By Sheine Nicole C. Lim | March 30, 2019
Manila, PH- ROTC “perpetuates culture of blind obedience, impunity” (Inquirer.net), “is [an] institutionalized violence, fascism in campus” (Anakbayan.org), and “a hotbed for abuses” that would “normalize” violence, impunity in schools” (LFS, 2016 & 2019).
Last February, the House of Representatives approved on second reading the House Bill 8961, which seeks to make the ROTC program compulsory for students in Grades 11 and 12 , according to The Varsitarian and the bill is said to be passed after the May elections this year.
However, the revival of the mandatory ROTC was duly opposed by a number of Education Sector lawyers, netizens and parents alike and pressed that it would only prolong the suffering of the students and their families who are in fact, part of the bigger population who suffer from poverty, as it most probably would affect only the poor, or those in public schools. Isn’t it ironic that they wanted ROTC to be mandatory all of a sudden- why? Because they need new recruits to defend not the country, but a whole bunch of sickos who are very much afraid that they, “the powerful with a lot of connections and enough access to many resources” will get overpowered by the “powerless but united and strong-willed” citizens of this country. In addition, why can’t the government prioritize what needs to be prioritized at this time like education, since it is more useful than ROTC because education is and will always be an important tool and shield for a country’s progress, for without it, a country will never succeed because it is through quality and accessible to all education that one country progresses.
Seems like the Duterte Administration had it all figured out as their plans are slowly unfolding as the days pass by. First, the implementation of the war on drugs which only targets the poor and the powerless, but after finding out that not all people are dense enough to blindly support them in their genocidal fantasies, they made sure that the minds of the youth would not prosper into something ‘intransigent’ but rather, ‘subservient’ so 2019 welcomes the Department of Education with its largest budget cut yet—seems like education is now the top least priority of our current government for the very reason that education means empowerment and empowerment leads to knowledge and according to Foucault, “knowledge is [already] power”-and having attained a quality education serves as an individual’s amour propre and acquiring such consummation is self-fulfillment itself.
Say Mark Welson Chua’s Name
Mark Welson Chua, a late UST student and a former member of the ROTC unit’s intelligence monitoring team whose death [linked to his exposé of corruption happening inside their unit] became the catalyst for the passage of Republic Act 9163—the complete removal of Mandatory ROTC as a precondition for graduation for male college students in the Philippines.
It was in the early summer of March 2001 that the news circulated in the whole Philippines, calling the attention of the media and the government itself as his case kick-started the purging of the normalization of violence and abuse that lies underneath what is then considered as the ‘empowerment’ of men. Also, his exposé helped shed light to many different outcomes of creating hierarchies inside an institution that lead to the perpetuation and illegal and inhumane practice of violence which is a “ubiquitous and quotidian social phenomenon”, according to Oxford Bibliographies that needs to be addressed, not just to end it, but also to make sure that it will never rise again.
How is the opposition of ROTC related to poverty?
Many children go to school because they have a dream—even though admittedly, they are aware of their current financial status and they, sometimes lack the resources to further continue on their journey- they go to school, determined, hoping they could somehow take their families or themselves out of poverty but due to unfortunate circumstances (e.g., the need to stop studying and start working to provide food to their families), many of these young people drop out of school and as of 2017 Annual Poverty Indicators Survey (APIS) by Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), it has been found out and recorded that about “nine percent (9%) of the estimated 39.2 million Filipinos aged 6 to 24 years old were out-of-school children and youth (OSCY)” (APIS, 2017). OSCY refers to family members 6 to 14 years old who are not attending formal school; and family members 15 to 24 years old who are currently out of school, not gainfully employed, and have not finished college or post-secondary course (PSA, 2018).
The opposition is significant and should be made as a ground for reconsideration because it sheds light to what is the current economic status of the whole country wherein many people are poor and could not even stay hydrated for days because of no access to water because water in the city is now privatized—a commodity that shouldn’t be. People are struggling to make meets end and yet they make sure their children go to school and finish it, only for the government to worsen their situation and further put their faces in the mud as the implementation of ROTC as a requirement for graduation for male students would cost them more money to earn and spend and the government would not even blink one bit.
Lastly, according to Edward James Olmos, “education is the vaccine for violence” so let’s continue educating not just the young, but everyone to further strengthen the will power of the powerless. We are currently fighting a tough war against the powerful and we should not yield. Let us keep fighting for our rights and for those who died to put an end in this violence and nonsense. Remember that we are not powerless if they are afraid of what we can do.
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