CENTRAL Student Council (CSC) secretary-elect Clarence Mindo said “unanswered votes” in the CSC polls won’t address issues in campus politics.
In a Facebook post on May 2, Mindo apologized for his statement on April 30 blaming voters who had opted to choose the unanswered option during the CSC elections, saying the message that came across was “far from what he meant.”
“It was wrong of me to put the entirety of the weight on our constituents especially when various complex reasons make up the conditions of our political climate within the University,” the secretary-elect said.
Despite this, he stood by his remarks, questioning individuals who had advocated for “letting unanswered ballots win” or abstained from voting.
“Given the historical turnout in our campus politics in recent years and the present condition, advocating for abstain might not be beneficial for the student body and might actually encourage indifference, or worse, apathy, when we preach that it is only right to refrain from electing representatives,” Mindo said.
“It is disheartening to see individuals who advocate for unanswered ballots instead of encouraging students to actively engage with the candidates and the student council elections in order to increase political participation,” he added.
In a resolution dated April 30, the Central Commission on Elections (Comelec) reversed its initial decision on the vacant secretary position, proclaiming Mindo as the secretary-elect despite the unanswered votes reaching 9,358, higher than Mindo’s 8,565 votes.
Comelec said unanswered ballots were null and must not be tallied, as they did not represent a vote for any candidate.
READ: Mindo proclaimed CSC secretary despite higher ‘unanswered’ count | The Varsitarian
Mindo urged students to engage in collective action and discourse to address the root causes of predicaments facing campus politics.
“Our collective action should not be towards fellow students, but the system that encroaches our very existence in an institution in which we as students are the very foundation,” he added.
He also called on the Comelec and local student councils to “be critical” and “explore more forms of enjoining the student body” to engage in campus politics even beyond the elections.
The clarification came after Mindo’s statement where he called out “individuals who had advocated voting “unanswered” in the elections.
“If there are two competing candidates, yet you choose to not engage critically in evaluating them, then the burden of being informed is not anymore at the position of those candidates, but on you as a voter who decided to keep a blind eye and a mouth shut,” he said in an April 30 press conference.
This year’s CSC elections voter turnout slid to 60.08% from last year’s 61%.
Several academic units did not proclaim winners for president of college or faculty-level councils.
