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Pagpupugay sa mga Iskolar ng Bayan!

Magpatuloy at Maglingkod sa Bayan!
by Angeli Louise T. Cando

Ika-25 ng Setyembre 2011

Pagpupugay sa mga Iskolar ng Bayan! Magpatuloy at Maglingkod sa Bayan!

Pinakamataas na pagpupugay sa lahat ng mga Iskolar ng Bayan na lumahok sa kilos-protesta noong ika-23 ng Setyembre 2011 upang tutulan ang panibagong pagkakaltas sa pondo ng UP at mga SUCs at upang igiit ang mas mataas na subsidyo para sa edukasyon at batayang serbisyong panlipunan!

Hindi biro ang ginawa nating pagliban sa ating mga klase upang makiisa sa laban ng buong mamamayan, ngunit pinili pa rin nating sumama at magmartsa sa lansangan kasama ang iba pang mga Iskolar ng Bayan sa iba pang mga pamantasan dahil batid nating ito ay tama. Sa kabila ng napakaraming exams, nangibabaw pa rin ang ating paninindigan. Ating ipinakita at pinatunayan na hindi hadlang ang mga exams upang ipagpatuloy natin ang ating paggigiit para sa ating karapatan. Hindi tayo natinag sa init ng araw at bulusok ng mga sasakyan. Ipinakita lamang natin na nananatili pa ring nag-aalab ang dugo ng isang tunay, palaban at makabayang Iskolar ng Bayan.

Sa ginawa ng mga Iskolar, Kawani at Guro ng Bayan sa buong bansa, tiyak na nakalampag natin ang ating pambansang pamahalaan. At kung mananatili pa rin silang bingi sa ating mga daing at patuloy na lilinlangin ang buong mamamayan, hamon ulit sa atin na magpatuloy sa paglaban. Hamon din sa atin na mga Iskolar na palagi, sa ating bawat laban, ay huwag nating ihihiwalay ang ating mga sarili sa mga mamamayan lalo’t higit sa batayang masa. Dapat ay mas pahigpitin pa natin ang ating pakikiisa sa kanila dahil hindi naman hiwalay ang ipinaglalaban natin sa ipinaglalaban nila.

Ang krisis na nararanasan nating mga kabataan at ng buong sambayanan ay bunga ng isang mapang-api at mapagsamantalang sistemang panlipunan na hindi natin kailanman ninais. Hangga’t ito ay nananatili, magpapatuloy pa rin ang pagpapahirap sa buong mamamayan. Hangga’t ito ay hindi nalalansag patuloy din ang paglaban at pagkilos ng mga mamamayan.

Sa kasalukuyang kaganapan sa ating bayan, napapanahon ang mga malawakang pag-aaral ng lipunan at malakihang mga pagkilos. Napapanahon ang pagkukwestyon at pagtutol sa kasalukuyang daloy ng ating lipunan. Napapanahon ang pagpapataas ng antas ng ating kamulatan at pakikibaka. Ang hindi pagtindig at paglaban sa panahon ng matinding pangangailangan ay pagtalikod sa tunay na esensiya ng pagiging isang Iskolar ng Bayan. Ito ay isang krimen sa mga mamamayan.

Sulong Iskolar! Patuloy na manindigan! Paglingkuran ang sambayanan!


-Sandigan para sa Mag-aaral at Sambayanan Party Alliance (SAMASA-PA)
ANAKBAYAN . League of Filipino Students (LFS) . OIKOS (Ecological Movement) . Samahan ng mga Mag-aaral at Kabataang Kababaihan (SAMAKA-KA) . SAMASA Mass Organization . Hamili Brotherhood . Hamilia Sisterhood

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Streetwise
By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo

Protests are good

The protracted global economic depression is sending the economies of even advanced capitalist countries such as the United States and members of the European Union on a tailspin. Despite fits of financial convulsions due to the bursting of economic bubbles and now EU countries threatening to default on their sovereign debts if not bailed out, most official quarters still minimize the extent and depth of the crisis of global capitalism.

But the average person-on-the-street in the perennially underdeveloped countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East as well as the most advanced capitalist countries in the West knows from experience that this global economic depression is for real.

It is making life harder and harder even for the touted “middle class”. Worse it is unclear how or when the crisis will end and how or if the people’s situation will improve.

All over the world, what is becoming exceedingly clear for a growing number of working people and their families – wage workers, salaried employees and the bourgeoning underclass of unemployed, under-employed and self-employed individuals trying to scrape together a living – is that they are being made to unfairly bear the burden of this crisis.

And they are fighting back. They are demanding changes that mean something to them and are not mere empty promises.

In this country, students, teachers and school officials are marching in the streets to decry budget cuts for state colleges and universities. Health care workers are up in arms over slashed budgets of public hospitals and public health programs.

They denounce the Aquino government’s budget priorities: debt servicing, conditional cash transfers aka dole-outs and military outlays that go down the drain of corruption and failed counter-insurgency programs.

They reject the privatization and commercialization of basic social services such as education, health care and housing and public utilities such as water, electricity and public transport.

Militant transport workers, in particular jeepney drivers and operators, along with the riding public have staged protests and strikes to dramatize their opposition to run away oil prices. They attribute this to the foreign and domestic oil cartel and speculators in the oil futures market manipulating the oil price and raking in super profits, together with the oil deregulation law and the national government’s “hands-off” policy even as it collects windfall value-added-tax on higher oil prices.

The protesters are demanding the scrapping of deregulation policies, centralized government procurement of crude oil to take advantage of the cheapest prices, the scrapping of VAT on oil and for the government to take the commanding heights of developing a sustainable and people-oriented energy policy that is free from foreign domination and control.

Workers are on a warpath against the policy of contractualization that is ravaging their jobs, security of tenure, wages and benefits leading to labor being at the complete mercy of capital. They are calling for the implementation of the twin policies of land reform and national industrialization to optimize the utilization of the country’s natural and human resources and to create jobs and livelihoods for the army of unemployed and underemployed, especially the youth.

Homeless people living in shanty colonies in urban centers are resisting spontaneously against violent demolitions of their make-do residences only to be literally thrown into the streets. They reject so-called government cum private development projects which exclude them but instead cater to commercial and financial big business interests.

In the US, there have been work stoppages and mass protests over lay-offs, budget cuts, withdrawal of entitlements and subsidies both in the public and private sectors. Migrant workers and other immigrants have denounced job discrimination, police racial profiling and severe restrictions as well as harassment from immigration authorities.

Fed-up ordinary Americans are staging an ongoing “Occupy Wall Street” campaign wherein hundreds if not thousands of people have been conducting a daily sit-in protest at the heart of the financial district in New York City, pointing their fingers at the behemoths of finance capital for their economic dislocation and immiseration.

Greece, Spain, France and Italy have witnessed hordes of their people pouring out into the streets to reject government austerity measures after the public coffers have been emptied in bail-outs for the banks and other financial institutions and other failed neo-liberal policies as well as profligacy of their ruling elites. They are also demanding jobs and social justice against the corporate elite and their political backers who continue to control the highest levers of power.

In North Africa and the Middle East, the political upheavals that have removed or are trying to depose entrenched authoritarian regimes continue. The workers and youth in Egypt, for example, will not settle for the mere removal of their previous ruler, Mubarak, but are calling for his trial and those of his cohorts to account for their crimes against the people.

They reject the military’s hold on power and demand greater political representation of ordinary people in decision-making. They call for an end to failed policies that have only managed to deepen their people’s impoverishment and misery and the backwardness and stagnation of their economy. They vigorously call the US to account for backing the Mubarak regime and its policy of rapprochement with the Zionists in Israel.

Sooner than expected, the real objectives of US-NATO in invading Libya are revealed. For one, Libya is being turned into their newest field of investment (read: dumping ground of surplus capital), with the IMF-World Bank "asked" to "rehabilitate" the Libyan economy using the billions of dollars the Libyan government has invested in foreign banks, and to repair its infrastructure damaged by the US-NATO bombings.

All these developments are rooted in the inability of the global capitalist system to fully recover from the global economic crisis triggered by the financial meltdown in 2007-08. The continuing and intensifying paroxysms in the very centers of capital belie all claims that the world economy has recovered or is on the way to recovery.

This is not at all surprising since none of the neoliberal policies that have brought about the crisis has been reversed. Measures have not been put in place for regulating transactions in financial derivative long identified as one of the major culprits that brought about the meltdown. Worse, the US and European governments, invariably beholden to and directed by finance capital, continue to conspire to this day in diverting public funds meant for housing, education and other basic social services to rescue the latter.

Corporate media and bourgeois propaganda may have succeeded for some time in conjuring the illusion of recovery and brighter times ahead, the reality of continuing joblessness, rising prices and loss of social security inevitably catches up and bursts whatever bubble of false hope remains.

Thus while it can be argued that the people’s protests are long overdue and still need to gain strength and momentum, these have so far been the only forces that have mitigated the greed and avarice of the big capitalists and their agents in the bureaucracies.

In the medium and long run, they are bound to grow and gain more strength as the crisis worsens and the hardships become more intolerable worldwide. #

Published in Business World
30 Sept - 1 October 2011

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Letter from the UP Student Regent: It's not about the money money money

IN REPLY TO:

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/65017/abad-tells-activists-more-funds-won%E2%80%99t-do

Students took to the streets last week to protest the education crisis, not merely the budget cuts. If money were the only factor necessary to ensure quality education, UP would outpace all other state colleges and universities ten times over. UP (inclusive of PGH budget P5.54 billion, with RLIP P6.6 billion) would be doing mathematical differentials while the Philippine State College of Aeronautics (P70,062) and Marikina Polytechnic College (P67,043) are still learning addition.

Why does government find it hard to engage the claim of activists that the education crisis stems from factors, and gives rise to issues beyond education spending? One of the most simple correlations we’ve raised is this:
 

1. Underfunding of education – Quality education is influenced by the quality of teachers, the quality of infrastructure and equipment, and ultimately, the quality of the students. This is where underfunding matters most; Secretary Butch Abad should know this by now. Teachers need to feed themselves, the school buildings have to stay up, the laboratories need to be well-stocked, and the students have to pay jeep and train fares to get to school. This is exacerbated by inequitable funding.
 

2. Inequitable funding – Government makes so many distinctions: first between basic and tertiary education, and then among state colleges and universities. What is clear is that education is being funded disproportionately. This results in distinct differences between the quality of education in each school, leading to commercialization of education.
 

3. Commercialization of education – Education is a treated like a commodity, hawked like property. In such sense, thus it must conform to the demands of the times. This is why we have the perennial debate between private and public control over education, but in either domain, there is a lack of framework for our educational system.
 

4. Lack of educational framework for education – We have no substantial goals nor sound philosophy for our education. The Long Term Higher Education Development Plan aims to “diffuse knowledge in the relevant and responsive to the dynamically changing domestic and international environment.” It is, mildly put, reactionary. The government has no vision for this country; we lack a national industrialization framework.
 

5. Lack of national industrialization framework for the country – We have no specific growth goals for our country which is backward and semi-feudal. Are we going to be a production-based country? Agricultural? Manufacturing? Services? A mix of all?
 

True, there are many inefficiencies lodged in running our schools, like when we print ten excess test papers, or when we hire two fresh graduates when what we need is one with an MA. Our school administrators try their best to minimize all of these; this is why UP President Alfredo Pascual espouses “operational excellence” along with academic excellence. But we balk when our esteemed academic and administrative heads are compelled to be political lackeys – so they can secure sufficient funds from the Department of Budget and Management, Congress, and the President; and especially, assure the timely release of the funds. (Note: Over nine years, the unreleased appropriations for UP reached P6.19 billion.)

It is easy to say that the 10,000 students who missed classes last week were noisy and pesky brats; even easier to call them lousy students and flunkies. Focus on your studies, says Abigail Valte rather rashly. Ms Valte probably lived with parents and learned from teachers who measured intelligence by the book. For these kinds of people, memorizing Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo would be the best measure of nationalism. It is as if, had we really studied, we would never have noticed how injudicious the system is. Our progressive education and our society are training us for lifelong learning, and how we wish President Noynoy Aquino, Secretary Abad and Ms Valte were prepared as well.

Defend public education and health care! Fight for greater state subsidy to social services!


Krissy Conti
UP Student Regent
krissy.conti@gmail.com
09165435216