Humble service, rather than exhilarating credentials, should define our next set of student leaders. For the University Student Council (USC) must be subservient only to one thing – the principled commitment to serve the students and the people.

During this campaign period, we have been presented with the platforms of three parties namely: Alyansa ng mga Mag-aaral para sa Panlipunang Katwiran at Kaunlaran (ALYANSA), Nagkakaisang Iskolar para sa Pamantasan at Sambayanan (KAISA), and the Student Alliance for the Advancement of Democratic Rights in UP (STAND UP). The cited parties have similar advocacies. It is through their principles, methods, and track record, however, that one can see the difference. And it is in lieu of these that the UP student must choose.

Advocacies, after all, can be suddenly hatched during the election period. And, often, they are tainted with the desire to merely acquire positions in the USC.

While it is indeed important to consider a candidate’s academic performance and achievements, the positions they will be filling in the USC will require much more. The USC, after all, bears the expectations of history. It is an institution that owes its existence to the ardent struggle of the students. As such, it must remain faithful to the force behind its persistence – the students’ collective struggle for a genuinely democratic university.

We must be wary, therefore, of parties or personalities who merely crop up during the election period. A candidate must be weighed and measured according to his or her involvement in issues that hounded both the university and the country throughout their whole stint as a UP student.

There are a lot of things we need to know about our candidates, aside from the fact that they are interested in assuming a position in the student council.

We should not be contented with sweeping generalizations over issues such as the 300 percent tuition increase which affected thousands of freshmen during this academic year. The students must find out how a candidate engaged the policy during its genesis, when the administration was still discussing the increase as a proposal. The issue necessitates the sharpest understanding of the dilemma harrying the Philippine education sector and its connections with skewed government prioritization.

In issues of national significance, a candidate’s stand must not be due to any hype. He or she must know that the intensified calls for Gloria Arroyo’s resignation draws from the systematic machinations of the regime. We need to know if a candidate can refer to the spate of extrajudicial killings, the encompassing discourse behind government corruption, and lopsided economic agendas which have pinned the people to perpetual destitution. Knowing this, we must then ask if the candidate called for Arroyo’s ouster long before Jun Lozada exposed the corruption behind the NBN-ZTE deal.

Every candidate will expectedly hark on their commitment to serve the people. This pronouncement, however, is best articulated through practice. We must recall which candidates have stood for the interests of the UP community amidst threats of demolition to make way for private corporations. We must know which candidates merely stood still during the transportation sector’s strike last year and which of them even accosted drivers for paralyzing traffic. We need to know how they engaged perpetual oil price hikes, regressive taxation schemes such as the value added tax, and onerous trade agreements with multilateral trade institutions. Only then shall we be able to stamp the genuine seal on those who claim to serve the people.

We need to know which candidates are only using activism as a catch word. It is a controversial word, a word that determines the principles of a candidate or a whole party, a word referring to a candidate’s or a party’s ideals, a word that is clearly antagonistic to those who espouse the stasis imposed by the status quo. We must know which candidates are merely rendering the word palatable for the voting population and those who stick to its antagonistic signification as a means to confront a brutal and unjust system of living.

These are things that we need to know before we cast the ballot. The list is long, but the current USC candidates must oblige us. True leadership, after all, is not aspired for. It is thrust upon worthy candidates who rise to the occasion with only one thing in mind: genuine service. For those who merely want another credential to be listed in their resumé, we do not need to know their names.# Philippine Collegian

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