Paningkamot: New Approaches

WRITTEN BY CARLO TIMBOL

2008-09 VOL 19 NO 1

EDITOR’S NOTE: Twenty years after The Task at Hand was published, for the third time in this issue, it has been brought up that College of Science students have earned a reputation for being apathetic. But in this piece by Scientia’s tenth Editor-in-Chief on record, the critic’s eye is turned not towards the students but to those who initiate the dissent and call for activism. Timbol says that students do not join rallies or boycotts out of apathy but of more substantial reasons like the antagonist character of some dissenters. Indeed, a great discussion in today’s activism is how to make students partake in deeper social issues, integrate with the basic masses and make them see the power of protests while maintaining the character of a fierce opposition, which it itself is antagonized by a conservative and bourgeois culture of anti-activism.

I WAS IN FOURTH year high school when a teacher lent me a book entitled Six Young Filipino Martyrs by Asuncion David Maramba. It was a collection of short, gripping stories of young people who dared to dissent and paid for it with their lives. Of the six martyrs, only former Collegian editor-in-chief Ditto Sarmiento died a natural death — the others were all victims of extrajudicial killings.

Eman Lacaba, who died at 27, was a literary prodigy. Bobby dela Paz, a doctor to the poor of Samar, was also 27 when he was killed. Lean Alejandro — the “thinker-activist” — was gunned down at 27. Laurie Barros, who graduated cum laude from UP, was killed when she was 28, and Edgar Jopson, who was named one of the country’s Ten Outstanding Young Men in 1970, died 19 days after his 34th birthday. The martyrs’ willingness to pour in their youth and their talents for their convictions won me over. I decided to study in UP, if only to get immersed in its culture of activism.

During my first days in the University, however, I immediately saw that the UP of today is a wholly different place from the UP of the First Quarter Storm. The AS lobby, for instance, is now more often a venue for photo exhibits than a starting point of a march to Mendiola. The heyday of student activism in UP, it seems, has already passed.

This state of affairs is much more pronounced in the College of Science. None of my peers in the College have ever responded to calls to boycott classes. Expression of dissatisfaction with Malacañang and Quezon Hall, if there was any, has become limited to ranting on blogs. Participating in rallies, on the other hand, has become more of a novelty. All these have earned CS students a reputation for apathy, for a sheltered university life amidst experiments and paperwork.

But the College has not always been predominantly moderate. Some student activists have told me of past days when the College was, in their own words, pulang-pula. Science majors do recognize the virtues of student activism and they will take it up when they deem it necessary. If most of them today choose not to participate in rallies and boycotts, they do so out of motivations more substantial than mere apathy.

One of these motivations, I believe, is disillusionment over militant groups that demonize those in power. When we air dissent in an antagonistic manner, aren’t we only alienating those people who may otherwise be willing allies?

In 2004, radio commentator Grace Padaca made headlines by topping Isabela’s gubernatorial polls and ending a 40-year dynasty by the powerful Dy family. On May 16 this year, she was a speaker at the forum Realizing New Politics, organized by the Philippine Advocacy for Genuine Alternatives to Social Apathy (PAGASA) and the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA). She was joined by Pampanga Governor Ed Panlilio. In the open forum, Padaca mentioned her government’s efforts to connect with activist leaders, even allowing some of them to handle administrative posts just so “they’d know the inner workings of governance, kasi ‘yung iba hindi nila alam ang limitations ng bureaucracy kaya rally na lang sila ng rally” (or something to that effect, I’m quoting from memory). In another statement, she appealed to the audience to help her remain firm — the Dys may be out of office right now, but their influence will be far more difficult to uproot. “Pakiramdam ko kasi parang hinihintay lang nila na magkamali ako,” was how Padaca put it.

Her statements drove the point home: not all of our leaders are rotten, but those who mean well are already under tremendous pressure from entrenched structures of corruption and impunity. In this light, the overly critical attitude taken by some militant groups towards those in power doesn’t at all seem like the best way to go.

This is not to disparage those students who choose to air dissent the way the martyrs of bygone days did it. Radicals and moderates may employ vastly different means, but we all aspire for the same great things for our University and for our nation. But although the fine example of Alejandro, Lacaba, Jopson, Barros, Sarmiento and dela Paz should never be lost on us, we must not forget that new approaches to our struggle may be called for as times change. ●