Room

200 MVP Student Leadership Center

Ateneo de Manila University, Loyola Heights
sanggusecgen@gmail.com

SANGGUNIAN and Ateneo Task Force 2016 Stand on

the Campaign Season for the 2016 National Elections

The regularity of elections provides the electorate with the crucial opportunity to take their
government back if they feel it has been stolen from them, or to sustain a government they believe has
served them well. If the people were to see elections this way, then elections are a democratic practice.
What does it take to be a good democracy? Any attempt at an answer will prove inadequate, but a good
democracy must, at the very least, be practiced by a people that votes so that they may govern.
Democracy requires democratic commitment, a willingness to go beyond mere vigilance and to actually
participate in the processes of government. For a democracy to work, the necessary (though not
sufficient condition) is that the democratic commitment must be renewed and re-energized every
election.
Ateneo Task Force 2016, as part of Task Force Eleksyon, the largest nationwide coalition of
electoral reform advocates, and the Sanggunian ng mga Mag-aaral ng mga Paaralang Loyola believe that
the democratic commitment implies dedication to a set of values and standards by which leaders ought
to be measured.
ATF 2016 discourages personality politics; that is, politics that revolves around the namerecognition and popularity of candidates. ATF 2016 promotes a politics of persons, politics that is
centered on issues, while also affirming that the issues must, at the very core, be for the welfare and
dignity of human persons, and that elections are an encounter between persons.
Campaigns must be issue-oriented, but they cannot be exclusively issue-based. One politician
can change positions on issues, according to their popularity, but a politicians trustworthiness will
affect their positions and their resolve to deliver. ATF 2016 supports Task Force Eleksyon in promoting
VERITAS, a holistic set of criteria for voting. We call on the nation to choose leaders with Vision,
Engagement with Communities, Respect for the environment, Integrity, Track record, Accountability,
and Servant leadership.
We remind the Ateneo community that elections are not just a matter of individual conscience,
but involve the collective demonstration of a nations moral resolve. As such, we call on members of the
Ateneo community to participate in the campaigns of those candidates who, they believe, pass the
VERITAS test.
We also invite all members of the Ateneo community to engage in the political process; we
invite students to affirm democratic commitment, to expend their democratic energies on the pursuit of
social change. Ateneo prepares and has prepared us for engaging the world. The elections present an
opportunity to answer the call to be men-and-women-for-others, and to set the world on fire.
ATF 2016 believes that democratic commitment, informed by VERITAS, will make issues the
substance of the campaign, and the people the center of our politics. ATF 2016 places its hope on the
people, who, through sharing the democratic commitment, can reorient our politics to a politics of
persons, to a politics that restores dignity to the dispossessed, and advances the common good.