THE MODERN SARS-KWELA

Every election season, the walls of Mabini fill with posters with familiar names highlighted in prominent colors. The month-long campaign period for the PUP Sentral na Konseho ng Mag-aaral (SKM) and Local Student Councils (LSCs) elections ran from September 28, culminating in the Miting de Avance from October 22 to 24.  

You look up at your phone, the timelines fill with leaked screenshots, anonymous accusations, ‘exposés,’ and posts that were never meant to go this far. What makes them spread is rarely credibility, and the issue lies on whether it can be verified, and whether the person it names has a fair opportunity to answer it. 

Somewhere between the platforms and the printed tarpaulins, the student council elections stop feeling like a contest of leadership and start feeling like a show. 

A sarswela is a melodrama: heroes, villains, scripted heartbreak, and an audience that already knows how it ends. There is a villain named before any platform is read. There is a screenshot with the verdict already attached. There is a chorus of supporters and critics who know their lines, and a plot in which the question of who will serve students takes a back seat to who can be cast as the antagonist. 

You add a little kwela, and it hooks more people the closer it gets to the climax. At the height of the election season, what is unfolding at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) is unbecoming of a campus that prides itself on principle, a kwelang sarswela. 

The campaign at this time of the year no longer happens only in a quadrangle or the classrooms. It happens on Facebook pages, X threads, TikTok videos, and anonymous freedom wallpages, where candidates are accused, screenshots circulate with claims attached, and unverified posts make allegations. 

One Facebook post, for instance, claimed that a running SKM coalition was being targeted by two other parties through black propaganda and hate posts. Whether or not it is true, it spread the same way the smears it describes do: as an accusation first, with verification left for later.

Some of these claims may be true and deserve scrutiny. Many are unverified, stripped of context, or posted by accounts with no face and no accountability. Between September 28 and October 26, PUP Facebook groups, X, confession pages, and university subreddits were followed, and one to two unverified claims were logged on consecutive days, each drawing hundreds of reactions. Either “leaked” posts alleging conspiracies, rumors linking individuals or parties to the PUP Commission on Elections (COMELEC), unverified threats, and posts framing candidates as aggressors. 

Most of the attacks are designed not to inform voters but to wound a reputation before the facts can catch up. What can only be inferred beyond what is observed is the purpose. Regardless of whether these posts were meant to damage candidates is not something a timeline can prove. But their effect is visible: by the time a correction arrives, the damage has already been shared a hundred times. 

The format rewards the wrong things. A post about facilities, student rights, or services gets a handful of reactions. A scandal, true or not, gets a hundred. Fewer than 100 likes for a report on the General Specific Plan of Actions (GSPOA) of the running parties. Over 500 likes for an unverified post claiming SKM parties were conspiring against each other. When rumor outperforms platforms five to one, nobody has to ask candidates to campaign. The feed does it for them. 

The pressure is sharper this year because the field is more crowded than it has been in a long time. Three contenders for the top posts of the central student council: SINTA, Sinagtala, and Sandigan ng Mag-aaral para sa Sambayanan (SAMASA). Below them, seven of the 15 LSCs are contested, meaning more than one party is running for the same council, while the remaining eight are unopposed. 

Last year, only three councils were competitive. The contrast is clearest when compared with the recent past. From 2022 to 2025, SAMASA ran unopposed for SKM’s top posts in four consecutive elections,  and dominated PUP’s political setting. 

Another diversion from what was an almost monopolistic, concentrated weave of power is what birthed this year’s electoral crisis. Competition itself is not the problem. But in a field that was uncontested for years, the habits of a contested race, including the incentives described above, are new, and the campaign shows it. 

