The 2012 national budget has been signed by President Aquino. It has been heavily criticized for misconstruing the concept of social services by concentrating on doles and political accommodations instead of structural reforms and output. It has been ratified in record time, at the expense of comprehensive public scrutiny and participatory governance.
For this budget cycle, the University of the Philippines community has aired its most plaintive and most earnest case for greater state subsidy. When the administration proposed P17 billion for the 2012 budget, UP officials turned out in full force ready to justify every item in the account. Chancellors of every UP unit were present in congressional hearings.
The students, traditionally excluded from administrative decision-making, have been creative in campaigning for an adequate UP budget, a necessary corollary to the larger aspiration to quality and accessible education.
Last semester’s strike achieved many goals: we consolidated our ranks, gained national attention, triggered public debate, influenced media and public agenda and cornered a segment of supporters—judiciary employees, health workers, government workers, parents.
Although the only product of our congressional lobbying is a P200-million increase in the UP budget, we count all these as a victory in our protracted engagement with government.
More importantly, we are quietly learning. All these build on lessons in participatory governance and responsive policymaking, in social relevance and social justice. As we broaden perspectives and widen our goals, we stand now united. We see the UP budget only as a means to an end: after all, a nationalist, scientific and mass-oriented education can jump-start national and industrial development.
Perhaps among the most important things we know now is that we can choose to reject the system. The way things are run today, by an older generation resigned to the status quo and reformism, is almost impossible to correct. Why is it that we need to yell in order to be heard? Why do we need to beg for our rights? Why are we taught to think out of the box, but then told to do things the “tried and tested” way? Why do we work to live, instead of the other way around? Devoid of objective idealism, this system has only skewed the benefits of our society in favor of those who least need it, or deserve it.
The youth of today refuse to inherit a world embroiled in its own irrationality, in privatizing social services and in prioritizing the interests of the elite. In other countries abroad, the Occupy movement has been led by young people against social and economic inequity, for a revolutionary rethinking and redoing of social structures and processes.
We pledge to replicate and to improve on that philosophy in the Philippines.
We are excited to make this world not only better, but better for all of us.
—KRISSY CONTI, UP student regent,
krissy.conti@gmail.com