APPLAUSE TO UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS ON ITS QUADRICENTENNIAL

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

This writer hereby extends Big Kudos to the Dominican-run University of Santo Tomas on its 400^th Anniversary!

The University of Santo Tomas or UST, established 400 years ago in the Intramuros district of (old) Manila, has finally grown, matured, and reached international acclaim as an institution of higher learning. It had added milestones to its earlier feat as the oldest university in the Philippines, which renders it worthy of the accolades on its quadricentennial.

I still recall as a young school boy in the 1960s, that my teachers as well as history & geography textbook authors cited the UST as the nest of brilliant youth who later became great minds. Our national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal, obtained his first level of university education from the UST (he took up advanced studies in Europe after the UST stint).

More patriots followed after the footsteps of Dr. Rizal later. The late Manuel L. Quezon, president of the country during the USA’s colonial occupation, was among them. A visionary whose thoughts were to linger long after he was gone, Quezon is among the great patriots of the motherland. He underwent collegiate education in the noble UST.

The UST did not only churn out great men in past eras. In this current context, we have the likes of Bienvenido Lumbera, one of the literary giants of the ASEAN and a National Artist, among UST’s alumni. And so is Brilliante Mendoza, CANNES Film Festival awardee as Best Director, among the long list of upcoming luminaries of the Philippines and the ASEAN.

If there is any coterie of minds that I would give due credit for re-inventing UST that enabled it to be among Asia-Pacific’s top 200 universities, it is the Filipino Dominicans and the Filipino professors who resonated with the innovative designs of their priestly sponsors. The new breed of Dominicans dared to transform the university’s teaching force from one of purely teaching tasks to one of scholarly research faculty broke the long tradition and moved the UST out of stasis.

Without meaning to denigrate the White Dominicans from Europe who dominated UST’s echelon for too long a time, I would have to state candidly that it was during their stewardship that UST stagnated. Thus, it was known for its oldness bereft of the qualitative substance of being a progenitor of new philosophies, arts movements, and scientific R & D.

UST’s faculty was merely tasked to teach, and was assigned huge teaching loads (e.g. teaching 24 units), hence disabling them from engaging in productive research and/or artistic productions. It was during the stagnation phase that the much younger universities—University of the Philippines, Ateneo De Manila University, De La Salle University—became international universities, breaching the UST’s records by several notches.

I asked some pals of mine in the 80s and early 90s—who were teaching in UST—to share their own opinion regarding the relative stagnation of the UST. Without batting eyelashes, they blamed the over-bearing and subtly racist predominance of White Dominicans for the long stasis. Accordingly, the latter were of the mindset that they came to PH to civilize the Filipinos, a condescending if not arrogant attitude.

I was appraised of the situation within the campus and of the arduous efforts of Filipino Dominicans to make their dent in a context where Jurassic colonial tradition was still strong. By the 1990s the innovative Filipino Dominicans and UST professors were finally making headway. As a result, the UST made it to the top 200 universities in the Asia-Pacific in the late 1990s.

Research institutions have since been evolving within the present campus in the Sampaloc district. Some professorial pals of mine, who were products of the U.P. and DSLU and who took up doctorates in top universities abroad, have decided to base themselves in UST. They are now taking up the cudgels of re-engineering their respective departments, thanks to the new policy environment crafted by Filipino Dominicans.

Finally, as UST’s professorial pool has been up-scaling their research & development capabilities, building research institutions and generating research & publications products, the university is on the way to move UST to the next level, which is that of ‘world university’ status. I am highly supportive of the re-engineering, even as I’m confident the university will get there in the foreseeable future.

[Philippines, 15 February 2011]

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LUISITA’S OWNERS MASSACRED UNIONISTS AFTER NEAR-RESOLVED DEADLOCK

Prof. Erle Frayne D. Argonza

University of the Philippines

This development consultant and social scientist, who shortly served the GMA regime as a director at the Office of External Affairs or OEA, wishes to inform the public of a plain truth regarding the massacre of unionists by the owners-managers of the Hacienda Luisita.

That massacre was hardly warranted, as a back-channel negotiation was going on before the gory day, with Luisita unionists agreeing to withdraw their mass action and return to work. No less than palace demigods called for the backdoor negotiations, which was already in progress before the bloody event took place on November 16, 2004.

I was among the core officers who assisted Sec. Edgardo Pamintuan  organize the newly established OEA in 2004 right after PGMA took her oath (we comprised of assistant secretaries, directors, consultants). The OEA was assigned membership in the political, communications, and intelligence clusters of cabinet, to recall some basic facts.

