WE HAVE all heard the jokes because too often they were not jokes. The relative of the barangay captain runs. The cousin of the councilor runs. What should nurture young leaders can sometimes look like a family franchise in politics. Add poor guidance and a system that prizes charm over competence, and public service becomes more show than substance.
Still, abolition is a lazy broom. It sweeps the floor by throwing away the furniture. If the SK has become vulnerable to trapo culture, the solution is to attack the trapo culture, not youth participation itself. Even the 2015 reform push led by supporters of overhauling the SK understood that. Among the strongest reforms were raising the age of SK officials to 18 to 24, requiring mandatory training, and introducing anti-dynasty restrictions, precisely because the goal was to move the institution toward competence and away from patronage.
That instinct remains correct. The country does not need a youth council that behaves like a miniature mayoralty race. It needs one with stricter qualification filters, serious onboarding, transparent budgeting, public scorecards, and real consequences for nonperformance. If an SK can handle ten percent of a barangay’s general fund for youth development, then it should also survive publication requirements, procurement scrutiny, attendance checks, liquidation deadlines, and citizen feedback. Service without accountability is not empowerment. It is cosplay with receipts missing.
What would reform look like if we were serious and not merely dramatic? Start with the obvious. Require certified training before full assumption of financial powers, not after damage is already possible. Let the Katipunan ng Kabataan assembly become what it should be: regular, documented, and open to all youth. That way, SK officials face their community, not just their election circle. Every budget and project update should also be posted publicly in clear Filipino or the local dialect.
Strengthen the Local Youth Development Council so the SK is not isolated and can be checked, advised, and enriched by student leaders, faith-based youth groups, sports organizations, campus journalists, cultural advocates, and community volunteers. Most of all, tighten the anti-dynasty rules and enforce them like we mean it. If adults keep using the SK as a nursery for family brands, then yes, the public will keep mistaking youth governance for early-stage trapo incubation. The remedy is not abolition. The remedy is to starve the patronage pipeline.
This matters even more in the teachers’ context, where the cost of shallow politics is seen up close. Teachers know what happens when leadership is reduced to popularity and paperwork is treated as decoration. Schools are full of young people who can lead if given trust, structure, and coaching.
When the SK works, it can support reading drives, tutorial hubs, anti-bullying campaigns, school supply banks, sports access beyond the usual boys’ league, menstrual health sessions, digital literacy orientations, youth disaster response, anti-teenage pregnancy advocacies, voters’ education, feeding programs, even mental wellness conversations in places where guidance services are thin.
These are not grand ideas. They are the ordinary, community-level programs youth councils are meant to carry out. When young leaders manage them well, they discover that leadership is not about noise, but about responsibility. A country already weary of cynical politics does not need fewer training grounds for public service. It needs better ones.
It is easy to understand why some have lost patience with the SK. But disappointment should not become neglect. If we remove every imperfect institution, the deeper problems will remain. The wiser choice is to preserve youth representation while demanding better standards from it. Young citizens deserve a venue for leadership that does not train them to become smaller copies of the worst adults in the system.
If Remulla’s provocation pushes the country toward that deeper reform conversation, then it may still do some good. But if we stop at abolition, we will only prove once again that when politics fails to guide the young well, it finds it easier to blame them than to change itself. The SK should stay. The trapo DNA inside it should not.
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Doc H fondly describes himself as a “student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with./PN
