Bandilang Pula
Written by: Anoymous;
Published: Bandilang Pula, Ika-12 ng Pebrero 1971;
Source: Bandilang Pula, Ika-12 ng Pebrero 1971
Markup: Simoun Magsalin.
The meeting of the Board of Regents at an open hearing in Quezon Hall on Tuesday morning brought out several facts: that while the nation at large is watching the Diliman Commune with admiration and hope, the Trojan horses within our midst are on the gallop. Only too eager to inform the regents of the “true state of anarchy” and danger to their “freedoms” on the campus was a small, but classic group. It included people like some reactionary Arts and Sciences councilors, a Law councilor, Dr. Emerenciana “faith and freedom” Arcellana, Dr. Gemino Abad, concurrently, it seems, the private secretary of Concepcion Dadufalza, and Mr. Johnny Uy, who must have found it safe enough to come out of hiding in his evacuation center. Also in full force were equally classic “middle of the roaders” like Dean Malay, and Prof. Yabes who have functioned as spokesmen, wittingly or otherwise, for the government directed Third Force. The first thing evident was that many of these people who are so concerned about “threat” to their freedom of movement, do not live on campus bur have impressive real estate investments in U.P. village; nor were they present during the invasion by troopers. The communards seems to terrify them, but the Metrocom does not.
The other conclusion to be drawn from this very dull hearing was that after six days of outright barricades, one student dead, two more seriously injured, and scores of others grazed by bullets, a few burn cases, and a number of students who are still missing, the official sector of the Diliman campus fails to see the larger issue involved in our struggle. They still insist in reducing the whole issue to academic freedom and to localizing it within the campus boundaries. The only cogent remarks made during the entire hearing were those of Mr. Felixberto Olalia, who pointed out that the Regents should make every effort to pressure the national government to end the oil controversy once and for all, To think of peace and order without having tried to do this would be to forget what caused the current crisis and what the students were fighting for when Pastor Mesina was shot by a degreed madman.
Each pressure group which testified before the Regents — for most of them were pressure groups of the most banal sort — was only interested in the restoration of “normalcy” on the campus. One wanted the university closed to permanently throttle the Commune, although all had a uniform ring in their repeated avowals of respect for the right of student dissent and their opposition to the militarization of the campus. But it was soon clear that normality for most of them was grounded on a nostalgic memory of the elitist, technocratic classrooms that the student communards had so hurriedly emptied when the state troopers poured into the university last week. One professor actually saw “normalcy” as the problem of not only bodily yanking the student out of the streets, removing his placards, flags and revolutionary slogans, but forcing him to keep his mind on spelling and trigo for the next six weeks.
Strangely, all of them see these things as necessary to “academic freedom”. When we examine what all these earnest people who claim to have only the academic integrity of the community at heart really mean by academic freedom, we find a contradiction that would be downright frightening, if it were not so stupid. The last seven days have pointed out for the entire world to see, the utter helplessness of one single university authority to stem the commando attacks of state troopers with shoot-to-kill orders by using the persuasion so dear to all old time Liberals. All dialogue was cut short by armalites, not excluding President Lopez’s own last remarks to the student barricaders on February second. It was possibly the only time in the twentieth century in which the president of a university was fired at by state troopers. Yet it is quite clear that the UP administration has forgiven the troopers, otherwise they could not beg of the students, even if it is in the right, to give way to them. For the regents to talk about academic freedom when the faculty arid administration have only one freedom — the freedom to order the students off the streets, in tacit collaboration with the troopers which they claim to abhor, is the height of the absurd.
Now that we kifow the trump card which President Lopez has had up his sleeve since last Thursday, we are constrained to note that it is suspiciously close to blackmail. In effect he begs the students to remove the barricades as a test of their personal support or he threatens to resign and throw the entire campus to Vicente Abad Santos and the dogs. If the president of the university, even after his “conversion” is a prisoner of the State (and what institutional head is not?) having successfully maneuvered this State-ordered demand for the removal of the barricades by a coercive order in outright surrender to coercion, is he then so deceived as to believe that he has affirmed academic freedom? In point of fact he has confirmed State fascism. By using the arguments of the Malacanang based Third Force, couched in a humanitarian aversion of bloodshed and damage to property, we are constrained to note that the State has forced Lopez to act promptly by holding the lives of his students, and the entire community for that matter, as hostages. That at the moment, we have the precise value of any common hostage in the State’s exercise of power, should stun the entire academic community into outrage. Constrained like Lopez, instead of attacking the violence of the State, they attack the “violence” of the victims of state violence, and then continue their placid discussions of academic freedom. They talk on and on, forgetting that they are only hostages.
The events of the last seven days have pointed out many things: among them the sub-literacy of many of our dear teachers on the simple ABC’s of mass action. As soon as the pictures of Metrocom guns stalking students outside Vinzons or Education dropped out of the front pages of the daily papers, certain ones began planning feverishly on how they could save themselves and their property in the event that things became worse, particularly the better heeled residents, some of whom own apartment houses in U.P. village which they rent out at steep rates to their own colleagues. A few who have been on the demand for ouster lists raised during student strikes suddenly disappeared and began making press statements about the disorder and anarchy on the campus. A few others complained and whined about inconveniences suffered. It is also possible that the Commune directorate displaced a certain clique of state agents who have constituted the UP brain trust and caused a mild panic when they discovered that they were expendable. Suddenly individual rights and freedom of movement assumed the old importance, as the psy-war became more intense.
Many of these residents were taken in by the false logic of individual struggle as against collective struggle and played into the hands of the state fascists by attempting to break the extraordinary solidarity achieved during the first three days on the barricades. Others who could not comprehend that solidarity both inside and from supporters on the outside is so essential at such a time, viewed strange faces on the barricades with distrust and fear, not knowing that some of these were the sons of UP employees or our loyal and uncomplaining supporters from Balara, or Krus na Ligas. So while students went without sleep, running water, clean clothes, and regular baths for almost five days, a few residents, egged on by those with dubious motives, whined about their “rights”, not realizing that if the state succeeded in sabotaging the struggle, none of their “rights” would mean anything of consequence.
The other sector of the highly degreed who seem to have flunked out somewhere on the basic principles of mass action were the Third Force people who quailed at the word commune, and naively jumped into the counter-revolutionary center as the government forces hoped they would. These also include those who see all struggles in terms of telephones and petitions, hot lines to Malacanan, City Hall or Congress, still seriously believing that the only way to dodge a troopers’ bullet is to outmaneuver him by intrigue at the top. This to them is the dignified and “right” way even though it may be counter-corruption. Students, workers, mass bases and barricades is the “wrong way”. It still has not managed to sink into their degreed skulls that they merely succeed in conspiring to make most of the community assume the status of hostages who can be shot the moment they step out of line; while they, the guarantors, succeed in a function which is unacademic to say the least; as erudite scabs.