Duterte Youth is bogus partylist

Blame the Rodrigo Duterte administration for coddling Duterte Youth, its sponsored partylist that should have been kicked out on Sept. 3, 2019 and barred from participating in the elections for fielding overaged nominees like Ronald Cardema, who was already 34 in 2019 and is thus prohibited from representing the youth. Yet, common sense escaped the Commission on Elections (Comelec) that year as it did not resolve a petition filed to disqualify Duterte Youth. Eventually, Cardema was kicked out as a nominee and was recently ousted as chief of the National Youth Commission (NYC) for being overaged.

The key reason why Cardema’s partylist should be excised from the list of groups vying for partylist slots in the House of Representatives is that it is called Duterte Youth, which means they are loyal soldiers to Duterte and whatever he represents. Moreover, why should Comelec allow a personalist, cult-like organization to be represented in the Lower House? By allowing the Cardema clique to have its own partylist, then it follows that Arroyo Youth, Roxas Youth, Aquino Youth, Bong Go Youth, Sara Duterte Youth and Marcos Youth must all be authorized to participate.

Suspending the proclamation of Duterte Youth in this year’s partylist should be the first step and banning it should be next. This Duterte Youth is the partylist of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), which Duterte organized in 2018 via Executive Order No. 70. In March, Kabataan Tayo ang Pag-asa filed an urgent motion for Comelec to resolve the petition to cancel the party-list registration and declare the nullity of the Duterte Youth’s registration. Petitioners said the Duterte Youth made untruthful statements regarding the ages of their nominees, which is enough to void the registration of the partylist.

Youth leaders on Thursday, May 15, 2025, filed a petition before the Commission on Elections (Comelec) seeking to cancel the registration of the Duterte Youth partylist, the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) disclosed. The petitioners urged the Comelec to issue a show cause order as well as to cancel Duterte Youth’s registration and disqualify it from the elections. The petitioners asserted that Duterte Youth has been red-tagging partylists and individuals in its Facebook posts and livestreams between February and April 2025, an action that violates Comelec Resolution No. 11127. “The law is unequivocal: Red-tagging during the election period is a punishable election offense. It cannot be tolerated, least of all by groups seeking to sit in Congress and represent the Filipino people,” Ephraim Cortez, the petitioners’ lawyer, argued. He stressed that red-tagging is not a mere smear tactic. “As the SC has itself acknowledged, red-tagging is a threat to life, liberty, and security,” Cortez added. “Allowing parties like Duterte Youth to continue weaponizing red-tagging erodes democratic space and puts lives at risk.”

In a joint statement, the Student Regents of the University of the Philippines (UP) and the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP), backed the move for the disqualification of the Duterte Youth partylist. “The Duterte Youth, under the leadership of Ronald Cardema, has time and again shown itself to be a clear threat to democracy, the safety of youth and students, and the sanctity of the electoral process. Its campaign has not been rooted in meaningful platforms or genuine representation of the youth sector, but in baseless attacks, disinformation, and the deliberate red-tagging of progressive voices,” the UP and PUP student regents declared.

The disqualification case against Duterte Youth, which the Youth Alliance for Climate Action Philippines initiated, is anchored on its trampling of Comelec Resolution 11126 and Supplemental Resolution No. 11127, which banned red-tagging, which demonizes targets and tags them as “terrorists.” This is an affront to the principles of a clean, fair, honest, and peaceful election essential to our democracy. “Across our universities, we have witnessed the impact of such dangerous rhetoric. In UP, students have been subjected to unwarranted surveillance, online attacks, and harassment in public spaces simply because they come from a university associated historically with activism and critical stances on government policies and issues. These are not isolated incidents—they are part of a broader climate of fear being cultivated by groups like Duterte Youth alongside and reinforced by the NTF-ELCAC who equate dissent with terrorism,” the student regents said.

In PUP, the largest state university, where students are notoriously known to endure a shortage of classrooms, outdated facilities, and lack of access to quality education, this group has failed to provide any credible solutions. Instead of amplifying the voices of marginalized youth, they vilify those who organize and mobilize for change. Let us be clear: red-tagging is a form of violence. “It is a deliberate attempt to criminalize advocacy and discredit those who speak truth to power. It kills critical thought, endangers lives, and erodes our institutions. It has no place in our electoral system, much like the fake party-list groups that spearhead such a dangerous practice while claiming to represent the youth,” the student regents explained. “We therefore urge the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) to act with the urgency and courage that the situation demands. Disqualifying Duterte Youth is a necessary step toward protecting our democracy from further decay,” they concluded.

As chief of the NYC, Cardema was criticized by the Commission on Audit (COA) for unexplained expenses and irregular disbursements in violation of existing COA rules and regulations similar to those regularly breached by Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio at the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd) before she abruptly resigned last year just as reports of financial shenanigans surfaced, along with her designating military officers from her security detail as special disbursement officers (SDOs) and delegating to them the use of millions of pesos in taxpayers’ money. With Rodrigo Duterte safety tucked in his spartan lodgings at the Scheveningen Prison in The Hague, Cardema has been orphaned, left with only the NTF-ELCAC to back his vicious red-tagging mania.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *