Once in a while, we swerve out of the everyday routine that life dictates and find ourselves in situations we aren’t supposed to be in. Nevertheless, there isn’t any flickering remorse as such circumstance opened our minds and brought us into another dimension of our very existence that most medical students are heedless of. That, my friends, is the familiar word POLITICS. Yes, we hear about it everyday from the television, read political headlines on newspapers, see politicians’ faces on tarpaulins and infomercials but most medical students give them a mere shrug. Our lives revolve around the library reading books, correlating the signs and symptoms to the lab result of our patients, or digging down our cerebral cortices for the pathophysiology of the possible diagnoses jumping in and out of our heads (we’re facebook addicts too, by the way). Yes, we care, too, about our country’s governance because we are affected by our patients’ inability to buy their medicines due to poverty. We give our opinions regarding the political state of our country and find ourselves cursing the culprits of the nation’s suffering, our very own sufferings. We accuse them, the president down to the senators and the congressmen, of graft and corruption, of stealing what is supposedly for the people, of being political turncoats. We judge them just like that. Yes, I curse them and they cannot blame me.
But I ask myself, what gave me the right other than being a natural citizen of this country to air my grievances when I haven’t even exercised my right to suffrage? I want change for the better to take place; I want a bright future for myself and for my siblings and I want to raise my future children in this country free of corruption and violence, but I dare not took the single step towards change—casting my votes during national and local elections. I had been an eligible voter for five years now and haven’t tried voting, not even once. It’s woeful, I know. It’s not my choice not to cast my vote; it’s the chaotic situation that demanded me not to do so. It’s for personal security and the realization that my right to suffrage doesn’t make any difference as obvious vote-buying and electoral manipulation seems normal as the beating of one’s heart. He who has plenty of money (which comes from god-knows-where) and who has adequate power to grip the people on their necks wins the race—it’s not about he who can bring progress to the land and can unite its people to act harmoniously as one. It is a very pitiful situation to contemplate on, making the word HOPE an illusion of the past.
However, if I continue being an idle citizen of this nation allowing my illusion of hope to endure getting buried and trampled upon by selfish and ambitious political figures who care only about their images and their wealth, I might as well forget my delusion of a bright future and I might as well step out of medical school as all hard works shall not pay off if I continue being a passive citizen. We medical students make an implication on how we don’t care about the political happenings in the country as there are certain set of individuals responsible for political jobs the way we are responsible for treating our patients. But we must also take into consideration the web we are all moving within, that the action of the people on one side deliberately affects us on the other side.
Hence, I encourage everyone to take a stand and get involved into the process of electing the set of people who shall run our government in the next coming years. Our choice this coming May Election will reflect on our country’s stability, our oneness as a nation, our future and most importantly, our choice will reflect what kind of people we are.
Somehow, despite all the odds, I can see HOPE shimmering from a distance, signaling it’s not yet too late. We can do something to put a halt to our country’s suffering, thus we must act. NOW!
This time, I took the step towards my goal towards change—electoral registration. Have you?
