New normal: Bring back ROTC next school year

Last Monday I was able to interview Maj. Gen. Marlou L. Salazar, Regional Director-7 for the Civil Defense Office in Region-7 and I found out that he is also the Regional Inter-Agency Task Force (RITF) head for Region-7. In short, Region-7 is not only being taken cared of by the Office of the Presidential Assistant (OPAV) Michael Dino… or our elected leaders like Cebu Governor Gwen F. Garcia, Cebu City Mayor Edgardo C. Labella or Mandaue City Mayor Jonas Cortez or Mayor Ahong Chan of Lapu-Lapu City or Mayor Sam Sam Gullas of Talisay City… but people under the Office of the President and all its regional offices. 

Anyway, one of the major things that we discussed is the return of the Reserved Officers Training Corps (ROTC) especially that it is already May and the Department of Education (DepEd) is preparing to reopen our schools either this coming June or in September. So when can we expect this to happen? I can only hope it would happen very soon.

Again I would like to point out that the ROTC is the only subject in College that teaches you love of country! Just study the students who are against ROTC and you will see many of them are leftists who support the communist underground movement. They know too well that a town that has ROTC reservists can easily overwhelm the New People’s Army (NPA).

In truth during the mid-1960 the ROTC was really training reservists properly with the right training for soldiers complete with arms. This however changed drastically in September 1972 when then Pres. Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law and his military forces went to all the schools and universities and removed all those arms held by these schools and universities, scared that the ROTC might go against Martial Law. 

Anyway, the post Martial Law ROTC had to march with wooden arms… making them a laughing stock. In my view the Marcos military sold all those firearms to Vietnam as it was the height of the Vietnam War. Anyway if and when this pandemic is over… our new normal should include the return of the ROTC complete with rifle and pistol shooting, finding food in the forest, helping in emergency medical services. 

It must also include additional training in traffic management, firefighting, crowd control or support for natural disasters like typhoons and earthquakes. Then I expect that our military advisers would come up with a map of each municipality or town and draw up defensive positions in case of NPA attacks. This is the only way we can bring back the ROTC that our people would welcome their return.

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Many of our readers who agree with my suggestion that the Philippine Senate should immediately declare a halt on the construction of the P8.9 billion Senate Office in BGC. At this time when we need a new normal way of thinking we expect our 24 Senators to use our tax money for more important issues… like what I suggested… that the Office of the President should immediately construct a huge hospital ship perhaps a bit smaller than the US Navy Hospital Ship USNS Mercy, but complete with medical equipment and medical staff, where we can request Congress for those graduating in medical schools must do at least six months training on board these medical ship before they are allowed to graduate. 

But again I would like to say that we only heard a deafening silence from the Senate, not even from my friend, Sen. Dick Gordon. Clearly the Senate wants this expensive offices to be constructed even at this time. At this point… it is high time for people who want true political changes in this country to resume their call for a unicameral legislature. We really don’t need 24 Senators throwing away needed funds for luxurious offices. 

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We just talked about returning the ROTC in the coming school year. But let me inform you that I was quite elated by the news that the Bar exams for 2021 might be held in Cebu as part of the Supreme Court’s regionalization of the Bar exams. This was one topic that my good friend, former University of Cebu-College of Law (USC) dean Baldomero Estenzo has been pushing this for years.

Indeed for people living far and away from Metro Manila… taking the Bar exams is an expensive proposition compared to people already living there. Fortunately things are beginning to change when we learned the news that the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Diosdado Peralta and 2020 Bar chairman Associate Justice Marvic Leonen agreed to hold two separate venues for the 2021 Bar exam – one in Manila and the other in Cebu. University of Santo Tomas (UST) in Manila has been the venue for Bar exams since 2011. Wow! Call it the new normal for the SC!

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