The OEA had hardly warmed up as a ‘freshman agency’, when a directive came from the Office of the Presidency or OP, for our agency to help resolve the Luisita deadlock. My boss, Sec. Pamintuan or EdPam, had proved his talent at back-channel negotiations, being one such negotiator between the GRP and National Democratic Front, and so the application of the same ‘best practice’ to the Luisita deadlock proved all too facile for the noblesse negotiator.

Most urgently, Sec. Pamintuan instructed his executive team to contact the leadership of the federation to which the local Luisita union belonged, the Kilusang Mayo Uno or KMU. The OEA’s main task was to serve as bridgehead and clearinghouse between the various constituency groups and the OP, a task that it immediately began doing upon its very inception circa 2^nd quarter of 2004. Inviting the KMU to a consultative talk was routine task for the OEA, KMU being a long established constituency group representing the labor sector.

We OEA officials felt so glad that the KMU arrived pronto right in our office at the Bahay Ugnayan – Malacañang Palace. Practically the top brass of the federation came. We gave them a warm reception, and our exchanges were very cordial.

After the issues were clarified and the messages exchanged, the federation committed to consult with the local union. The maximum expectation was for the union to withdraw its forces and end the protest, with the quid pro quo that the 300+ union officials and members who were retrenched will be allowed to RTW (return to work). [Note: Luisita’s wage was a pathetic P9.50 per day which the union vehemently protested.]

Amid the intensifying crisis, action was swift as the federation and (local) union did clarify and resolve issues during rush consultations. Finally, to our merriment, the news came to our office that the local union was already decided on withdrawing its forces/dismantling the barricade, and was ready to sit down with Luisita management to communicate their modified demands including RTW.

We were almost at the point of euphoria over the success of the back-channel talk, when the horrifying flash news reached our office that the Philippine National Police stepped in and resorted to brutal and brazen slaying of unarmed unionists and supporters. It was an utterly unnecessary move, in as much as the local union was already in the process of withdrawing its protesting forces and prepared to sit down with the owners & management of the hacienda.

As per reports brought to our office then, the Luisita management, with the complicity of top DOLE officials, called upon the Philippine National Police to disperse the protesting farm workers & supporters. It was clearly an arrogant display of brute force and one-sided communications, with no compunction shown at all during that dreadful moment of firing automatic rifles on unarmed unionists.

Not only human rights were violated on that black day, there was also a clear violation of good governance in a number of ways: (a) authoritarian management that is inappropriate to the current context; (b) distrust of the organized sector of farm workers and their disabling from participation in renovating human resource systems in the hacienda; and, (c) hubris and brazen display of excessive force in resolving a deadlock that was in a near-resolution situation.

We need not even bother to find out whether certain officers of the law are under the payola of the Luisita paymasters. Or, that certain labor inspectors and officials are likewise in the payroll of the same paymasters. Such a system of corruption has been in place for nigh decades, and has never been rooted out.

It is truly bothersome for a co-owner of the Luisita, Noynoy Aquino, to mouth good governance as a banner motto in his campaign for the presidency. The facts about Luisita affairs hardly substantiate Aquino’s claim of “hindi ako magnanakaw.” Cojuanco family’s Luisita is replete with narratives of corruption and blood spilt to sustain operations, rendering moot and delusional any claim by its owners to puritanical moralism.

Good governance is not just about “hindi magnanakaw.” It is a coherent concept that is operationalized as: (a) efficient management; (b) enabling civil society-state dialogue; (c) participative management, observing a partnering modality between labor & management and not a subordinated treatment of labor by managers-owners; (d) low to nil graft/transparency; and, (e) political will in pursuing visions, mission, objectives, and related ends.

Noynoy Aquino represents the cacique class and is a product of an oligarchic lineage and milieu. He reduced ‘good governance’ to a parochial propaganda cliché, a term that he may have little understanding about based on the practice of corporate governance in Luisita.

The last thing that ought to happen in this country is to keep on recycling oligarchic rule, an evil system that is perpetuated by non-thinking voters who are as gullible as those overseas workers sweet-talked by illegal recruiters. It is now time to put an end to this sordid evil, for prolonging it further will bring us down to a Dark Age which happens at the tail end of any oligarchic regime (e.g. classical Greece was destroyed by the Athenian oligarchs’ lust for wars against Persia).

I just hope that, in case Aquino will win the polls, and the greedy grafters and ‘kamag-anak incorporated’ around him will grab juicy state posts in wild abandon, plundering at will like there was no end to  colossal loots, I won’t end up echoing “I told you so.” Honestly, I would, and will sonorously burst with guffaws.

[Philippines, 19 April 2010. Prof. Argonza is an international consultant, academic, and Fellow of the prestigious Asia-wide Eastern Regional Organization for Public Administration or EROPA. He is also a long-time grassroots worker, serving marginal sectors for over three decades. See also: IKONOKLAST: http://erleargonza.blogspot.com.]