Standing for UP

 

“THE COUNTRY’S premier state university has become a safe haven for enemies of the state."

Thus spake Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana of the University of the Philippines, thereby – in some senselessness – making imperative the unilateral termination of the 1989 DND-UP agreement requiring state forces to inform the state university before its personnel can enter campus grounds.

Signed between then UP president Jose Abueva and then Defense chief Fidel Ramos, the agreement also holds that military and police cannot enter any UP campus "except in cases of hot pursuit and similar occasions of emergency" or when assistance is requested by university officials.

An earlier agreement, the 1982 Soto-Enrile accord between then student leader Sonia Soto and then Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile, was signed to protect the autonomy of the university from military intervention, especially in protest rallies.

The “agreement” – Lorenzana presumably making the two as one and the same – he deemed merely a “gesture of courtesy” that is now “obsolete.”

What Lorenzana takes as some outdated privilege bestowed by the state is the very core of academic freedom, among all other freedoms upheld as human rights in a democratic state.   

"However, during the life of the agreement the University of the Philippines has become the breeding ground of intransigent individuals and groups whose extremist beliefs have inveigled students to join their ranks to fight against the government," he said in a statement, bereft of even but a shred of evidence to support his claim.

Lorenzana in effect there reducing UP students to herds of cattle easily led by the nose, even to slaughter.

Expectedly, outrage poured out of social media deluging Lorenzana.  

"Kung meron tayong due process, sana sinabi muna kung ano ang resulta ng compliance sa halip na pumasok sa red-tagging na wala namang batayan si Lorenzana dun sa kaniyang desisyon to abrogate nga ito," said UP journalism professor Danilo Arao.

Furthering: "Ang mensahe natin sa publiko, ngayon UP 'yan baka sa susunod PUP (Polytechnic University of the Philippines) na at iba pang unibersidad na walang kasunduan. Mas lalakas ang loob ng military at pulis sa paghahasik ng kaharasan."

Seconded Froilan Cariaga, chairperson of the UP Diliman Student Council: “Ngayon sinusubukan itong lusawin ng administrasyon ay malinaw siya na atake laban sa karapatang sibil ng mga estudyante at ng buong komunidad ng unibersidad at malinaw siyang atake sa academic freedom ng UP at ng iba pang pamantasan.”

UP alum and former student regent Sen. Francis Pangilinan, on Twitter: "Tinutulan natin ang panghihimasok ng diktador noon. UP has always been and will always be a citadel of freedom and democracy. Pakiusap lang, please don't mess with UP” referencing the so-called “Diliman Commune” of some 50 years ago when students barricaded the UP campus for days in protest of the Marcos administration still in its pre-martial law stage.

A "blatant disregard for students' historic win against campus militarization,” shared Youth Rep. Sarah Elago. "For education institutions to fulfill their significant role in upholding human rights and democracy, they must be protected from ruling regimes' undue pressures and dictates.”

 

Sonia’s dare

For her part, Sonia Soto, principal party to the eponymous accord with Enrile had this to say: "Nalungkot ako at nababahala. Para sa akin, ang UP-DND Agreement noong 1989 na nakabatay sa Soto-Enrile Accord noong 1982 ay kapwa resulta ng democratic reforms movement ng kabataan-estudyante na hindi dapat ganoon kadaling makaisang-panig na ibasura ng pamahalaan. Ipinaglaban namin ito noon.”

And dared: “Forty years ago, we made a stand. Today it is the turn of the young Isko/Iska to defend their institution."

Defend the institution. Uphold academic freedom.

Comes to mind here one of the greatest philosophical treatises in defense of the basic right of freedom of expression, John Milton’s Areopagitica, thus:  

“Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?”

So Lorenzana urged the UP Community to "work together to protect our students from extremism and destructive armed struggle” even as he warned that the DND will "not tolerate those who will violate the laws of the land in the guise of lawful public dissent, free assembly and free speech."

An abject admission, unwittingly, there of the utter defeat of the regime Lorenzana represents in that free and open encounter that is the UP system.

Milton, once more: “For who knows not that truth is strong next to the almighty; she needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings to make her victorious, those are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power: give her but room, and do not bind her when she sleeps…”

Abrogating – unilaterally at that – the UP-DND agreement is that very shift, that deceitful scheme, that error, indeed, evil, uses against the power of Truth.