The Office of the UP Faculty Regent (OFR) deserves plaudits for hosting the first Academic Freedom and Human Rights Conference with the theme “Resisting Threats, Reclaiming Rights” on December 4, 2024, Wednesday, at the GT-Toyota Asian Center auditorium in UP Diliman, particularly now that the UP President Angelo “Jijil” Jimenez is “nanggigigil” in chopping up the UP Diliman campus into commercial enclaves.
The activity coincides with 5th Pingkian Conference of the Congress of Teachers/Educators for Nationalism and Democracy (CONTEND.) The other partners in the conference are the Defend UP Network, All UP Academic Employees Union (AUPAEU), Network in Defense of Historical Truth and Academic Freedom, and the Alliance of Concerned Teachers-Philippines (ACT.) Plenary speakers include the Faculty Regent Carl Marc Ramota of UP and Faculty Regent Ramir Cruz of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP), along with former UP Faculty Regents Dr. Judy Taguiwalo and Dr. Ramon Guillermo, Ateneo de Manila University (AdMU) professor and Scholars for Peace convener, Dr. Francis Gealogo, and ACT National Capital Region Union President Ruby Ana Bernardo.
The conference serves as a venue for discussion on the principles of academic freedom in general and the role of academics and the university at large under a murky national situation dominated by political dynasties that have conspired to humor the Filipino people with “bread and circuses” but are now battling among each other for political power. The Marcos-Duterte dispute is a clash of political dynasties that benefited from digital fraud in 2022, helped immensely by the fraudulent operations of the political consultancy company Cambridge Analytica, which worked on both the Duterte presidential campaign in 2016 and the Marcos Jr. campaign in 2022.
Academic freedom advocates must take a keen look into the scam being foisted anew on the Filipinos by these dynasties, which are essentially two sides of the same stinking coin. The Dutertes and the Marcoses deserve each other and if they are brave enough to duke it out, they should start a shooting war. Yet, both of them are not prepared to settle their differences, if there are differences between them, in a gunfight. The point is that both of them are scared shitless that millions of Filipinos duped in 2016 and 2022 should now be ready to dump the carcasses of these dynasties. Surely, the public knows the Marcos scam in 1965 and the imposition of martial law in 1972 as well as the blackmails that attended the ascension to power of the Dutertes in Davao City after 1986.
Historical and economic records being what they are, the Dutertes and Marcoses exacerbated the misery of the Filipino during their bloody years in power, with the Dutertes amassing wealth while Davao City bathed in blood. From 1965 until they were kicked out in 1986, the Marcoses achieved a puny annual 1.5% economic growth and Japan agonized over the 15% share of the regime in infrastructure projects. The US itself, in one admission, was scandalized to know that all the bomb blasts in 1971 and 1972 were the handiwork of the Marcos regime. One Marcos Cabinet member was so incensed with the plan to impose martial law in 1972 that he warned a veteran journalist about it. “Son of a b*tch, he is declaring martial law!”
Aside from Marcos, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Rodrigo Duterte also declared martial law in Mindanao. The first, was to manage the Ampatuans, who had murdered dozens of journalists in 2009, but who were her close allies and who maintained a private army to support Arroyo’s political ploys. Duterte’s martial law was a bit awkward as it involved a botched “service” of arrest warrants in Marawi that quickly devolved into armed clashes. Duterte failed to exploit the Marawi siege, which was a demolition project, to expand his martial law to cover the entire country. Yet, his martial law was also used to justify atrocities in other areas of Mindanao, where minority groups have persistently opposed the rape of ancestral domains by the Consunjis and other plutocrats.
To the credit of the OFR, UP professors and researchers may now broaden the scope of their inquiry beyond monitoring and protecting academic freedom and human rights or supporting coalition building efforts across higher education institutions in the Philippines and the region. Last year, the OFR launched a campaign for the creation of the Committee on the Promotion and Protection of Academic Freedom and Human Rights both at the entire UP System and constituent university levels. In one year, four constituent universities have established Academic Freedom (AF) committees – UP Cebu, UP Diliman, UP Los Baños and UP Manila— which means success if afoot to form the AF committees in four other constituent universities.
More research must be undertaken to expose the mendacity, rapaciousness and plunder committed by political dynasties to make academic freedom relevant to the Filipino people. While there have been laudable initiatives to demarcate the metes and bounds of their political turfs, a dialectical approach must likewise be applied to weaken them, strip them of their feudal influence, rob them of their guns, goons, and gold, and cripple their access to power. That, in the end, will demonstrate what real people’s power means.
