By Joseph B.A. Marzan
Youth partylist Kabataan on Saturday elected during its national convention Raoul Manuel both as its new national president and first nominee for the 2022 elections.
Manuel is more familiar to Ilonggos as the first Summa Cum Laude of the University of the Philippines Visayas (UPV), where he graduated with a degree in Applied Mathematics.
He also previously served as National President of the National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP), and UP System’s 34th Student Regent from 2016 to 2017.
In 2019, he became popular for making Senator Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa “cry” during a Senate hearing on the mandatory military training in schools.
At the convention, Manuel said that the change the youth wants is that which is “for the people and for the true interests of the Filipino people.”
He said that Kabataan Partylist will increase its efforts to push for the unity of the youth with the rest of Filipino people up to the ground level.
This was on top of their continued calls for social assistance or ayuda amid the COVID-19 pandemic, safe return to schools, and other causes that they have been championing.
The partylist’s 9-point Youth and People’s Agenda includes safe, accessible, and quality education, quality social services amid the COVID-19 pandemic, livable wages and jobs for all, genuine agrarian reform, good governance; peace and end to tyranny, national sovereignty, environmental protection, and ending gender-based discrimination.
“As the hope of the nation, we are not just fighting for the causes of the youth. We are not waiting a long time to create history, but now, now is our time to move and give purpose to the efforts of the people to push for our 9-point youth and people’s agenda,” Manuel said.
Another nominee is UPV alumna Jandeil Roperos, NUSP’s current national president, a Deputy Youth Convenor of the 1Sambayan coalition, and former UPV College of Arts and Sciences Student Council chairperson.
Roperos said that the partylist will continue to push for causes “across the field”, including that of students, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and the Filipino people in general.
She particularly reiterated the partylist and NUSP’s shared stance of “Ligtas Na Balik-Eskwela”, or a safe return to physical classes in schools across the country.
“This is a challenge for us in the time that the 2022 elections are nearing, because of the active movement of the youth since the Marcos Martial Law era. Now that we are facing the Duterte Terror Law, the youth’s fight hasn’t faded away, bringing not only the youth sector but also calls of the Filipino people in different sectors,” she said.
The party’s second nominee, Angelica Galimba, an Indigenous Peoples (IP) member from Kalinga, says the partylist will also increase its calls for the protection of ancestral lands.
“In spite of the attacks on environmental defenders, particularly on national minorities which I am a part of, facing big mining and energy corporations protected by the military, this is the right time for the national minorities and the youth sector to combat the violence we face in protecting our ancestral lands,” Galimba said.
RJ Ledesma, chairperson of the League of Filipino Students-Bacolod Chapter, was also placed as their 7th nominee.
Kabataan Partylist’s current member in the House of Representatives, Sarah Elago, is 31 years old and would no longer be eligible to represent a youth sector party list in the May 9, 2022 polls.
