‘Abstain’ wins in UP Diliman student council polls

MANILA, Philippines — In what could be a first in the university’s history, “abstain” won over the candidates for top student council positions at the University of the Philippines flagship campus in Diliman, Quezon City.

After more than a week of voting, results released on Wednesday showed that more students opted to vote “abstain” instead of for the candidates for chairperson and vice chairperson.

A total of 5,745 students voted “abstain” for the chairperson post, almost 2,000 more than the 3,756 votes received by candidate Jaira Marie del Mundo of the Virata School of Business.

Vice chairperson candidate Therese Jan Mangussad of the College of Engineering garnered 3,870 votes, compared to 5,631 abstentions.

Both Del Mundo and Mangussad ran under the political party UP Alyansa ng mga Mag-aaral para sa Panlipunang Katwiran at Kaunlaran or UP Alyansa.

Instead of 12, only eight candidates for councilor were proclaimed as the rest received votes lower than the 2,496 abstentions for the position.

All eight councilors who were proclaimed ran as independent.

According to the University Student Electoral Board, which is chaired by UP Diliman vice chancellor for student affairs Louise Jashil Sonido, “the majority of abstention votes shows that there is no sufficient basis to declare the candidates superseded by abstentions as valid, elected representatives of the student body.”

In the interim, the electoral board said the top two highest voted councilors – Beatriz Pineda of the College of Home Economics and Katrina Maria Batac of the College of Fine Arts – may function as acting chairperson and vice chairperson, respectively, to preside over discussions.

Only 36.7 percent of the UP Diliman student body voted in this year’s student council polls.