JUNK O, SAVE UP by Jojo Robles, Manila Standard 8 March 2004

IF I may add to the cacophony of voices raised against this or that candidate: Please do not vote for one John Henry Renner Osmeña, reelectionist senator from Cebu.
This suggestion was prompted, though left unmentioned, by a recent letter I got from another prominent Cebuano, University of the Philippines president Francisco "Dodong" Nemenzo. Nemenzo wrote an impassioned letter to the UP Community last week denouncing Osmeña for almost single-handedly jettisoning the 10-year legislative effort to save the country's premier state university.
But can one senator, acting alone, really decide the future of an entire academic community? Of course not. Osmeña was helped along, though not actively, by the weak leadership of the Senate, personified by Ilonggo and fellow UP alumnus Franklin Drilon.
Yes, John O went to UP, where he studied engineering and — according to stage director and actor Tony Mabesa, a contemporary of the senator — discovered that he had a budding career in acting. Politics proved a headier brew for Osmeña, however, and he forsook "the roar of the greasepaint" for a lifetime as an office-seeker. All told, there are nine UP alumni in the 24-person Senate. So you'd think they would be more sympathetic to Senate Bill 2587, which seeks to update the ancient 1908 university charter to make UP more financially viable. But no. With the prominent exception of former UP student leader Senator Francis Pangilinan, Drilon and the rest of the ex-Diliman senators hushed up as John O lobbied to thwart Nemenzo and scuttle SB 2587, which never even got voted upon before the Senate adjourned after the first week of this month.
For reasons put forth by Osmeña that Nemenzo described in his letter as "puerile." Which is really insulting to young boys.
"Politicking of the most despicable type shelved what could have been the legislature's singular gift to the University of the Philippines," Nemenzo wrote. "Malice triumphed over reason."
Should we allow triumphant malice another victory at the polls? I don't think so.

* * * SB 2587 was first crafted 10 years ago, during the term of UP president Napoleon Abueva. Throughout the term of Abueva's successor, Emil Javier, UP carried on the fight to be designated a "national university," distinguished by its scholarship and research from other state universities and exempt from the government's salary standardization law. The bill, certified as urgent by the administration and passed unanimously by the Lower House, seeks to stem the faculty brain drain that has plagued UP for decades and would also allow the university to use its own savings and other monies directly to improve teaching and facilities.

The proposed law would grant tax exemptions for imports of materials needed for teaching and research, and greater institutional autonomy to enhance UP's ability to compete with the best universities in the region. Nemenzo, convinced of the importance of the bill, last year headed a last-ditch effort to have it passed before the end of the current Senate's term. It was a lobby campaign that would last for eight months but which would end in futility because of Osmeña's filibustering. This despite the fact that Nemenzo had already been assured by a clear majority of the senators that they would vote for the bill, if it came on the floor. But because of Osmeña's efforts, of course, the vote never happened. "Senator Osmeña, who would either suddenly disappear when it was his turn to interpellate, or otherwise make demands and claims so outrageous that it took every ounce of forbearance on the part of our University officials to suffer them in the hope that our bill would pass, regardless," Nemenzo said. A "peevish" John O "blithely dismissed" any and all arguments presented by the UP officials to dispute his claims during the hearings, Nemenzo added. And as for Drilon (last year's "Outstanding UP Alumnus") and the rest, well, they stood idly by, not even calling for a vote that would surely have defeated Osmeña's objections.
It soon became clear that Osmeña, according to Nemenzo, had his own reasons for objecting to the bill. "Osmeña reserved his worst diatribes for me, privately calling me a communist, blaming my relatives in Cebu for his political misfortunes, and vowing to make UP pay for 'demonizing' him during the bases debate more than a decade ago. He informed UP officials that only my immediate resignation from the UP presidency could secure his support for the Charter bill. When he realized that I was resolved to serve UP to the end of my term, he proceeded to do his best to achieve the same end and to maim SB 2587 in the process," a bitter Nemenzo recounted.

* * * Rightly, Nemenzo has refused to be cowed by his powerful provincemate. "I relish intellectual debate, and am used to the insults of the ignorant and the desperate," he said. "But this is not an argument between John Osmeña and myself. I would have no hesitation leaving office for the right reasons — but humoring John Osmeña is hardly one of them." For that matter, according to the UP president, "this is not even an argument, but petty tyranny at its worst, with brute political power prevailing over any possibility of reason. It is patently unjust to hold the future of the country's leading university hostage over some personal differences, no matter how deep they may be."

Is this the end, then, of the efforts to revive UP?
Nemenzo doesn't think so. "We will fight again, and we will fight on," he promised. "We cannot yield to demagoguery and intimidation. As disappointing as the results of this struggle have been, we also learned many things, and will employ those lessons in a fresh campaign to get a new Charter — perhaps one even better than the current version — drafted and passed."

Among those lessons "is my conviction that just as our legislators have always held UP accountable for its programs and its funds, so should UP hold the legislature and its individual members accountable for their acts of commission and omission. We can only pray — and mobilize — for the emergence of more responsible lawmakers and leaders who can truly help UP and Philippine higher education." That's where my call not to return John Osmeña to the Senate comes in. If UP alumni everywhere (and we are many and supposedly influential) heed it, perhaps the old, dying school will have a fighting chance.

:: Bing Wednesday, April 11, 2007 [+] ::
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