It ultimately came down to the wire for the independent ticket composed of Sean Latorre (CMC), Franz Beltran (NCPAG), and Kristian Mendoza (CSSP), who, despite their widespread gains across the university, were faced with a close call down at the college level during the 2024 University Student Council special elections.

Abstentions still led the race for chairperson in the three most vote-rich colleges, beating out Latorre by around 5–7 points, according to data from Halalan UP Diliman. 

The three colleges alone—Engg, CSSP, and CS—made up 39.6% of the electorate in the October polls. They had comparable participation rates to the university-wide turnout of 37.13%, which was the highest since 2021.

The three colleges were once considered toss-ups, but they swung heavily to STAND UP, with which Latorre, Beltran, and Mendoza are affiliated, following the absence of KAISA UP during the pandemic-era ballots in 2021 and 2022.

But the red party’s withdrawal from the 2023 regular elections led to the abstain vote taking a sizable majority in 19 out of 27 colleges. This result was further exacerbated in the following regular polls, where the uncontested standard bearers won in only DEPPO, CHK, and AIT.

While the Latorre-Beltran-Mendoza ticket managed a narrow victory for the top two offices without capturing Palma, Melchor, or the Science Complex, a win in any of the three could have widened the razor-thin margin, especially for Latorre, who only emerged the front-runner by 0.79 points. 

Their campaign thus had to rely on support from the smaller colleges to pull off a win, in hopes their triumph would end the leadership vacuum in the council at the time. Latorre picked up 13 colleges in total during the 2024 special elections, which made up over half of his final vote count.

The independent ticket’s voter base was mostly composed of what were typical red party strongholds, such as CAL, CMC, and CFA.

The ticket also picked up a surprise victory in CBA, which traditionally leaned ALYANSA but went abstain for the chairperson race in 2023 and 2024. It split its ticket between Latorre and blue party nominee Therese Mangussad (Engg).

CBA made up 5.2% of Latorre’s vote share, but it was enough to push him over the top. The independent ticket also picked up Music, a historically safe college for ALYANSA that flipped to abstain in the 2023 regular cycle—turnout there has steadily gone down since 2021.

Should the chair have been vacated due to the abstain vote, it is likely the winner of the vice chairperson election would have been able to assume the top position, as abstentions in the vice chairperson race remained a distant third. 

Only Beltran and Mangussad garnered enough support to pick up individual colleges. The blue party’s contender secured a healthy 9-point lead in her home college, while Beltran was ahead of Mangussad by only 0.63 points in CSSP.

In addition to CBA and Engg, the sole ALYANSA bet picked up support in CHK, Econ, NCPAG, and Law—the last of which had been abstaining in standard bearer races since at least 2021. The latter three were dominated by abstentions in the top office, while CHK voted for Latorre.

But while they similarly had poor showings against abstentions at the college and university level, independent chairperson candidate Andrew Ronquillo (CMC) and vice chairperson candidate Dexter Clemente (CAL) put up a fight in CSWCD.

Ronquillo came out as the front-runner in the college, though the race was neck-and-neck as he only beat out his opponent by 2 points. Clemente—one of the candidates under the 10-point common agenda—was ahead of the blue party, though he remained behind Beltran by 7 points.

Rather than Ronquillo and Clemente, who were also STAND affiliates, splitting the vote with the Latorre-led faction, it appeared they were instead cannibalized by the ticket, which kept solid control of most of the red party bases while also expanding its reach elsewhere.

Joaquin Buenaflor (CSSP), who also ran as a councilor with the 10-point agenda, managed to evade a pull downwards by the rest of the coalition’s performance. As Buenaflor runs unopposed this year to replace Latorre, the shift away from abstentions in the past two election cycles will be tested again. 

The results of the 2025 UP Diliman student council elections will be revealed after voting ends on Friday night, May 16, with the proclamation at Vinzons Hall. ●