The Centennial Iskolar ng Bayan in the Thick of Crises

Last June 20, 2008, the story of a freshman Chemistry major who dropped out on the third day of his classes found its way in the pages of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. The Letter to the Editor was written by a professor in the UP Math Department who was dismayed to find out that his student dropped out because he was assigned to bracket C of the restructured Socialized Tuition and Financial Assistance Program (STFAP), which in consequence would require him to pay P600 per unit.

Sadly, our fellow Iskolar ng Bayan’s situation has become more common in UP since the Board of Regents approved the 300% tuition and other fee increases (TOFI) last 2006, despite the lack of comprehensive consultation from the students and the absence of the Student and Faculty Regents in the meeting.

More alarming, however, is how common our fellow Iskolar ng Bayan’s plight is in this country. According to the CHED, 11 million Filipinos aged 6-24 years old or just over one-third of those in that age bracket have stopped going to school. The Commission adds that for this school year alone, approximately a million school-going Filipinos have had to drop out.

Should we be surprised? After all, as the prices of basic goods like rice, bread, canned goods, vegetables, meat, fish, petroleum products, transportation, and electricity skyrocket to record-highs, the Filipino family’s budget for sustaining their children’s education has virtually disappeared.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UN FAO), families in developing countries, such as the Philippines, spend 60% of their budget on food alone. Moreover, the IBON Foundation cites that the poorest 30% of the Philippine population spends even more than that. When the cost of staple foods rises, therefore, the poor are the first to suffer. So when both the cost of staple foods and education simultaneously increase, it is nothing but a recipe for disaster for the 65 million Filipinos living below the P112/day poverty line.

Dole-outs in the form of rice and other subsidies do nothing to address the real causes of spiraling poverty and diminishing access to education in the Philippines. Many groups have insisted that a P125 across-the-board wage hike and the scrapping of VAT are realistic measures the government can take to provide instant relief to those hardest hit by the prevailing economic crisis.

Last year, the government allotted a miserable 2.66% of the GNP for education – once again, nowhere near the minimum of six percent set by UNESCO Delors Commission for developing countries. Since 1998, when the education budget peaked at 3.8%, the government has continuously and deliberately decreased public spending on education in line with its commitment to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and its Structural Adjustment Program (SAP). The IMF’s SAP encourages governments with massive foreign debt to reduce spending on social services so as to increase allocation for debt servicing. Certainly, a look at the Philippine budget in the last eight years clearly illustrates how compliant the government has been to the SAP: giving more than half of the pie to pay off debts and leaving so little to care for the physical and mental well-being of the Filipino people.

Since 2001, President Arroyo with her administration has done nothing substantial to re-appropriate government spending and genuinely prioritize education. On the contrary, she has aggressively pushed for the full realization of the SAP through the Long Term Higher Education Development Plan (LTHEDP), which aims to make 70% of all State Universities fiscally autonomous by raising their tuition fees to private-school-level by 2010. She has also refused to do anything to alleviate the impact of oil price hikes and instead continues to implement E-VAT to the further detriment of Filipinos.

In light of all these, we demand for the immediate rollback of the tuition increase amidst a worsening economic crisis, the junking of the UP’s most recent tuition policy, without prejudice to further investigation of the STFAP, and the increase of state subsidy for education. These are but some of the many genuine steps towards providing economic relief to all iskolars ng bayan. These are crucial steps so that families today and in the future no longer have to choose between spending for food or spending for education.

As Iskolars ng Bayan, we must analyze these social and economic issues besieging our country beyond the comfortable confines of the academe. We cannot afford to ignore the widespread hardship, which the majority of the Filipino people are barely enduring, because sooner rather than later it will affect us all – and the UP Chemistry freshman’s story will be too commonplace to be on the news.

Roll back tuition fees!
Junk UP’s Tuition Policy!
Increase government spending on education!
Reform the Philippine educational system!

Rising prices of oil, rice, transportation, among others, are part of the undeniable factors that burden the iskolars ng bayan and their parents. Notwithstanding all these, the students are burdened further by the relentless laboratory fee increase proposals such as those in the Colleges of Engineering and Mass Communication, despite the already implemented tuition increase in the University of the Philippines. More so, President Arroyo and her cohorts in the UP Administration found it fit to declare UP exempt from such a moratorium, as evident in UP President Roman’s Inquirer.net video, as though the UP and its constituency are exempt from the extraordinary challenges faced by the average Filipino family in these most trying of times.

