
The government’s push to revive the mandatory Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program has been met by opposition, particularly from the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) and Kabataan party lists, saying genuine education should instead be advocated to influence the critical thinking of students.
ACT called the move a “blatant attempt to use our youth as pawns in geopolitical conflicts,” while Kabataan said the government should instead use ROTC funds on state universities and colleges.
The trigger was Senate Majority Leader Francis Tolentino’s recent statement over the weekend, saying that the renewed push to reintroduce mandatory ROTC to college students would be a “big help” in instilling in them a “strong love for the country” amid growing tensions between Beijing and Manila in the West Philippine Sea.
“The push for mandatory ROTC is not about instilling discipline or nationalism, but about preparing our young people as cannon fodder for the rising threat of war in the region,” ACT chair Vladimer Queta said. He cited the case of Mark Welson Chua, a University of Santo Tomas student who was murdered in 2001 after he exposed corrupt practices within the university’s ROTC ranks.
Queta warned that reviving mandatory ROTC would only expose the youth to similar dangers. Instead, he urged government to push for a “genuine patriotic education” to foster critical thinking, peace promotion, and safeguarding the country’s sovereignty without having to resort to ROTC.
Renee Louise Co, national executive vice president of Kabataan party list, said that Congress should refocus to restore the huge budget cuts suffered by some state universities and colleges (SUCs) instead. She estimated that the ROTC program would cost government around P61.2 billion when there are 28 SUCs facing P14.4 billion in budget cuts next year.
The push to revive mandatory ROTC is difficult to explain, as it has not yielded positive measurable results back then, and there were surely valid reasons why the program came to an unheralded end. If the lawmakers who want it to happen are convinced that it is a good thing, it would be best if they came up with real reasons why it should be revived and why government should spend billions on it.*