Universities and colleges alleged red recruitment centers?

The 18 institutions of learning tagged by Malacañang as centers for recruitment by leftist organizations are crying foul. They say they were condemned without first being heard. They deny the accusations, and many of their students and faculty have even gone beyond mere denial to stage demonstrations rallies and use social media to denounce the president, the armed forces, and the whole administration. The radicals and ideologically-linked youth organizations, student alliances, and other progressive organizations, including fraternities and sororities have taken a strong stand against what they denounce as a blanket accusation without due process.

Look who’s talking. The favored elite in UP who enjoy free tuition and miscellaneous fees at the expense of taxpayers are denouncing the Duterte government, the first administration in all of history to give free tertiary education in all public universities. DepEd Secretary Leonor Briones, a certified former activist and ideological thinker and advocate, is silent. Not only because she is in government. It is because she must have realized the huge accomplishments of Duterte in education. Neither Cory nor PNoy did that for children in Hacienda Luisita. FVR and GMA didn’t do it. Erap, being a dropout, didn’t consider education important and urgent so we can forgive him.

Today, children of farmers and fishermen are studying in UP, rubbing elbows with the children of congressmen and Cabinet members. I should know, the son of my driver is now in UP, with full scholarship and residing inside the dormitory. The activists in UP should be fair enough and stop behaving like rich colegialas in exclusive schools. They should open their eyes to the fact that they are unwittingly being used by the opposition, the CPP/NPA/NDF to advance their political and military struggle to put the whole nation under the control and domination of a foreign ideology, alien to our history and culture.

History tells us the fist activist and revolutionary was Dr. Jose Rizal from Ateneo, Letran, and UST. Joma Sison and Edgar Jopson were student activists from UP. Our own Pastor Alcover, now a Cebu City councilor, was an activist in SWU. There were many student leaders from UV, USC, CSJ-R, CIT, USP, and UP Cebu who were rounded up in 1972 for being involved in the then Kabataang Makabayan and Samahang Demokratikong Kabataan. I should know, I was a student council president in 1972 and was one of those who spent weeks in Camp Sergio Osmeña Sr. And so, people should not react negatively if the military identifies their institutions of being hotbeds of activists. Such a branding used to be a mark of honor. To not be in a stockade during martial law was ignominy. It means you did not love your country. If you were not held in captive, you were not “in.”

The military conducted intelligence operations and pinpointed the 18 institutions. Their work enjoys the presumption of regularity. Between their info and the speculations of activists, people should believe the uniformed officers and men and women sworn to protect the country and defend the people. The activists of today shall become the reactionaries of tomorrow. Many of them may become councilors in Cebu City, even military officials. That is the pattern of human metamorphosis, proven by facts and empirical data.