Thursday 22 October 2015

Lack of good candidates? Lack of awareness? Desire for new politics? Or really existing apathetics?

Lack of good candidates? 
Lack of awareness? 
Desire for new politics? 
Or really existing apathetics?

Notes after an article on "Tomasinoweb" 
about students prefering to abstain in coming 2016 elections



It was days ago when this person read an article from "Tomasinoweb" about Students from the University of Santo Tomas preferring to abstain than voting for potential candidates such as those of President and Vice President.

In an article, it stated that Thomasians are more inclined to abstain rather than vote for any presidential candidate in the upcoming 2016 elections, a study finds.

"45% of the study’s respondents decided to abstain rather than choose Davao Mayor Rodrigo Duterte (36 %), Sen. Grace Poe (10 %), resigned Interior and Local Government Secretary Manuel Roxas II (8 %), or Vice President Jejomar Binay (1 %) as their preferred presidential candidate.
The research also finds that 38% of the respondents would rather abstain than choose Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. (19.0 %), Camarines Sur Rep. Leni Robredo (16 %), Sen. Francis Escudero (16.0 %), Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano (8.0 %) and Sen. Antonio Trillanes (3.0 %) as their preferred vice presidential candidate."


Potential Anarchs isn't it? But the reason behind abstaining was "lack of green politics", according to Mr. Norman Garcia from the UST Research Center on Culture, Education, and Social Issues in the “Greening the 2016 Elections: Looking for Environmental Leaders” seminar, which was last Saturday, Oct. 17.

According to Garcia, he attributed the high percentage of abstain votes due to the candidate’s lack of presentation of their environmental platforms to the youth. He even told student leaders present at the event to create a "green party" to show the electoral candidates their clamor for more environmental focus.

Quite nice so to speak in regards to that article, and perhaps these students from UST may also be a part of those who chose to abstain from voting in every part of the country; and to use Garcia's basis, it may sound reasonable that the cause for abstaining was lack of environmental awareness, of mismanaged waste disposal to those of cutting down trees and unjust mining all for development, and some even believe that they abstain for most politicians lack transparency and that includes mismanagement, vote buying, and instances of harassments; but on the other hand (and likely to be considered as accurate), these people who chose to abstain in voting possible candidates are rather not having time to vote for these potential individuals regardless of their track records and platforms given their intentional apathy as individuals and total disregard for social issues in favour of individual fantasies. They may admire certain personalities though such as Mar Roxas, Miriam Defensor Santiago, or Leni Robredo, but these people prefer playing computer games in Mineski and drinking cocktails at Tomas Morato, or even following the trend of venting their broken-hearted feelings than having themselves immerse in a series of discourse with the latter likely to lead on debates and at worse, personal attacks.

That somehow benefits the system itself knowing that having a depoliticised, apathetic generation disregards social awareness as it favours their personal fantasies in life; maybe a "just" paying of taxes is enough for that generation to justify a semblance of "national concern", but in regards to social issues these people care little or none about it unless it disrupts their route going to work in case of misrepaired roads, mismanaged mass transport, and traffic flows; and some would even cry "privatisation", "deregulation" that as if a panacea for corruption and disregarding its possible negative effects. 
Sorry to say those words but these may be a part of what goes behind a person, a groupuscle, a clique who happened to be preferring to abstain and at the same time assail those who are voting personages that happened to be corrupted by the system itself knowing that there are no options if not benefiting from its pseudo-welfarism in case of Jejomar Binay and Joseph Estrada.

Anyways, that generation of apathetics, of those who tolerate having the polis, the agora be replaced by the shopping mall by the decadent social order, are those who made the nation sedated till its sleeps. And according to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, he said that: "Nations that sleep either disappear or wake up as slaves."