Youth campaign against bogus party lists, front of “leeches, parasitic elitist pigs”

A youth group announced that it would be launching a campaign against “bogus” party-lists running for Congress in the 2022 national elections.

Samahan ng Progresibong Kabataan (SPARK), an activist youth organization, called on the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) to delist and disqualify party-lists that falsely claimed to represent marginalized sectors.

“There is no doubt that the party-list system has been hijacked by the self-serving parasitic elite,” John Lazaro, SPARK national coordinator said, in a statement.

“Instead of granting marginalized sectors much-needed representation in a society already built to make their lives harder, these sloths are instead taken by the elite pigs who already run the system that drains the poor of their lives,” he added.

COMELEC released the initial list of candidates for the 2022 elections last December 24, but stated that they would still be deleting nuisance candidates from the roll before the printing of the ballots on January 2.

Lazaro cited several examples of bogus party-lists that falsely claimed to represent social sectors, including Marino, a party-list that supposedly represents Filipino seafarers.

“The fact that ‘seafarer’ party-list Marino has not fielded a single seafarer as a candidate for the House of Representatives should say it all about who this bogus party-list really represents,” he explained.

Other party-lists that SPARK called out included the Mothers for Change (MOCHA) party-list that fielded a non-mother in former Duterte administration figure Mocha Uson, Ako Bicol headed by billionaire tycoon Elizalde Co, and the Duterte Youth party-list that “has never raised the actual issues of Filipino youth to a national policy level.”

Lazaro warned that, if allowed to run, these party-lists would only cause further marginalization for the sectors they claim to represent.

“The marginalized sectors deserve to be genuinely represented to aid their concerns, not for their genuine needs to be bastardized by leeches who seek public office for private gain,” Lazaro expressed.

SPARK also called on the Filipino people to reclaim the democratic spaces that had been hijacked by the political elite.

“We have had enough of our exploiters also being our rulers; it is high time to bring about a government that truly represents the masses,” Lazaro said.

SPARK has launched multiple campaigns centered around the issues of the youth, education, and workers’ rights.