous willpower and drive in the 2022 national elections, can do so in the barangay and SK elections, too. And to me, the stakes are far higher.
In our province, the pandemic has proved to be the ultimate test for many of our local officials, the “trial by fire” that showed which officials are more than willing to go above and beyond their duty to aid the millions whose lives and livelihood were negatively affected by the coronavirus.
The same will be held true in the barangay and SK elections, even as we are now on the road to a full recovery from the pandemic.
This is the ideal opportunity for us to show our officials who directly affect our lives that corruption and incompetence will NEVER be a part of the New Normal.
#UncommonSense
#BarangayElections
#OpinYon