In all these, the iskolars ng bayan need to understand that such pronouncements all ring hollow in the face of the seeming insurmountable problems facing the Philippine education system, in which the UP are among those that are being used as guinea pigs for commercialization schemes. We need to understand that the structural problems in higher education are rooted in the failure of government to appreciate the central role of state higher education in national industrialization and genuine economic development. Instead, the present government and the UP Administration slavishly embraces the entire neo-liberal economic policy imposed by multinational financial agencies such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund where the abandonment of social services, like state higher education, is among its basic tenets. Such a policy has been crystallized as policy by government through its Long Term Higher Educational Development Plan (LTHEDP).

It is quite clear that the solutions being offered by the Arroyo regime are sham tricks and bogus pretense that deceive the youth and the Filipino people to make it seem that serious steps are being undertaken to resolve the crisis of the educational system. These are mere smokescreens to hide the fact that it is the government itself that has actually aggravated the already chronic economic crisis faced by the country.

Thus, it is imperative for the iskolars ng bayan to unite today and stake their constitutional claim to their right to education, by standing firmly for the rollback of the UP tuition increase, and the eventual junking of the UP tuition increase policy itself.

Rollback the 300% tuition increase, Stop laboratory fee increases! Junk the Tuition Policy, Fight for Greater State Subsidy for UP and Education! Oust GMA! Struggle for a Nationalist, Scientific, and Mass-oriented Education!

We released the first issue of Oblation last week. Oblation is the official newsletter of the University Student Council (USC). As chairperson of the USC’s public information office, I am in charge of coming up with the monthly newsletter. The first issue is just four pages, but couple the task with my having to adjust with the overwhelming amount of readings in law school and, and a few unforseen problems, it had been quite stressful.

I’d like to take this opportunity to publicly thank my mass media committee members, editorial staff and the contributors!

Anyway, if you weren’t able to grab a copy, do download the PDF version.

“The rollback?”

No action! I mean it’s pretty obvious. In fact we could have increased tuition this year because the approval of the board last year allowed for adjustment of tuition based on inflation… I really don’t know why they’re saying rollback when it’s not part of [President Arroyo’s] directive.

I’ve been enjoying it so far. Funny, or perhaps I’m speaking too soon, all the initial readings actually caught my interest. The thought of having a professional grasp of this field excites me in how I can pursue, well, romanticized as it sounds, the pursuit of truth and justice in things I believe in. I can’t yet quite adequately answer the question as to why I’m doing this, but it may be borne out of a personal feeling of frustration at a legal system that is largely at the hands of those with the economic and political capital, to protect the status quo. Finally, I thought. I’m going to learn how to engage controllers in a level where I shall not be dismissed as a mere young idealist who know nothing about laws and whatnot.

Anyway, a few days ago, my sophomore block buddy, Kuya Luis, invited a blockmate and I at his boarding house to share some advices and tips and showed us all his books and his tons (literally) of readings. They were all so well organized. I felt so ‘inspired’ that the next day, I spent almost the entire day doing some spring cleaning in my room to make space for piles and piles of photocopied cases. Well, the sentimental person that I sometimes am, I spent a lot of time because I still had to go through papers and other personal effects individually before deciding to dispose of most of them forever. From high school essays and personal letters, to old copies of Hilites Magazine (high school publication where I spent four years as editor) and the Philippine Collegian. So amusing. I’ll talk about them in another blog entry. I even went out of the house and bought file cases.

So. Law school will take a lot of my time from now on. I’m still trying to adjust in a way that I am able to fulfill all my other extra-curricular and personal responsibilities. Nevertheless, I’m going to have to manage my time like I’ve never managed it before. I can’t believe I have to spend hours studying every night. Haha. Obviously, that wasn’t a habit I inculcated as film student.

June 04, 2008. As the Court of Appeals conducted a hearing for the combined writ of amparo and writ of habeas corpus to compel the Philippine Military to surface abducted UP students Karen Empeno & Sherlyn Cadapan, dozens of activists including relatives of the missing staged a picket outside the premises of the second highest court in the country.

I went to the picket and I also spoke in behalf of the University Student Council and the other concerned students of UP, where both Karen & Sherlyn come from. Bang and Lester were also there.

The demonstration started along Taft Avenue where a small rally was held. Our photos at Taft Avenue actually landed on the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s front page, but the photo was cut off right before I was supposed to appear, so you just have to take my word for it. But that’s besides the point. From Taft Avenue, we marched along Padre Faura on the way to the Court of Appeals where the main program was conducted.

After half an hour, the counsels and the parents of the missing UP students came out of the Court of Appeals and shared to the crowd what happened at the hearing. The hearing was apparently adjourned without rendering the writs. That was already the eighth hearing for the case, and the ninth was scheduled on a later date.

