Are the youth voting as advocates of issues? Or are they simply being mobilized to fulfill the ambitions of others? Are they well informed? Or have they simply been fed a steady diet of algorithm-driven nonsense designed to predispose them to supporting this or that candidate? Are they intelligent members of society exercising their right to determine their fate? Or have they been reduced to shambling hordes of zombies blindly marching to cliff’s edge?
Apathy is no longer as big a problem as we used to think. For as long as most people can remember, the voter turnout percentage in the Philippines has held steady in the mid- to upper-’70s; in 2016, we hit 81 percent. People go out to vote; and since the youth account for roughly 1/3 of the electorate, it’s safe to say that the youth are very clearly voting. The problem, however, is how are they voting. Not to put too fine a point on it: the challenge isn’t getting the youth to participate; the issue is the quality of that participation.
And so, we who have made it our business to educate and inform the public—must ask ourselves, are we doing this generation of voters justice?
In less than three months the nation will once again have to vote. Some 18,060 elective positions are going to need filling up, at literally every level of the government, save the presidency. The occupants of these positions will either pass actual legislation—whether good or bad, necessary or frivolous—or spend too much of their time doing whatever it is politicians do when they’re not actually doing what they were elected to do; these “winners” will directly influence policies that may spell the difference between life and death for thousands of Filipinos, in too many tragic cases, quite literally; the people chosen by the electorate may give wings to the country or run us into the ground. And yet, despite these stakes, the mainstream national conversation still spends far too much time on such incredibly important issues as what to call the country.
We should do better.
Now that the youth are mobilized, we must exert every effort to ensure that their participation in the elections be principled and based, at least in equal measure, on altruism as in self-interest. More importantly, in doing so, we must avoid the pitfalls of present-day political discourse: the impulse to airily dismiss disagreeing opinions with pithy comments about grammar or inconsequential details gotten wrong; the temptation to prioritize how badly you burned the other guy over how clearly you have explained your arguments and perhaps fostered a change in opinions; and the all too tender trap of dichotomizing the world around you, even when those who oppose you insist on doing so.
We ought to do better.
Voters in general, but the youth most especially, must be weaned from the notion that elected officials are self-contained engines of change. We must underscore that elected officials are only as effective as their peers and—in the case of executive officers—appointees allow them to be. What use is a crusading congressman if everyone else is content to simply be complicit? What use is an honest mayor if he appoints incompetent and corrupt friends and classmates to positions of power? We must see to it that voters understand who they are really voting for—a real person or a carefully crafted image.
We must do better.
The youth comprise approximately 21 million voters. Whether they will be intelligent voters or 21 million uninformed, thoughtless, and gullible rubes is up to us. Working together we can help bring up a generation of voters who understand and fully appreciate the power in their ballots. And if we don’t, we—as a nation—will have a very long time to contemplate just how badly we failed the country, the youth and ourselves.