The role of youth in elections

With their vaunted majority in our current population in this country, one would think that our youth would not only be conscious of their power but also make sure that their voices are heard in terms of national policy. But while political "pros" pay lip service to the "role of youth in nation-building," the real danger to our democracy is not that youth might be misled by trapos, but that they simply will not care.

You get that impression when speaking before some, not all, I hasten to add, youth groups these days, even those that swear they are on the side of democracy. They pay respectful paeans to the benefits and responsibilities of suffrage, but the overwhelming sense one gets is that of apathy.

One gets the uneasy feeling that in the last analysis, they’d rather be doing something else other than voting on Election Day, like getting the dance steps of their group synchronized when performing "Itaktak Mo."

Not that youth as a whole can really be blamed. Many feel that politics is the playground of the rich and the powerful, and that youth groups are merely exploited by whatever political "aggrupation" there is, including party-list "sectoral" groups which turn out to be stalking horses for special, sometimes dubious, interests.

Others feel that elections won’t change a thing in this country, and that promises of politicians, like the latter’s incompetent singing and awkward dancing on the stump, are only meant to entertain, not to state a genuine vision of government. When politicians virtually disappear, or revert to inaccessibility, once they have successfully completed their routine exercises in mass deception every three (or six) years or so, young people don’t get unusually upset because, well, that’s par for the course.

Finally, as I said, many, perhaps a greater number than we care to admit, are just bored by the whole thing. When asked directly, they will bellow that they would never go for "undeserving" candidates like mere celebrities and famous movie stars, but these "nincompoops" (their description, not mine) get elected anyway. So why bother?

It is clear to them that elections are won, not on the bases of merit, much less the "issues," but by the grace of "operators" all over the country whose pockets are always well-lined by gullible but desperate pols when election fever grips this country.

We, their "elders," hasten to reply, of course, that, Good God!, they MUST participate, that the voice of youth must be heard, that the youth are the hope of the fatherland, as Jose Rizal said, blah, blah, blah.

But then they look at us and smirk: Look who’s talking! Do we have the kind of track record that, we can boast, demonstrates the blessings of democracy, as well as the moral imperative of getting out the vote? Then you ask for a show of hands among those who are of voting age and have registered, and you’re totally floored by the very few hands that are tentatively, embarrassingly raised.

The awful truth is that youth should care, and that they should bother to vote. But because the street-wise and unremittingly desperate among them probably outnumber those that still retain the eternal optimism of the inexperienced and the uninitiated in the realities of life, you have difficulty getting fires of energy and enthusiasm lighted.

There are those, I am sure, that will insist that the apathetic represent only a minority of the youth of this country. I will acknowledge they could be right, and I will admit that surveys of Pulse Asia or the Social Weather Stations might be of limited value in smoking out the real number of the uncaring. That’s not my point. Some of you who might not be eligible to be classified by demographers as "youth" might see yourselves in what I’ve described above.

My point is that we should stop selling the garbage that periodic elections are the pith and substance of democracy, or that elections are some kind of deus ex machina that will bring joy and happiness to our land, and bring surcease to all our problems, economic or political, in this country.

Despite all the selling snow jobs that George W. Bush and his fellow neo-conservatives have wrought on the world, "healthy doses" of democracy have not brought prosperity, much less peace and contentment, to such places as Iraq or Palestine (the Gaza strip), or Venezuela or Bolivia in South America, or Indonesia in Southeast Asia, all of which are going through crises, courtesy of the ballot box.

Okay, maybe not only because of the ballot box. Still, the assumption into power of dictators, elitists and closet devil-worshippers was made possible by "free, fair and open" elections. Fareed Zakaria, in his influential book, The Future of Freedom, reminds us that Adolf Hitler "became chancellor of Germany via free elections."

Zakaria also dredged up that question of former American diplomat Richard Holbrooke who asked about Yugoslavia in the 1990’s: "Suppose elections are free and fair and those elected are racists, fascists, separatists. That is the dilemma."

Certainly it’s a dilemma, because not many people equate democracy with what Zakaria calls "liberal democracy," which means not only free and fair elections but also "the rule of law, a separation of powers and the protection of basic liberties of speech, assembly, religion and property." And, I might add, don’t get me started on poverty and the "pursuit of happiness."

Elections as a panacea: That’s the big fraud, and the false message about democracy. But it’s an illusion many of us cling to. In their supposed "apathy," perhaps our youth are being a lot smarter than we think, and are sending an urgent signal that we’re not getting.