It’s that time of the year again in DLSU where the students of the university get to elect the Student Council Officers. From the President, VP-Academics to the Legislative Representatives of every batch of every college, the Student Council of DLSU will again be hotly contested by two opposing parties - Tapat and Santugon. Students will again go to vote for the SC positions on March 17, 18, and 19 to show their support for their chosen candidates from the parties aforementioned.
The candidates of both parties are as always star-studded. Either a candidate from one party was the first honor during the candidate’s high school days, or either the candidate is a consistent dean’s lister, or either the candidate is a leadership awardee, having been involved in handling fragile positions in his/her high school’s student council, or the candidate is involved with a lot of extra-curricular activities inside and outside the school, and at the same time doing well in academics, or he or she is a popular choice within a batch or a college because of something special that the people see in the candidate. But one thing is for sure - getting into the official running lineup of either Santugon or Tapat is an accomplishment in itself. One must be a quite a highly-accomplished person to even stand a chance at being included in the either ticket, the more accomplishment or accolades you need to stand a chance of winning. The names on the lineups of the parties are heavy names. These are names that are talked about by Lasallians whether academics-wise or extra-curricular wise.
General election statistics shows that Tapat has won majority of the executive board of the SC, and they had many executive board sweeps, which is approximated to be at 17. So obviously the odds are stacked against Santugon to somewhat get back at Tapat by sweeping the executive board slots or at the least getting slots to share with Tapat. If there’s any position that Santugon can target if they are not sure of sweeping the executive board is of course the presidency of the SC. Failure is surely not an option for these two parties but when one is bound to fail, whether they like it or not, things will fail for them.
One thing that is very interesting to watch is the way how these two parties campaign themselves into the heart of the voters and for votes. They have no appropriate brand name for the way the candidates campaign but it’s like a calibrated campaign speech for every classroom that they visit. It’s monotonic per classroom they visit (it sounds the same), they talk too fast, and in the end they end up confusing the voting populace and not presenting the specific programs of action. That’s the first impression that I have noticed with the way the parties have been campaigning. It seems to me that they are speaking beautiful words that are so nice and smell so good but, when examined, has no real value or has no substance. I don’t know if it’s just me but I think that the candidates should be better off presenting their proposed programs for the student populace and the school rather than saying too much cheesy words that won’t take them anywhere. I know that they are trying to impress the audience with their powerful and persuasive speaking skills in front but I remain unfazed despite of all these fancy talk. I need to hear from them more of what they plan for the DLSU students or for my college, or for my batch.
Okay, I’ll let that fancy talk pass but I just hope they talk more of their plans and programs. That would be better, I think. But hey, I’ll vote for the first party who stops campaigning like robots and broken discs. Really. Straight or Derecho, I wouldn’t care. If one party breaks away from the traditional “scripted campaign”, I’ll vote for them straight up, no questions asked. I kinda don’t like those pa-cute campaign styles but I prefer campaigns with strong conviction and action. Not much cheesy stuff.
I mean, they are advocating change but how can we see them as advocates of change when they won’t even strip off that monotonic and boring traditional campaign style or interchange it with other campaign styles?
I know of candidates who are both strong in word and action and I will surely vote for them. I think they just need to stop the calibrated/scripted campaign thing because sometimes it does not sound good anymore. There are still many ways there with how these candidates can campaign themselves, Tapat or Santugon alike.
At the end of the day, it should be DLSU who will benefit from all of these stuff, not them. Right?
