Books, not bullets

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile claimed that the Philippine military is weak because government budgeting has always given priority to education, and he proposed a constitutional amendment to put military spending as the top priority (“Enrile’s Cha-cha solution to PH security draws mixed reactions,” Inquirer, 7/3/12).

We cannot understand how a Senate president, even if he was once with the military and the defense department, aware of all the problems our educational system is facing, could propose to prioritize military spending over education.

For the past decades, we have been witness to the lack of classrooms, teachers, books, sanitary facilities, and many other necessities in our public elementary and high schools. Outside the big cities, schools are out of reach, if not nonexistent at all. State universities and colleges have been up in arms for the past years, protesting the dwindling state subsidy. Public universities are left with no choice but to increase tuition fees, thus making education inaccessible to the majority of the people and driving more and more young people out of school; or forcing these universities to lease their assets even for purely commercial purposes, thus compromising academic, extension and research functions.

Despite the constitutional provision to prioritize education, increases in the education budget have always been nominal and artificial, compared to government allocations for military spending, pork barrel and, most specially, debt servicing.

Debt servicing is effectively the top budgeting priority and this is because of the automatic appropriation for debt servicing.

Education makes or breaks a nation. The last thing we expect our legislators to do—considering the comparatively low spending in education (in fact, the lowest among our neighbor-countries and way behind the international standard), the crisis in our education system (high number of school dropouts, low employment chances after graduation), and the lack of genuine progress—is to replace education as the top budget priority.

We refuse to accept Enrile’s claim and proposal. “Libro, hindi bala (Books, not bullets)” seems to be an old line, but it is what the Constitution prescribes when it comes to budgeting.  “Gusto ko, happy ka (I want you to be happy)!” cannot be realized if the country has an uneducated, illiterate youth.

—CLEVE ARGUELLES,

UP Manila Political Science,

UP System student regent,

clevekevinrobertarguelles

@gmail.com