Think about it
Give Filipino youth a new home
By Jun Velasco
“Nothing more detestable does the earth produce than an ungrateful man.”—Ausonius
OFF HAND, we were in favor of the idea to scrap the Sangguniang Kabataan (SK).
We changed our mind.
Scrapping it is too harsh, too grave. It’s a big slap on the Filipino youth.
We love our young and our children. We have faith in them. The young, whether here or there, symbolize hope. If we don’t think so, there’d be no more future world to speak of.
Did you see that? Did those who want to scrap the SK see that?
Deep in every one of us is a spark of good, and this spark is still abundant and overflowing in our young.
If they were not hauled — probably against their will — to SK, a mechanism of corruption, they’d be on the vanguard of greatness, we believe.
Let’s look and look hard.
Our young were clamped in these “prison camps” known as SK by a discredited system, a government that didn’t have love or concern for them and the future.
The young are victims. They are still fragile and couldn’t be liable for the collapse of the system.
We don’t like the scrap because it doesn’t give the victim a chance. And the victim here is us, our future, children’s and grandchildren’s future.
Mark our word, if they’d find their bearings, their proper place in the sun, they’ll be heroes in our beleaguered land.
Let’s try to find time and talk to them, sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters. They’d tell you they want no part with corrupt practices, aware that these things which promise only short time pleasure. They’d tell you they want an honest, clean and truthful government, because it’s a mechanism that lasts.
Let’s look for them. Chances are you’d find geniuses among them, teenage idealists who hate their parent-scripted fund-raising projects with lots of “commissions.”
Advocates of the SK scrap must be referring to SK officers who were elected by the familiar 3 g’s (guns, gold, goons) and couldn’t get out of their discredited shells.
Those who want the scrap say reforming the system is impossible, corruption being already a part of a deep-seated culture.
Instead of scrapping the system, we suggest a new one born of the young’s free and genuine voices supplant the old. It should be one that provides a space for crystallizing the young’s vision without interference…. from the old except a government agency that sponsors it. It must have a constitution and by-laws that guarantee freedom from government intervention.
Perhaps, government should only step in on financing matters and in giving the new SK fresh programs. They should be assured government won’t dip its hands in the way they would run their own organization.
Only in this way that a vibrant Philippine youth organization can rise to Jose Rizal’s paradigm of the youth as the hope of the fatherland.
* * *
That loco of a driver who stole our hard-earned cash of more than 280,000 was finally convicted by the Regional Trial Court at the sala of Judge Dumlao of Qualified Theft recently. He is in jail at the Dagupan BJMP, after 3-day detention at the San Fabian police.
Bernardo Supsupin, late 40’s (definitely no relation to Miss Universe Shamcey Supsup), was able to withdraw via our ATM card he stole from our car; he got wind of the pin number from our cell phone.
The family was devastated because we were treating him like a family member.
It’s hard-earned cash; you can imagine our anguish at this detestable crime committed by one we thought we could trust.
We didn’t notice how Supsupin, who was introduced to us by a family friend, Danny Panelo, his high school classmate in San Fabian, “sucked” all the money using our ATM from April 6 to April 28 this year, until we visited our home bank to make a withdrawal. We were told that we only had P35,000 from the half a million that we deposited that month.
What did him in was the CCTV camera installed on ATM counter, particularly at the RCBC and China Bank branches mostly in Tarlac City where he made the withdrawals. His daughter lives in Tarlac City.
We wish to thank China Bank Dagupan manager Rommel Agacita, City Fiscal Castro and Fiscal Alma Torio, subpoena server Mamerto Ragutana; Clerk of Court Danny Fernandez; the San Fabian Police and the Dagupan BJMP for their support… not for us personally but for the community in obtaining justice with dispatch.
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