Our Dear President, in a bid to save money, has decided to nix Sangguniang Kabataan from the budget. SK, in case you're not familiar, is an offshoot program from Kabataang Barangay that was created by the then president Ferdinand Marcos 20 years ago. It's purpose is to get the youth into politics early on, so that they may grow wise faster and become more politically mature. Right-o.
Since then, I am glad to report that the program has impacted my life as youth and as I am right now in a grand total of zero ways. The program is so successful in being unsuccessful that the only time anybody heard of SK in our hometown was when the SK chairman got shot after a row with rigging an online computer game contest. I am not making this up.
Oh yeah, they also like to put up street signs, where the SK logo is larger than the actual streetname. Real useful, if you need to know whether SK exists or we're just funneling funds into an imaginary branch of the government.
Kabataan partylyst and the current SK members are of course in protest. But then again, is there anything really that nobody will care to protest against in this country? Like maybe the usage of green straws when serving cocacola?
Listen, SK does not work. Not in my lifetime. If once upon a time it did, it doesn't anymore. Kids nowadays are so busy with pretty much everything else that they cant even be bothered to check the news that doesn't involve the cancellation of classes. The only ones who are interested in SK are those who are already looking into running for mayor even at an early age, like say five, persumably because our local government positions are now run like family businesses.
If our goal is to put more misinformed people into positions of power, then yeah, I think we've been doing a swell job of it. The only thing more dangerous than an adolescent who knows jack shit about the world is that same adolescent with public funding.
If we really want our kids involved with the government at an early age, we should enforce mandatory taxpaying. Tax allowances and let them know how it feels to be robbed in plain daylight so they can go have that trademark disgust for corruption long before they can be exposed to the "perks" of being on the other side of the dirty laundry biz.
That's the only time I'd talk eye-to-eye with a child on governance.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment