Protect the youth's freedom to choose how to serve

HOTSPOT

By TONYO CRUZ

The Duterte administration and Congress are now trying to snatch away a precious, hard-fought freedom of young Filipinos. And that is the freedom to choose how to serve their country.

I’m referring, of course, to the moves to reimpose mandatory Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC).

Young Filipinos had won freedom from the constricting, suffocating, and corrupting program in 2002.

“Finally, college students are now given a choice on how to participate in nation-building through civic consciousness aside from the ROTC which was imposed 76 years ago.”

Thus said Senator Renato Cayetano in January, 2002, after the enactment of the National Service Training Program into law, which effectively abolished mandatory ROTC.

Another senator, Ramon Magsaysay Jr., noted that the Armed Forces of the Philippines recruited a mere 10 percent of the 400,000 ROTC graduates each year.

A newspaper report quoted Magsaysay as saying that “this figure indicates an overwhelming majority of ROTC graduates have their interest elsewhere and should, therefore, be given a choice.”

"I believe students should instead have the option to take up community service or related subjects that will enhance their performance of civic duties," said Magsaysay.

“Magsaysay said that his bill would seek to redirect and guide students to the ethics of conscientious and patriotic civic and social responsibilities instead of focusing their attention solely on defense and security,” the newspaper report continued.

Yes, folks. The Duterte regime and Congress are about to take away an important freedom from young people. The freedom to choose how to serve their country and people. Youth and student groups are thus justified in their protests.

I would like to think that Cayetano and Magsaysay were right: Young people have delivered since 2002.

Young Filipinos are at the forefront of disaster relief operations, volunteering to both state and private citizen efforts. They have also helped innovate disaster relief through social media, mapping, and calls for transparent use of donations coursed through government.

Students from elementary and high schools remain the main force that keeps major festivals alive. Sinulog, Masskara, and other festivals won’t be the same and would not be as lively and dynamic without the participation of young people.

Fresh graduates of medicine and other courses continue to respond to the calls of our rural population for their much sought-after service. They not only skip the opportunity to earn more in the cities and especially abroad, but they also bravely defy threats to life from those who brand them as leftists or communists for choosing to be doctors to the barrios.

Young voters have also formed Kabataan Partylist and have elected a youth partylist representative in all of the last five straight elections since 2007. This party has defeated nuisance disqualification cases, and unlawful electioneering by military officials.  It is a party that is incorruptible, with its partylist representatives often competing for the honored title of “poorest representative.”

I don't have enough space to enumerate the many freely chosen social, civic, political, and economic contributions of young Filipinos since 2002.

Taking away the freedom to choose how to serve the country is not the only outcome of reviving a mandatory ROTC.

Reviving mandatory ROTC is like summoning Frankenstein and letting it loose again on young people.

The ghost of University of Santo Tomas student Mark Wilson Chua continues to haunt the ROTC.

It was Chua’s murder that propelled the campaign to abolish the ROTC. Chua was murdered soon after he exposed and denounced the anomalies, in the UST ROTC unit.

Both senators Cayetano and Magsaysay, along with many lawmakers who voted in 2001 for the bill abolishing mandatory ROTC, called on the AFP to address the ROTC abuses, starting with the Chua murder.

But since 2002, there has been no admissions of guilt, no expressions of remorse, no major prosecutions for all the recorded abuses, anomalies and irregularities in the ROTC.

Chua’s murder has not been solved. Justice continue to elude Chua’s family.

There are other victims crying out for justice. The College Editors Guild of the Philippines said justice has been denied to Seth Lopez of De La Salle University who died from ROTC hazing in 1995, and to Arthur Salero of St. Louis University who also died from ROTC hazing in 1999.

The ROTC continued to exist even after the enactment of the NSTP Law. No longer mandatory, the ROTC remained as an option. But the CEGP notes that the ROTC abuses and anomalies continued.

In 2006, ROTC cadets were mobilized by government to spy on and to red-tag activist students at the University of the Philippines in Diliman. The cadets also dissuaded students from participating in the local campaign to protest cuts to the university budget.

Similar politically-motivated and questionable misuse of the ROTC cadets was recorded in 2007 at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, and in 2010 at UP Los Banos.

The CEGP also reports that in 2014 alone, ROTC scandals rocked Benguet State University, DLSU, Ateneo de Davao University, and PUP. The cases involved hazing, sexual abuse, and defamation against activist groups.

Irregularities and abuses continued in 2015 and 2016. Citing student publication reports, the CEGP said that ROTC units were the subject of complaints and issues in UP Visayas Tacloban College, University of Mindanao-Tagum, Tarlac State University, Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Pasig, and UP Mindanao.

If the administration and Congress would have their way, the same corrupt and abusive mandatory ROTC would be reimposed on all senior high school and college students. And they would take away the youth’s freedom to choose how to best serve the country.

It is thus no surprise that young people are furious.