By MELISSA LUZ LOPEZ
BAKA wala nang liga. There might be no sports fest anymore.
Ian, 15, recalls his main worry when he heard the news that the Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) or youth council elections were being postponed. (All the names in this story have been changed—Ed.)
Like hundreds of thousands of Filipinos aged 15 to 21, Ian and three of his friends were supposed to run for SK kagawad or councilor in a barangay in San Jose Del Monte, Bulacan in elections originally timed with Monday’s barangay polls.
The annual paliga was to be among Ian’s programs, in the same the way it was the program of the current SK chairman of his barangay. In fact, the sport fest was the only project of the chairman.
So when President Aquino on Oct. 3 signed the law rescheduling the SK polls to anytime between October 2014 and February 2015 and declared all SK positions vacant in the meantime, Ian and his friends were disappointed.
Abolishing the SK, Ian said, would be a backward step in terms of youth participation.
