When I woke up this morning, I read a post on Facebook P4A Youth Movement about the Abra Youth and Student Leader Manifesto for the 2013 Elections.
The manifesto signed on May 9th, 2013 calls for a clean and honest elections in Abra. According to the manifesto, the young generations are together in denouncing the cycle of violence, corruption and unending bickering among Political Leaders. I encourage everyone to read it closely as it tells you how we the grown ups and as a society has failed to be the insipiration to our future generation.
This reminds me when I was a kid growing up in Bangued one weekend. Me and my friends were out enjoying our brief freedom from school when we notice a crowd gathered around this empty lot. There were mostly old folks. The grown ups where boisterous, shouting and laughing. As we approach the crowd, we saw this two kids staring at each other. One man urge one of the kid “La igamam man ta pidit-pidit na?” (can you touch his ear?) which the kids gladly oblige. There were more laughter. Suddenly things hit up and the two kid started to fight right in front of everyone. What really surprise us (kids) all the grown ups where just standing and enjoying as if it was a cock fight. The two protagonist continue to throw punches at each other until one of them start spitting blood.
Suddenly out of no where, one of the kids’ mother came running and shouting “Apay nya deytoy nga mapaspasamaken?” (what is going on here?), she said angrily as she goes between the two kids. The mother looks at each of the grown ups and shouted “Apay sikayo nga laklakayan sika yo pay ti mangi-sung-sung?, awan ti nakem yo ken bain yo puro kayo durog” ( you are all grown ups, you should not be doing this, you are not thinking, you should be ashame of yourselves ). The place fell into silent as the mother dragged her son away. Slowly everyone started to leave.
This is a good analogy on what has been going on during the course of this elections. Grown ups acting like kids in front of everyone (in this case, the world) to see, hear and watch.
This election is far from over. Not a single ballot has been cast (or is it?) and counted. As in the past elections, Abrenians again are in the hot seat as Candidates vie (either convincingly or by force) for their votes.
Shame on us who won’t listen to these kids.
you can download the full text of the manifesto here Abra Youth and Student Leaders Manifesto for the 2013 Elections
abrenian.com 
I think this message is coming from (one) youth who is so concerned about violence and mistreatment of young people who would eventually will grow up to be good example in a society that which is unpredictable because of too much politics elsewhere but ABRA. My advice would be try to convince other youths like you (who are fed-up too) and organize stronger youth movement. Its not easy BUT trying to that would need a lot of head turning because someone would dislike your doing and might POINT an hard object to your head. Thats how our politics WORK nowadays.I STRONGLY SUPPORT YOUTH MOVEMENT.
Posted by laplap | May 12, 2013, 1:00 am