Students launch advocacy for youth to vote in May polls

MANILA, Philippines - A group of University of the Philippines (UP), Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU) and Miriam College students yesterday launched an advocacy movement to rally the youth’s participation in the coming May 2010 polls in favor of Liberal Party (LP) presidential and vice presidential bets Senators Benigno “Noynoy” Roxas III, and Manuel “Mar” Roxas II, and ensure that the votes are counted properly so that the rightful winners are declared as the country’s president by June.

Some 150 students from the three prestigious educational institutions staged a short march along Katipunan Avenue regarded as Quezon City’s “University Belt” to mark the start of the group’s activities in the few weeks running up to the elections.

Leander Marquez, lead convenor and spokesman of the Pinoy Marka Ako movement, said that yesterday’s march qill be followed by similar activities in other “university belts” throughout the country to demonstrate the youth’s resounding support for the presidential and vice presidential candidacies of Aquino and Roxas.

Marquez said that the rally also intended to encourage their fellow students targeting every institution to go out and show their support for Aquino-Roxas tandem for the May elections especially with the ongoing black propaganda and “viral” advisories.

Aside from support Aquino and Roxas, Marquez said that the Pinoy Marka Ako movement also included a “Bantay Balota” Movement, a campaign that will rally the youth sector’s participation in ensuring the sanctity of the votes given the fact that the automated poll has recently proven doubtful due to more than 20 defects found in the automated election system process.

“We are supporting the Aquino-Roxas tandem but we are also protecting the votes of each Filipino,” said Marquez. 

With public support of the Aquino and Roxas candidacies as shown from the results of the recent surveys of the Social Weather Stations and Pulse Asia polling firms, Marquez said that they were now looking at pursuing efforts at guarding the votes and the vote counting process as a strategy that the voice of the electorate was not subverted.

“We want the youth not only to participate in the elections by casting their votes but also to make sure that their votes are counted in favor of the people they voted for,” Marquez said.

At the rally, they posed a challenge to Senators Aquino and Roxas that since vast segments of the studentry and the youth have pledged to support them, they should in turn respond with a pledge to the Filipino people to fulfil the promises they have made and to carry out the reform agenda they have laid out, and to make the Philippine presidency a transformational and inspired institution.