Also, in an effort to water down discontent and dissent among the people, the administration has been giving token dole-outs left and right, from electric bill subsidies, fertilizer subsidies, and scholarships. All of which are one-time, and of course temporary. Thus, the obvious motive for such is not to seek to change what’s inherently wrong in the prevailing order but is to simply quiet down and dupe the masses in a time where crises in basic commodities and social services have become unbearable, and in a time when such crises could spark another wave of anti-administration demonstrations.

No amount of bribes in the form of ultra-temporary financial reliefs nor rampant government propaganda will fool the people or solve their hunger and discontent. What we need are higher state subsidies and government regulation of basic industries and social services. Lest we forget, calls of accountability transparency amidst billion-peso corruption scandals are still being ignored.

What I’m also trying to say is that the proliferation of government propaganda at a time when millions of Filipino students are about to return and reconvene in schools across the country is a recognition of the power of the youth movement in social change.

Youth Act Now!, an alliance of youth formations across the country, held a National Youth Assembly last May 30, 2008 at the College of Education Theater in the College of Education, UP Diliman.

Present to speak at the assembly were NBN-ZTE Scandal whistle-blower Engineer Jun Lozada, Christian leader Eddie Villanueva, and another corruption whistle-blower Joey de Venecia. Also present at the assembly were representatives from student councils and student organizations across the country.

The assembly was held to end the summer vacation and to kick-off the start of classes and rekindle the youth’s commitment in the movement for truth, accountability and social change.

I had just finished watching Goin’ Bulilit, a children’s gag show, on ABS-CBN. Part of tonight’s show was a spoof of a showbiz talk show where one of the kids impersonating John Lapus was interviewing another child actor impersonating President Gloria Arroyo.

President Arroyo is made to sit on an electric chair. The host explains that the chair would electrocute the President if she lies to John Lapus’ questions.

Interestingly, for a children’s gag show in a segment spoofing a showbiz talk show, the questions were mostly about the NBN-ZTE corruption scandal. And as expected, the President is portrayed as lying to her teeth. And she of course, gets electrocuted a number of times. Hilariously, as the President is electrocuted, everyone on the set suddenly dances like crazy with a shower of colorful confetti and merry background music complementing the stint. It was fuckin’ hilarious! The same stint would be repeated over and over as the President is electrocuted. Crazy. Tawa ako nang tawa! Way to go, Goin’ Bulilit! It just feels so remarkable for me for a children’s gag show to come up with political satire like this.

In the end, as the President is caught lying the last time, she oddly escapes another electrocution. A kid impersonating the President’s husband, Mike Arroyo, enters frame and declares that her wife is safe as they had already bought control of the electric company. That was, of course, in reference to the Meralco issue. Instead of the audience dancing to the same merry music, the President and her husband go dancing in the middle of the set mocking everyone else. Nice one!

She did admit a few things, among which her recognizing how difficult it is to defeat the militants in the student council elections. Because she thought we were all non-activists, she urged us students present to consolidate better in order to win against the activists in the elections. I was wiling to pass those, among other things, off, as I had expected such thoughts to come from her.

However, when we were about to leave, she left us with an interesting remark. She said she was pleased President Arroyo’s moratorium on tuition increases in state universities won’t affect the University of the Philippines. She said, “Buti na lang di tayo apektado noon ‘no?” Hindi na lang ako nag-react. That just capped and reinforced my disappointment at the UP President, pleasantries and sweet tarts aside. It also reinforced the fact that President Arroyo’s moratorium on tuition increase is all for show to water down youth dissent, as it is meaningless because tuition and laboratory fees in state colleges and universities have already increased incessantly the past years.

May 24, 2008. My parents picked me up from the Manila Domestic Airport, fresh from my 5 AM flight from Cebu City after the KASAMA sa UP National Council Meet. We were to proceed to my father’s office outing at Laiya Beach in San Juan, Batangas that day.

Because I was largely sleepless, I was asleep for most of the four-hour drive from Manila to San Juan, Batangas, only to be awaken when we were to eat breakfast at a fastfood restaurant.

We arrived at San Juan, Batangas at more or less an hour before noon. Since I felt really tired and sleepy, I immediately looked around to find the nearest couch to take a nap on. I only woke up for lunch. After lunch, I went around the beach to take a few pictures.

The heat that afternoon was intense. After satisfying my click-happy fingers I went back to the cottage and took refuge in the shade. I eventually slept the rest of the afternoon, without caring much about not being able to enjoy the beach. An afternoon siesta was just what I really needed anyway.

We headed back to Manila late that afternoon.