The Sanggunian elections for this year should not be held.

The Sanggu’s situation is too problematic for it to move on and hold elections. At least last year, we could have attributed the Sanggu’s problems to political immaturity and the infancy of the two-party system.

This year, it has become more evident that what has been happening in Sanggu is plain dirty politics. There hardly is a way for the students to know about the internal politics in Sanggu, like the personal issues of one officer against another, because of the lack of transparency (which could well have been its product). There are only stories coming from officers frustrated by the happenings inside. (Don’t reason that they are just propagandist rumors, because that would only prove my point even more.) The mudslinging during last year’s elections, for example, can still be attributed to political immaturity and the infancy of the two-party system.

Recently, I have been hearing so many things about what had brought about the controversial events, and I do not think they are just rumors. I also do not think that they are mere consequences of “the absence of clear-cut leadership,” as someone’s claim-to-fame line goes. The resignations? The ouster? Call me a conspiracy theorist but I believe (and partly because someone told me) that they were part of a partisan maneuvering to gain (more) power.

Where does this seemingly senseless and baseless theory come from? Aside from the accounts of someone inside Sanggu, this draws from the vagueness of the statements of the people involved. Upon reading them, one gets the feeling that something is still lacking in them, that something is being left out.

Even after Sanggu’s open forum, which was advertised as the event where the true story would be told (from the point of view of only certain people, of course), some questions remain unanswered. What really happened is still unclear. What was then an issue of a lack of transparency now becomes an issue of stifling the truth. Other than this, I cannot think of a better way to reflect the actions of the Arroyo administration on the ZTE scandal (along with many others).

Hence my call to postpone the elections. The Sanggu must first prove my (and others’) theory wrong. Let there be transparency, if only in the Satinitigan controversy. This is not merely a personal issue of Satinitigan, as some say. Neither does the shedding light on this issue “lie on Karl alone.” Just as the ZTE scandal is an issue of every Filipino, so is the Satinitigan ouster an issue of every Atenean.

A student government should not be like the current Sanggu. A student government, especially in a university aiming to mold future leaders for this nation, should not mirror the (at best) disturbing state of the Philippine government.

During Boyet Dy’s presidency, when the ‘Hello, Garci?’ scandal broke out, and when the Arroyo administration urged the people to move on after the President said sorry, the students posed a question to the administration in a tarpaulin. I pose that same question now: “How could we move on without the truth?”

Si Maki Lim ay ang Punong Patnugot ng Matanglawin.