It is not an unfamiliar case where there are issues coming afloat, shocking the public involving candidates running for student council positions. Four days before the campaign period ended, PUP SINTA’s SKM presidentiable Nathaniel Arguelles reported receiving a threat from an unknown email source. Last year, an OUS candidate withdrew after receiving threats, and two Independent SKM Councilor candidates reported threats of their own. The senders remain unidentified, but the repetition across two elections suggests that intimidation is becoming a feature of PUP campaigns, not an exception.

Threats are made, the campaign continues, and those not targeted see, hear, and say nothing. The calm is the troubling part. An outright showcase of intimidation, which has been normalized among political runners inside, is what makes the student council elections placidly violent. 

Not long after Arguilles’ issue came to light, Sinagtala Coalition of Student Leaders’  Cherry Jhoana Ubani, running for SKM Vice Presidency, also addressed a Facebook post criticizing her leadership as president of the council of College of Political Science and Public Administration (CPSPA), over an alleged failure of communication surrounding one of the council’s academic competitions. 

The timing cannot reveal the poster’s intent: it could be accountability that landed at a sensitive moment, or criticism picked up for its usefulness. The candidate said the issue should not define her candidacy. The claim thus deserves to be examined, not dismissed or amplified. 

Ubani responded in the comment section by explaining that the controversy involved personal and political remarks and arguing that accountability requires considering the full context and both sides of the issue. The reply frames the issue but does not settle it: the allegation about the council’s communication remains unconfirmed, and the concerns it raised have yet to be answered in the record.

The standard of verification does not only apply to rumors. It also applies to those in office. This year’s electoral stint is not free from ever-long calls for transparency and accountability for the leaders of the SKM and local councils. During the final day of the Miting de Avance, SAMASA’s SKM Councilor candidate and current SKM External Affairs Kim Eugenio, expressed that the council is willing to release its financial statements for Fiscal Year 2024-2025, amid concerns over SAMASA-led SKM’s history of delays in submitting financial reports for Academic Year 2024-2025.  

As reported, the statement was an expression of willingness, not a commitment. No release date, format, or channel was given. However, that does not make it empty: it was made publicly, in a campaign setting, and voters can hold it to account. But until the statements are actually published, it remains a campaign position, and the delay it responds to remains unresolved on the record.

While local student councils also faced scrutiny over stalled release of financial statements for the fiscal year 2024-2025. The PUP SC COA’s update on fiscal year 2024-2025 reports cleared 10 of 16 local councils. Clearance is when the financial statements are reviewed and found to be in order, but it is not the same as public release. A council without clearance has not necessarily failed to submit its statements. The SKM, for one, submitted statements, but with unresolved accounts pending reconciliation, missing receipts, and further council response. 

Questions about fund accountability did not start with the campaign, and they are fair ones: overdue or incomplete financial reports are a substantive issue voters have every reason to scrutinize. What buries them is the noise, where a documented concern and an anonymous rumor circulate side by side, and neither gets answered. Alongside them sit the questions a council exists to answer: enrollment, facilities, fees, welfare, mental health, student rights. 

In a sarswela, all of them become intermission before the next drama.

On the other hand, heated campaigns reflect real student engagement, and some online exposés surface legitimate issues the official channels ignore. Take the case of PUP’s 20th Student Regent John Paul “JP” Azusano. The challenge to the constitutionality of his term rose when questions about his enrollment status first spread through posts on Facebook and Reddit, before Alyansa ng Nagkakaisang Konseho ng PUP (ANAK PUP) moved on October 26 to place him under preventive suspension, after he admitted that he is not officially enrolled for A.Y. 2026-2027. 

A preventive suspension is not a finding of wrongdoing, and the process of investigation is still ongoing. But that case also shows what separates scrutiny from smear. The claim was checkable against enrollment records, answered by a body with a mandate, and it followed with a procedure. A claim grounded in verifiable facts can be examined and potentially resolved. Information without sufficient sourcing or corroboration, however, warrants scrutiny rather than immediate acceptance or dismissal.

