President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. will deliver his first State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Monday, July 15, and among the things that he is expected to discuss is the push for the mandatory Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) among the youth.
According to Department of National Defense (DND) Officer-in-Charge Jose Faustino Jr., Marcos is particularly keen on strengthening the reserve force of the military.
“Sang-ayon kay Secretary Faustino, nabanggit na ni Pangulong Marcos sa kanya na ang isang gusto niyang palakasin ay ang reserve force development natin (According to Secretary Faustino, President Marcos has already told him that one of the things that he wants to fortify is our reserve force development),” said DND spokesperson Arsenio Andolong.
“Maaaring ‘yan ang madinig natin sa Lunes kapag nagtalumpati si Pangulong Marcos (We might hear it on Monday when President Marcos gives his speech),” he added.
The push for the return of the mandatory ROTC is being led by Marcos’ political ally, Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio.
Carpio had said during the campaign period in January that she would want to make mandatory the military training for all Filipinos who reach 18 years old.
However, then DND Secretary Delfin Lorenzana objected to this proposal, saying that it would require big funding and resources for the training camps and manpower to accommodate and train millions of Filipinos who will reach 18 years old every year.
“We are not on war footing and there will be little need of a general mobilization,” he had said.
The mandatory ROTC was abolished in 2001 after Mark Chua, an ROTC cadet at the University of Santo Tomas (UST), was killed when he exposed the alleged corruption in the school’s military reserve training program through an article in The Varsitarian, the UST’s university paper.
Accordingly, some students would pay big sum to the school officers to avoid the training but still get a passing grade at the end of the program. After the expose, Chua went missing and his body was found floating in the Pasig River on March 18 2001.
This sparked a series of protests which led to the signing into law of Republic Act 9163 or the National Service Training Program (NSTP) Act of 2001.
Under this law, college students are allowed to choose from ROTC, Literacy Training Service, or Civil Welfare Training Service (CWTS) for their NSTP which shall be a pre-requisite for graduation, and be part of the curricula of all baccalaureate degree courses and of at least two-year vocational courses.
But Marcos is inclined to support the return of the mandatory ROTC for students – at least in 2019.
“The current debate about ‘mandatory ROTC’ takes me back to my time in the military. There is no replacement for the discipline and confidence I gained through the many tests of character we all had to overcome,” he said in a tweet on June 15, 2019.
“ROTC may have been designed to support our Armed Forces, but even without the threat of war, the experience leaves each individual with valuable learnings that they will use for the rest of their lives,” he added.