In between spending the day at the headquarters and meeting with allied candidates, organizations and supporters, I joined some of Kabataan Partylist’s sorties this past week, the first in the official campaign period for the May 2010 national elections.

Our campaign platform for this elections is E 4 ALL: End corruption and tyranny, Education and employment, Environment and national patrimony, and Empowerment and equality.

Our campaign slogan is “Ipagpatuloy ang Magandang Simula,” which is a call to continue advancing the rights and welfare of the youth in Philippine Congress through the representation of Kabataan Partylist. We are proud of what we have accomplished the brief six months we were seated in the House of Representatives and we look forward to continuing our work, with two more Representatives next Congress. We may not have had constructed classrooms nor bridges like other congressmen, because as members of the opposition we are not being given our proper fund allocations, but we have filed countless bills and resolutions aimed at promoting the welfare of the youth, and successfully pushed for various campaigns including the extension of the voters registration and and the suspension of the implementation of various “no permit, no exam” policies in colleges and universities nationwide.

On our first day, we held a motorcade around Manila, starting off at Liwasang Bonifacio, onto Taft, then Espana, Morayta, and Recto through some of Manila’s major universities, distributing campaign flyers to and speaking with students and residents of nearby communities. We also passed through Sampaloc on our way back to Quezon City. Our local chapters in other parts of the country also made their own campaign kick-off activities. Our Quezon City chapter held their own motorcade in the metro’s largest city. In Baguio City, members held ‘Kabataan Fest’ at the Malcolm Square. Meanwhile, Kabataan Partylist in Panay released doves and balloons while Southern Tagalog, Negros, and Davao City chapters held grand caravans to declare the youth’s intent to continue its service to the people.

Online, we started the official campaign period with 10,000 Facebook fans. Right now, after a week of promoting the party’s presence online, we’re up to 12,000. Hopefully by the end of the month, we can reach 15,000, and hopefully many of them will help out in the actual campaign, even offline.

Last Friday, we joined the sorties of Makabayan senatorial candidates Satur Ocampo and Liza Maza, together with the rest of the Nacionalista Party (NP), in a whirlwind whole-day caravan around Cavite.

We started the day with an NP assembly in a resort in Kawit. We motorcaded from Kawit to Rosario in Cavite where NP candidates shook hands and spoke with residents around the town’s fishport. While the politicians were doing their sortie, we were doing our own distribution of campaign flyers on the streets. From Rosario, we went to Julugan in Tanza where a campaign rally was held in the covered courts. It was largely an NP rally, with impassioned speeches from its candidates. Our team went around the community in a house-to-house campaign during the rally. From Tanza, we went to Naic where our team had lunch at an eatery while the rest of NP was meeting with local politicians. We parted ways with the NP caravan when we went to a community in Trece Martires where we went on another house-to-house trail. We did the same when we went to another community in Langkaan, Dasmarinas. Finally, we went to General Mariano Alvarez and held a motorcade together with Anakpawis and other progressive partylists before ending the day at the NP rally and concert near Carmona.

This is the first time I’m actively participating in an election campaign and my first experience at a real national election sortie proved to be a tiring and enlightening one.