Younger Filipinos need to run for office. To encourage new leaders, we must inspire a movement that breaks traditional politics.
WHEN Filipinos went to the polls last May, one in three congressional districts offered only one name on the ballot. This has been building for years: in 2016, 545 “local candidates already ran unopposed” from vice mayor to Congress. A recent Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism report found that 113 of the country’s 149 city mayors belong to political dynasties. Democracy does not fail all at once. It hollows out seat by seat when no one new dares to run.
With fewer candidates running, Filipinos are stuck with fewer choices. Elections become increasingly uncompetitive, reinforcing decades-old uninspired leadership and perpetuating poor quality of service, lack of policy innovation and unchecked power within the same revolving political names. If we are to achieve national progress, we need new faces in service. Many young people dream of a better Philippines, but few are engaged politically, and even fewer are considering careers in public office. Young Filipino progressives are tired of traditional politics, yet deep-seated barriers hold us back from seeking elections. To revive our politics, we need to inspire a new movement — one that deliberately and unflinchingly departs from the political norm.
“Traditional politicians” are so commonplace that Filipinos have coined a widely known term for them, “trapo.” Often characterized as dirty, power-hungry politicians, the common denominator among trapos is that most have held their posts for far too long. In fact, of the 545 uncontested candidates from 2016, most are reelectionists. The rest carry the same surname as incumbents, revealing political dynasties, where members of the same family exchange political posts to circumvent term limits.
While political dynasties are a massive problem, and traditional politics bring scores of issues, their existence presents one particularly critical barrier to new generations of leaders — a death of hope. Trapos appear too entrenched, their victory a seeming guarantee from years of unopposed candidacies. They want us to accept the norm, to think it impossible for newcomers to run and take their long-held posts. It is not impossible. Trapos only stay in power because they succeed in intimidating young, passionate people. We can break the cycle, but first we need to reject this self-fulfilling prophecy.
Breaking away from traditional politics also means breaking away from the same old parties. Young progressives do not run because we do not see our ideals represented in the parties we are expected to join. In the 2022 elections, liberal-leaning opposition tickets failed miserably, with only one of 12 senatorial candidates making office. Most telling: Leni Robredo ran for president as an independent, leaving the yellow-clad party that once brought her to the vice presidency. Political parties across the spectrum have since become empty tickets — candidates grouped together without any meaningful agenda in common. It is no wonder that few young people forgo better careers to join such hollow parties.
The solution is not to reform the Liberal Party. They are beyond repair. We need a new movement that authentically represents our progressive values and inspires new generations of public servants. The proof that this is possible is already here. In November 2025, New York City’s Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist and state assemblyman with no machine backing, won the mayoral race on a grassroots campaign funded by small donors, defeating a well-connected incumbent. We, too, can make that happen.
Logistically, there is of course the question of money and machinery. Many Filipinos believe, not without good reason, that succeeding in traditional Philippine politics requires lots of cash and network power. Political strategists reveal that 2019 campaigns for senatorial posts went upwards of P190 million on average. For presidential campaigns, the figure skyrockets to P5 billion. Even gubernatorial and mayoral candidacies run expensive as illegal vote-buying remains rampant. While costs are high, aspiring candidates do not have to foot such bills alone. If there is anything the spirited Robredo campaign taught us, it’s that there is power in numbers. Kakampinks raised P388 million, a good percentage coming from small donors. While unsuccessful, Robredo’s campaign showed us that it is possible for Filipinos of humble backgrounds to vie for national office.
What we need, however, is to organize. I am inspired by recent youth movements like YouthLedPH and GoodGovPH that drive young people to engage in civic action and good governance. We must go even further. Absent entrenched power, organizing is how we build our campaign chest and machinery. We need young people to volunteer for campaigns, donate and knock on doors. Ultimately, we need young progressives to run, and support others to run, too. That is how we take the reins and start running our country.
Patricia Matias is a dual-degree master’s graduate of MIT Sloan School of Management and Harvard Kennedy School, where she learned to build grassroots political campaigns in Southeast Asia.
