“The House bill will have this effect. The Senate should do its part.”
“The House bill will have this effect. The Senate should do its part.”
The House of Representatives of Congress wants to make all campuses of the University of the Philippines havens for communists and their sympathizers, and to keep UP the recruitment center that it is for the Communist Party of the Philippines, the New People’s Army and the National Democratic Front.
Former UP Executive Vice President Teodoro Herbosa said so in an online story carried by the Philippine News Agency last Tuesday afternoon.
Herbosa disclosed that the House recently approved House Bill No. 10171 which proposes to amend Republic Act No. 9500, or the New UP Charter. It purports to protect the academic freedom of UP.
More specifically, House Bill No. 10171 bans state police and military personnel from entering any UP campus without the prior permission of the campus authorities, except in cases of “hot pursuit” or similar emergencies.
Herbosa said House Bill No. 10171 is unnecessary because the academic freedom of UP is already expressly guaranteed under its charter.
Further, Herbosa said the bill reinstates the so-called 1989 accord between UP and the Department of National Defense. That accord provided that policemen and soldiers must first get the permission of UP officials before they can enter any UP campus, even for law enforcement purposes.
Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana withdrew the DND from the accord last January 21. Lorenzana said the accord transformed UP into, among others, a recruitment center for the communist movement.
Herbosa shares Lorenzana’s assessment, and confirms that when the accord was in force, the residential areas of the UP campuses in Diliman and Los Baños became clandestine havens for gambling, narcotics and communist cadres.
I agree with Herbosa and Lorenzana. If House Bill No. 10171 becomes a law, the UP campuses throughout the country will continue to be recruitment centers for local communists.
As Lorenzana once succinctly put it, what is so special about UP that law enforcers need the prior permission of UP officials in order to enforce the law inside its campuses?
Nobody, not even UP, is above the law. Come hell or high water, Philippine laws must be enforced throughout the territorial jurisdiction of the Philippines, with or without the prior permission of criminals, terrorists, communists, fugitives, or anyone who wittingly or unwittingly harbors them.
UP campuses are public places. Like any public place, a UP campus should have visible police presence in order to discourage criminals, terrorists and their kind from committing unlawful acts there.
Parents who send their children to study at UP have the right to expect that their children will be safe from criminals and terrorists while they are at UP. One step in that direction is to keep police presence in the UP campuses visible. The absence of uniformed policemen in any public place is a tempting invitation for criminals and terrorists to operate there.
There are, of course, security guards inside each UP campus. However, because these security guards are fielded by private security agencies, they do not have the same law enforcement powers vested by law in actual police officers. Unlike policemen who are responsible to the public in general, private security guards are primarily loyal to their agencies.
Private security guards in UP are not employees of UP. They are employees of their security agencies. Obviously, they are not public officers. Precisely for that reason, private security guards cannot be held liable under the strict laws applicable only to state law enforcers. Unlike policemen and soldiers, private security guards cannot be held to account before the Ombudsman.
In other words, don’t expect quality public service from private security guards because they are not public servants in the first place.
Despite the abrogation of the 1989 accord, policemen cannot enter UP offices, college buildings, classrooms, libraries and dormitories unless they are called in. They cannot enter homes inside the campus without a judicial warrant. Like any other public place, police presence in UP is confined only to public areas like roads, parking lots and the like. As such, I do not see how the lawful presence of law enforcers inside a UP campus can actually compromise the academic freedom of UP.
To repeat, parents send their children to UP to graduate and become successful adults. No right-thinking parent will send his child to UP just to end up recruited by the communists, and to take up arms and die fighting government troops in the countryside.
House Bill No. 10171 should be rejected outright by the Senate. If it manages to pass the Senate, President Rodrigo Duterte should veto it. Should it lapse into law, it should be challenged before the Supreme Court by parents who do not want their children to enter UP just to die for CPP chief Jose Ma. Sison’s useless war to make the Philippines a communist state.