USC Elections

During the past few days the campus was littered with fliers, blown up posters, and multi-colored stickers promoting the candidates in their respective parties, who are running for the University Student Council. Their objective, as in all campaigns, is to secure the votes of the students. The candidates are at their best roaming around the campus with smiles plastered on their faces. They'll approach you in the friendliest manner and with a firm handshake would say, "Vote (place name here) for (place position here)." After which they would hand out stickers and papers that bear their names and pictures on it. It's like confetti, these things that they give you, the moment they turn around you stick it wherever you can or you just simply throw it away.

Today though the school was relatively clean. The campaign ads were stripped off walls and bulletin boards. In its place were banners that read "Halalan '05 - USC." Today's election day and the tension is rising between the members of the parties whose fate depended on the outcome of the student's votes. The parties running against each other are the ASAP-Katipunan and the Iskolar Student Alliance. The ASAP-Katipunan's cry is the fight for greater state subsidy. Backed by student activist orgs and frats, this party seem to have an edge against the inexperienced Iskolar. Among their agenda was to fight against the P357 million pesos budget cut. This has long been an issue in the UP, and now that the Congress has approved the budget cut, students has been taking it to the streets and rallying to abolish, if not strip down, the budget cut. The Iskolar argued, however, that the budget cut is only P67 million pesos - a less significant figure than that which the ASAP-Katipunan say it is, and that they had evidence to prove it. Another issue was the commercialization of the UP. The ASAP-Katipunan were against it, while the Iskolar were for it.

The way I see it, the former party is for the masses while the latter is for the satus quo. Ang laban ng mga maka-masa at ang mga elitista, as my blockmate would say. The differences between the chairpersons of both parties holds proof to that. The descriptions of the chairperson of ASAP-Katipunan emphasized more on his membership with various student activist orgs. The descriptions of the chairperson of Iskolar, however, revolved around his academic achievements as a student. I don't want to make hasty generalizations on this but everything points out to be that way. ASAP-Katipunan openly declares in their fliers that they are "pro-masses", something you'll never hear from Iskolar. Looking back in history I remember the Magdiwang and Magdalo faction. They had the same goals but had different interests. When I look at it, I see history repeating itself in a mini-scale University level, as represented by these parties.

With all that in mind there was one last question for me to answer. Who to vote? Should it be the student activists in ASAP-Katipunan or the student pacifists in Iskolar? I voted for neither of them. I didn't take part in my so-called right to suffrage because I was uncertain if the intentions behind the smiles and the handshakes of both parties were good or bad. Neither can I really say that I prefer one over the other. I guess I'll leave it all up to the student majority to chose who they think is responsible enough to take office. But I hope that the majority would get it right this time around.

This entry was posted on March 04, 2005 at 5:55 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.