In a little over a week’s time, we will be holding the 2010 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections. Still, we get a lot of people asking why they should even bother. Sometimes, it’s not easy to be patient with questions like that.
I’ve always held it to be self-evident that participation in an electoral exercise is the LEAST thing we can do to help keep our democracy working.
No, I don’t mean that in a dramatic way either. For me, a non-working democracy need not involve a return to tyranny or dictatorship. When I say a “working democracy,” I mean a system of government where ordinary citizens have access to basic services and are vouchsafed an existence that does not demean or degrade them. Absent those conditions, we could still be living in a democracy but it’d be a broken democracy.
So what does that have to do with participating in the Barangay Elections?
In the context of the Barangay, that basically means that if your barangay has:
- uncollected garbage;
- no deep-well pumps during el nino;
- a high incidence of dengue;
- no typhoon preparedness provisions;
- a high crime rate;
- frequent floods; and
- similar problems
then your democracy is broken. These basic services are the responsibility of the Barangay officials. If your community is suffering from these problems, then you have to take a long hard look at the Barangay officers you have. Because that’s what’s at stake here: the well-being of your barangay.
And that’s why you should bother.