The case of SR Azusano serves as a reminder of what every office in the student council rests on: qualifications that are written down and meant to be followed. Constitutional integrity is not optional, and when that requirement is questioned, the issue is not personal. The episode leaves a lesson for everyone seeking office this season: understand the requirements, address questions of eligibility through proper channels, and ensure that concerns are resolved through clear standards and due process.

Up to this point, it is easy to laugh. Recycled rumors, screenshots, and anonymous pages make for absurd entertainment, the kind that earns the word kwela. But when the safety and welfare of candidates are compromised during the campaign period in exchange for taking a platform for leadership, the kwela stops, and the curtains close. Whatever its origin or motive, a threat is not part of the show. It is a sobering reminder of what can happen when political competition unfolds in hostile environments where intimidation risks overshadowing meaningful discourse. 

In the end, JP Azusano announced his resignation from his post as Student Regent on October 27. What was left were the voices who ultimately criticized his position, continuing to echo until it crept to the voting lines. Calls to vote against his coalition SAMASA are seen on every platform, and calls for abstentions are starting to linger. 

But this should not birth a discourse that is merely reduced into a deciding factor on who to vote for, or to vote at all. Likewise, threats reportedly directed at individual candidates should not serve as proxies for their competence or accountability. These are separate issues, each deserving consideration. It is part of students’ responsibility to practice voting rights, and being critical during the student council elections is one step toward being a good institutional citizen. 

The harsh reality comes. The student who merely wants to know who to vote for is left sorting through rumor and counter-rumor. In such an environment, voters may become discouraged from engaging altogether. That may be the most damaging effect, a campaign that exhausts voters instead of informing them. 

And yet, none of this is unique to PUP. It is a microcosm of what we see in national politics: coordinated online influence, disinformation dressed as “exposé”, candidates judged by virality instead of competence, and a public too tired or too unaware to tell the difference.

That is the uncomfortable part. Student politics has always been a training ground for future leadership. When smear tactics, anonymous attacks, and controversy become recurring features of elections, they risk normalizing these behaviors for the next generation of public officials. Whether such tactics actually influence electoral outcomes remains unestablished, but their presence raises a question worth asking: what standards of political conduct are students learning to tolerate? 

This is the irony of Mabini. What makes this sting at PUP is who we claim to be. This is the ‘Pamantasan ng Bayan,’ a campus with a proud tradition of activism, of marching, of speaking truth to power, and of insisting that politics belong to the people. We are quick to denounce disinformation and dirty tactics in Malacañang and Congress. 

So the question has to be turned inward. If we condemn trolls and disinformation outside the gates, what do we say when it appears inside them, sometimes in the hands of people who share our slogans? Militancy that only points outward is not a principle but a posture. A tradition of activism is worth little if it cannot hold its own house to the same standard. 

The circus will not end by itself. A few places to start: verify electoral information before you share, demand names and receipts. These exposés should not be treated as a “gotcha” moment for these candidates, but must be an avenue to expect for accountability. Hold parties and candidates responsible for the conduct of their supporters and affiliated pages, and ask for debates and open platform forums. 

A reminder for candidates: do not look away because the issue is not yours. Defend fair elections even when it costs you, including the unfairness that favors you. Condemn threats and harassment against your rivals as loudly as you would against your own people. Be open about your institutional funding, and answer questions from students without hiding behind statements.

Remember who the fight is actually against. It is not the candidate across the table. It is the system that leaves students with a deprived budget, neglected facilities, shrinking democratic space, and an administration that benefits when student leaders are too busy tearing each other down to challenge it. The challenge is to hold fellow candidates accountable without losing sight of the institutions that student leaders are elected to question.

Mabini has always taught that the people’s struggle comes before personal ambition. Prove it in this election. A student council election should be a school of democracy, not a rehearsal for its decay. Until we stop applauding the performance, the modern sarskwela will keep running. 

Article: Shane Elijah Dinglasan

Cartoon: Kaiser Aaron Caya