Rights and privileges have always been the citizens’ clamor. These are what we rally for. These rights, such as to participate, gives us what we call power. Quoting from our favorite childhood movie, with great power comes great responsibility. If more than we realize, in a participatory democracy it is the citizens that hold power. This power is harnessed through — well you might have guessed it– participation. Our powers may be limited as to the fact that we are not the ones implementing laws and policies, we are not the ones who fund public projects, and we are not the final decision-makers on the platforms that are going to be implemented.

In this country, participation is not harnessed by the citizens and not encouraged by the ones in position, which makes the ones in position take advantage of the lack of participation and involvement citizens. Even as a college student and belonging in the middle class, I still do not clearly know all my rights and privileges as a citizen, and I know a lot of people in my age who are also college-educated do not know theirs too. This entails that there is a lack of education on the rights that we do have. Our national hero, Jose Rizal, implies that we should have more education to not be taken advantage of, or abused by anyone .I think we should embody this in our educational system– cultivating critical thinking and loving to learn knowledge. The standards of what makes a Filipino citizen are set by us, and only us.

With this, I come back to my first point of having great power means having great responsibility. Rights and responsibilities go hand in hand. Having rights means having responsibilities. This is one example of a social contract that is legally bound within us. For instance, we always remind each other to vote and exercise our right to vote, which is not much compelling, instead we should say that it is our responsibility to vote as much as it is our right. The rights that we know we have are something that we must demand, and we do demand that especially if these rights are not given to us. Yet we must also take into great account, that we must do our responsibilities that come with these rights.

-Sisig