By Cristyl Mae B. Senajon
INQUIRER.NET

STATISTICS show that 54 percent of the total voting population comes from youth bloc. Of the 2.6 million new voters, 80 percent are youth.

These statistical data show just how fundamental the role of the youth will be in shaping and determining the outcomes of the highly anticipated 2010 National and Local elections. If tapped well, these young Filipinos may well elect and put into power a whole new breed of leaders who lead the country on the fence of accountability, transparency and integrity, thereby creating a government that is more effective and more responsive to the needs and welfare of its constituents.

If this is going to be the scenario, and I’m keeping faith this will be, no more migrant Filipino workers will ever need to leave their families behind in search of greener pasture beyond borders, no more kids will be left to labor in the streets to feed their families; they will be sent to school to learn to read and write, no more families will go famished; no more Filipinos will die without being seen by a healthcare professional and above all, no more Filipinos will choose to be indifferent because they will now hold accountable their leaders for their statements and actions.

These changes though will come about only, if and only when young people, for the most part, choose to exercise their democratic rights by getting into the process of registering names on the 2010 voter’s list and exercising right to suffrage come election period.

The more crucial part however in relation to electoral processes, lies in being able to create and provide every means and ways for young voters especially first-timers to learn and be educated about the candidates—their platform of governance, track record on prior public undertakings, stance on pertinent issues and everything else that speaks of their person and character. After all, ineffective governance and unethical leadership don’t sit well with us, anymore.

Apart from these, youth claim their stake through other election-related engagements. Several youth-led organized groups are actively promoting initiatives in line with that of voter’s education in the country such as Youth Vote Philippines and Young Public Servants whose thrust is to get the unconverted vote into registering before 31 October and provide the voter-to-be such indispensable information as candidate’s comprehensive profiles, Millennium Development Goals as the checklist for candidates, and polls, among others to making an informed decision come 2010.

Ateneo School of Government’s Generation Change composed of student leaders from the Ateneo de Manila University is also making dent on the future stakeholders of the country through educating the youth groups of the 3rd District of Quezon City with their shared views and insights on voting for the right leaders in our government.

A number of youth, in the same breath, have chosen not to quibble but lay wager on the presidential candidate they feel strongly for and passionate about this up and coming election. There is PiNoy Power and YoNoy! for Sen. Noynoy Aquino, Kabataang Nasyonalista for Sen. Manny Villar, and pool of youth volunteers for National Defense Sec. Gilbert Teodoro and former President Joseph Estrada, respectively.

These youth-led campaigns prove the fact that the youth are in no way letting this chance pass up, the chance to do something through voting the right candidate therefore altering possibilities for a better future in this country.

By Cristyl Mae Senajon

ELECTING a president is akin to hiring company employees. It follows certain rules and procedures. Example, an aspiring employee will tender his/her professional portfolio to the hiring company. If lucky enough, this job-seeker qualifies to go through the company’s set application and screening processes.

A presidential aspirant is no different. He/she submits his/her Certificate of Candidacy to the Commission on Elections together with the other requirements set for by the commission. In the company, when all the examinations and deliberations are done, the one who passed the pre-employment selection criteria gets the job. In elections, the candidate who reaped the highest number of votes wins the position.

But companies think better. When they hire, they hire the best people to work for them so they get maximum results based on a set of criteria that works both to the company’s advantage and the employee’s benefits.

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By Karla Angelica Pastores
Contributor

BIRDS of a feather flock together, or so they say. In psychology, we learned that you are drawn to friends who are similar to you in terms of traits and characteristics. As the friendship deepens, you become more and more similar to each other.

And…?

When it comes to our friends and family, we tend to trust each other’s judgments and opinions. We turn to our friends for advice and information, and, depending on the level of closeness we have with them, usually believe what they say.

During elections, first time voters typically look to their friends and family as credible sources of information as to which candidate to vote for.

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By Karla Angelica Pastores
Contributor

IT’S a step towards modernizing elections in the whole Philippines.

Yes, we’re talking about automation, as the Philippines made its debut into the modern world’s election process with the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao’s (ARMM) computerized elections last Monday.

The ARMM elections will serve as a prelude to what might possibly happen in 2010, the crucial time when we elect our next president. If this pilot test proves the notion that automation reduces the chances of dishonest acts, then preparations will then have to be made for 2010. On the other hand, if the elections will be judged as a failure, then more work should be done, at the cost of a “failed election” in ARMM. This, I believe, is not acceptable. But since we have yet to evaluate the polls, this is still an issue for future blogs.

Automated elections alone do not guarantee fraud-free polls. To the really corrupt people whose opportunities for dishonesty were lessened by the power of computerization, it presents a bigger obstacle to open new doors of cheating. Perhaps not surprisingly, last Monday’s polls were marked with irregularities noted by volunteers of different groups. Aside from apparent vote-buying, machine malfunction caused a delay in the voting in some parts of Maguindanao. The former is a sad reality that we need to correct; the latter is a new problem we have to be prepared for.

But I believe that automated elections will contribute more to the solution rather than to the problem. The problems of automation are easier to fix than the problems of some corrupt people with honest elections. Machines are more obedient to their manufacturers than other people are to their Creator, who is of course all for honesty. Filipinos are brilliant; we are not inept when it comes to technology, even though we may not be at the forefront of it.
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By Niña Terol
Contributor

IN his piece on Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight for Time, Richard Corliss writes, “Nolan has a… subversive agenda. He wants viewers to stick their hands down the rat hole of evil and see if they get bitten. With little humor to break the tension, The Dark Knight is beyond dark. It’s as black — and teeming and toxic — as the mind of The Joker.”

Having watched the film twice, first on Imax and next on a regular theater, I can’t help but agree that The Joker is a better reference for the film than its real protagonist, Batman. Spawned right from the center of Limbo, with all the qualities we find loathsome, pitiful, and yet terrifying, The Joker is a reminder of everything we don’t want human beings to become. Quoting Corliss again, the late Heath Ledger’s Joker “observes no rules, pursues no grand scheme; he’s the terrorist as improv artist.”

But I’d take it a few notches further and say that The Joker is the film’s “inverted social conscience,” the dreaded, deadly disease that makes society work together to find a cure. It is he who asks the hard questions; he who challenges the taken-for-granted assumptions; he that pushes humanity to see how low they would really sink — or how far they could really rise. He is the ultimate “necessary evil” that forces us to see just what we’re really made of. A composite of everything that is wrong, perverse, and twisted in our society, it is he who nonetheless shows us our true potentials for greatness.

It just goes to show that, in the movies — as well as in politics and the rest of real life — there’s a lot we can learn from the bad guys. We cannot simply turn our eyes away from them, or pretend they’re not there, or believe that they will simply go away. They will not– for they are here to stay. But instead of ignoring them because they’re such “bad examples,” we should study them, dissect them — even if we don’t understand them — and see how we can stop the rest of the world from joining their ranks.

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