So last week’s enthusiasm over the imminence of the 2018 barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections (BSKE2018) now appears to have been more a matter of wishful thinking thing else. I jumped the gun, you might say, and engendered some expectations that should be managed more realistically. However, that episode did prompt someone to ask me whether I thought it was worth pushing through with the Sangguniang Kabataan elections in the first place, considering that the youth of today don’t seem particularly ready for the power that comes with being an elected official.
Despite the cloud of indeterminacy that now hangs over BSKE2018 (again), that is a question worth tackling, and the answer is in two parts.
First, I reject the notion that the youth of today are not ready to assume leadership roles in society. Fitness for leadership is not a function of chronological age, nor can fitness for leadership—at least in its broadest and most general sense—be deduced from a person’s adherence to any particular set of morals or aesthetic.
Having said that, however, and accepting for the sake of argument that the youth of today seem unprepared—less kindly words have been used, to be honest—the second part of my answer remains decidedly in the negative.
If we believe that the youth are not ready for the burdens of public leadership, then the solution is to undertake such steps as are needed to make them ready. Those who are in power now cannot live forever, as much as they might want to. The time will come for them to step aside. If that time comes and all that’s available to take over is a generation that has been isolated from all responsibility, then the decline of everything built up by previous generations is assured.
Removing the opportunity for the youth to experience the rigors and demands of public leadership would only hamstring the up and coming generation, perhaps preserving a comfortable status quo for a time, but ultimately dooming the future.
A better solution would be to finally treat the Sangguniang Kabataan like the mentorship
program it was designed to be; but a mentorship not just under the barangay—that particular approach failed, leading to the muddying of the SK vision because, in an entirely appropriate ironic twist, not all adults are themselves ready for leadership roles. And that’s exactly what the SK Reform Act (Republic Act 10742, 15 January 2016) is trying to accomplish.
By establishing mechanisms of supervision and review, the Reform Act attempts to create an environment where elected youth leaders are given the opportunity to work for the development of their communities with enough safety nets and institutional oversight that the problems of the past would not have to be repeated. This transforms the SK, from being just a miniature version of barangay politics, to a true learning environment where youthful inexperience, intemperance and overall unreadiness aren’t toxic risk factors but starting points for the growth, development and the honing of new leaders. And boy, we do need that.
Too bad some people are moving to make sure that we wait just a little bit longer than we should have to.