DLSU General Elections 2008: Has anything really changed?

I know I ought to be doing my thesis now, but I somehow need to get this out of my system. :D I don't think I can cover the campaigns as completely and objectively and as Shale Campaigns can, but I will try my best to give my viewpoints from a voter's perspective, and based solely on what I have heard and seen.

I was so furious at myself for waking up later than I would have wanted. I slept at 2:45 AM and woke up at around 9:30 AM, barely 30 minutes before the start of the debate and open forum of Santugon and Tapat. I left the house at around 11:30 AM, fervently hoping that I could catch even the last 5 minutes of the open forum so that I could ask the questions I wanted. Unfortunately, traffic in Taft was heavier than I would have liked, thus when I arrived at the 18th floor of the Andrew Building, the program had just barely finished.

I wanted to get the reactions of both political parties in relation to the first comment posted in one of Shale Campaign's entries. If you're too lazy to click the link, basically the commenter presented the following points:

• The batch candidates shouldn't have platforms since they belong to a party, and it's better being an aggregate of the party's beliefs and ideologies.
  
• The candidates, especially those in the Executive Board (EB), are voted based on what they have seemed to accomplish, or basically the credentials printed on the Specific or General Plans of Actions (SPOAs and GPOAs, respectively). However, they are merely glorifications of personalities. Have they really been productive as they claim, or have other people done the work for them?
  
• The political parties are useless because "they simply run on what makes them win." This includes campaign strategies, and noticing what the other party has done wrong (a.k.a. bashing). They have scripts that don't change every year, and they don't adjust.

I actually replied to that comment, though it was shorter than what I really wanted to say.

Another question I wanted to raise was regarding the autonomy of the COMELEC, as written in the March issue of The Lasallian. I wanted to ask the candidates what their concrete plans are regarding this matter. Personally, I like the idea of having the COMELEC as an entirely separate unit from the Student Council, with the incumbent COMELEC commissioners choosing their successors, instead of the Legislative Assembly having to do it. Hopefully, they would have more funds this way, especially if these are not included in the Student Council funds. To be honest, if I wasn't invited to run for a Student Council position, I would have chosen to be a member of the COMELEC.

So, has anything really changed? I'd say no. It's the same year in and year out. Both parties get bashed. Both parties do the bashing. Candidates of both parties outline their credentials, with a lot of people either doubting if these are actually true, or complaining about the fact that these are not readable in the SPOAs or GPOAs because of their sheer number. Remember that credentials and achievements alone should not be the basis for choosing your candidate. Unfortunately, these are the only things that can "measure" the capability of a candidate. It is only when they actually get the position that the ordinary student can see whether these candidates truly ran to serve, or did so just to glorify themselves and/or, even worse, their party.

Although I will be graduating on October 2008, I will still be taking my masterals, and will hopefully be working just inside DLSU (if I pass Datacraft's screening, that is). If that ever happens, I'll probably keep myself updated with what's happening in the undergraduate level. Thus, I will be able to see how the next set of Student Council officers would work. In this light, I would like to pose challenges to the two political parties.

Santugon, I know you want to somehow lessen or eliminate partisanship in the Student Council. This is something that will be hard to accomplish. To be realistic, I don't see this vision coming into fruition anytime soon, even if you manage to win all the positions in the Executive Committee (EXECOM). To hope for a 76-0 like we did last year is just unrealistic and too good to be true. (Trust me, I've almost always been a realist.) I'd like to see what the result will be at the end of the year.

Tapat, the University Student Government that you're proposing may seem appealing to some students, but to me it's seems up there, too idealistic. Even if you get all the positions in the EXECOM, getting the involvement of the students in this revamp won't be easy. Let's see what will happen at the end of the year. If you're really pushing for this, then hopefully it won't end up getting cobwebs for another 5 years like what happened last time.

To the candidates of both parties, I really hope that you decided to run because you have a genuine interest in the welfare of the students. Because if not, I wouldn't even want to think how the Student Council would be able to work next year.