UP ka-Diliman

The University of the Philippines is supposed to be screening and listening to the proposed programs of candidates among six potential UP presidents after Danny Concepcion. If I may, I would like to suggest to the Board of Regents or whoever is doing the screening inside UP and Malacañang to please ask the candidates for a business plan or program that will address the needed day-to-day technology such as internet services on campus, particularly in all dormitories of all UP campuses all over the country.

I don’t know how much was achieved under the Concepcion presidency but at the start I reached out to the UP president because of the deplorable conditions in dorms such as in UP Baguio, where students had to go outside campus for internet connectivity. Then I found out that students could not bring in electric pots or similar equipment to heat water or cook food because the system was not designed for or adapted to such modern needs like using a microwave!

Very recently a concerned mother of a student in UP Diliman called the campus as UP KA-Diliman because of the serious lack of street lighting on campus as well as the lack of security personnel or police presence. As a result, the mother is forced to wait for her daughter to come out from classes and pick her up. Although UP is now only number 2 to Ateneo, I think there are still sufficient bright minds on campus and the administration building who could organize a fund raiser or find an alumnus in Congress to donate several hundred solar lights to light up UP campus in Diliman, maybe even all the other campuses. If Leyte and Samar can waste P80 million lighting up the San Juanico Bridge, I’m sure every UP graduate currently employed would be willing to pay for one solar lamp! P80 million would have paid for 40,000 solar lights!

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There is now a growing impression among the public and the media that many members of the PNP have developed or acquired very dangerous practices and murderous behavior as a result of the anti-drug campaigns during the administration of former president Duterte. The repeated verbal suggestions to use violence against criminals and the absence of any serious system for accountability, many believe, has resulted in many killings and a mentality that makes the life of a criminal or perceived “enemy” or suspect cheap and disposable.

An example of this would be the arrest of 11 police officers and their informants in the kidnapping and disappearance of three young men. Before that the case of the 34 missing sabungeros, not to mention the countless dead small-time drug users and dealers. Making people disappear in a concrete-filled drum or a deep pit somewhere in the hills conveniently prevents us from calling them killings and murders. That is how things are now done.

Judging from the series of arrests of their fellow policemen-turned scalawags, the PNP can no longer write the incidents off as “isolated cases” or minimal in numbers. To be fair to the PNP and the DILG, especially under the current administration, they have acted with speed and determination to arrest and lock up cops with blood on their hands. But what about the prevailing concern and belief that many police officers have lost respect for the value of life or won’t think twice about killing someone who happens to have been pointed to by an informant or disliked by a wealthy patron or politician? How do we turn around the greater number of cops who might be tempted to use “short cuts” or extrajudicial killings simply because the justice system is so corrupt and so lenient? How do you “treat” someone of their murderous tendencies and violent inclinations?

I recently heard someone from abroad talk about how other countries somehow managed to deal with this sort of mindset and violent practices that developed during the reign of authoritarian leaders and governments. While we make light of it in places such as the Philippines, I was told that practices such as “truth commissions” or face-to-face encounters and listening to narratives of victims and perpetuators do have a very strong impact on an even wider audience who hear the accounts of horror, terror, loss, guilt and a lifetime of suffering from both the victims and the enforcers.

Listening to the consequences of a “convenient-deadly solution” from the mouth a child deprived of a father, to hear the desperation of a jobless widow struggling to find food and a place to stay for several kids, listening to the horror and repeated nightmares of a victim of rape/torture/false charges and its life-long effects and then to hear them speak about God, forgiveness and prayers, it turns people around.

Even the perpetrators eventually become “victims” too. I have met some people who, in the line of their work, have taken not just one or two lives — a soldier and an officer ordered to bomb a place of worship, a police officer given a quota to dispose of drug dealers and users in their area of assignment. Some followed orders, some filed for transfer or schooling and suffered long term consequences in terms of promotions and opportunities, some simply pulled the trigger or lobbed the grenade while saying to whom it may concern. But they spent the rest of their lives reliving the story in anger or in tears. Perhaps these are also life-changing stories that can guide others before they have to make such choices or mistakes.

A face-to-face gathering of “victims” from both sides is something worth considering. Just being able to tell our story often helps, being able to confess our guilt becomes a relief and seeing the face makes it real life. Let us save ourselves from ourselves through others.