Conclusion
IN 2001 a murder turned the system of maintaining a trained pool of manpower for the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) upside down.
The victim was Mark Welson Chua Jr., a cadet sergeant from the University of Santo Tomas (UST) Reserved Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC).
His corpse was recovered from the Pasig River on March 18, 2001. Nine months later, then-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed a law removing the completion of military training as a prerequisite to obtaining a college degree.
Aftermath of a murder
ACCORDING to records, two UST engineering students took the extraordinary step of actually filing a formal report alleging instances of corruption within the university’s ROTC system in December 2000. The report filed by the two students, Chua and Romulo Yumol, was accepted and investigated by the National Capital Region-Regional Community Defense Group.
The school organ The Varsitarian also obtained a copy of the report filed by Chua and Yumol and published an article on the alleged bribery, extortion and hazing occurring with the UST ROTC system.
Because of the complaint, the commandant of the said ROTC unit, then-Maj. Demy Tejares and his staff, were relieved of their duties, pending investigation.
As a result of the controversy in UST, Tejares’s promotion was delayed. Eventually, he was given “command clearance.”
Today, Tejares is a major general in the AFP and is currently assigned as deputy commander of the military’s Task Force Zambasulta (Zamboanga, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi).
Another officer, Capt. Rodolfo Batang, was assigned as commandant for the UST ROTC system in January. Batang is now a Lt. Colonel. The Varsitarian promptly published a chronicle of these events.
On March 16 Chua’s family reported that he was missing.
His decomposing corpse was recovered two days later from the murky waters of the Pasig River.
Investigation showed shoelaces were used to bind Chua’s hands, while duct tape was used to cover his face and restrain his feet. Police said he was murdered.
Because of the articles published in The Varsitarian, certain groups blamed the UST ROTC as responsible for Chua’s murder.
The outcry resulted in an agreement between then-AFP chief of staff Gen. Diomedio Villanueva and Education, Culture and Sports Secretary Raul Roco to work together to scrap compulsory military training in schools on April 30, 2001.
Chua later posthumously received the Outstanding Achievement Medal in June. It is the sixth-highest ranked medal in the country. According to The Varsitarian, the award was given in recognition of Chua’s “public service as a cadet sergeant major of the UST Golden Corps of cadets and as a member of the School Intelligence Network of the ROTC, where he performed with dedication and commitment and, at times, without regard to his personal safety.”
National Service Training Program
ROCO’S recommendation was acted upon in Congress a month after Chua’s murder, when Rep. Plaridel M. Abaya filed the National Service Training Program (NSTP) bill. Essentially, this was a rehash of Presidential Decree (PD) 1706 issued by then-President Ferdinand E. Marcos in August 8, 1980.
Under the Marcos decree, which was also called the national-service law, the term “national service” replaced the phrase “military training” used under the National Defense Act of 1935. Students can opt to fulfill their national-service requirements through either of three programs—military training, law enforcement service or civil-
welfare service.
PD 1706 was later superseded by Republic Act (RA) 7077, or the Citizens Armed Forces of the Philippines Reservist Act of 1991.
The law on compulsory military training for students in colleges in universities prevailing at the time of Chua’s murder was RA 7077.
By October of 2001, investigators have narrowed down the suspects behind Chua’s murder.
They were identified as Arnulfo Aparri, Michael von Rainard Manangbao, Paul Joseph Tan, Eduardo Tabrilla, Francisco Suelto and Jeremy Dunuan. All were cadet officers of the UST ROTC.
Eventually, Suelto and Dunuan became state witnesses, while Appari was later convicted of murder. Appari is currently serving a life sentence.
Tabrilla was arrested and convicted of homicide in 2006. He is due to complete his prison term in 2020. The other two suspects, Manangbao and Tan, are still at large.
As the orchestrated outcry against ROTC continued, it was announced in November 2001 that the counterpart Senate bill for the NSTP was about to be passed.
Two months later, on January 23, 2002, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed RA 9163. The NSTP was now the law of the land. The NSTP law amended Section 35 of Commonwealth Act 1, Executive Order 207 of 1939, Sections 2 and 3 of PD 1706, and Sections 38 and 39 of RA 7077.
NSTP: Since 2002
THE NSTP has been existence for the past 14 years.
Was it successful in the providing the country with a ready pool of trained Filipinos that the government can mobilize in case of dire emergency?
Under Section 11 of RA 9163, the NSTP was supposed to provide for the creation of a “National Service Reserve Corps [NSRC], to be composed of the graduates of the non-ROTC components. Members of this Corps may be tapped by the state for literacy and civic-welfare activities, through the joint effort of the Department of National Defense, the Commission on Higher Education [CHEd], and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority.”
For at least 8 years since the NSTP was enacted, no concrete steps were taken to turn the NSRC into reality. This NSRC existed only in the pages of the NSTP law and its implementing rules and regulation, which was issued in 2006.
It took the advocates of the “abolish mandatory ROTC” just 10 months to have the NSTP law enacted. There was a sense of urgency to remove mandatory military training and emasculate the reserve force that relied upon this training program.
But there was no accompanying sense of urgency when it took nearly a decade before any steps were taken to shore up the lack of organized reserves that the government can tap in the event of an emergency.
The proponents of the NSTP did succeed in removing the impetus that was behind the corruption that occurred in the ROTC program.
However, another problem was created. The creation of the NSTP caused a “catastrophic drop” in ROTC enrollment, which resulted in a critical lack of reservists and reservist officers in the Reserve Force components of the AFP.
Five years after the NSTP was enacted, the available organized reserve manpower pool for Metro Manila fell from over a hundred thousand to just a few thousands.
The NSRC, which was supposed to create a new organized pool of trained personnel that can be mobilized for the state, was nonexistent. It was only after the passage of RA 10121, or the Philippine Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act of 2010, when actual steps were taken to form the NSRC.
Under the RA 10121, the NSRC found an actual purpose. The members of the NSRC could now supposedly be tapped and mobilized as part of the disaster relief, mitigation and reduction activities.
In the University of the Philippines (UP), it was only in June 20, 2013, when an NSTP office for the Diliman campus was formally created, 11 years since the NSTP was created. UP is credited with pioneering the mandatory training of college students in the Philippines when the Department of Military Science and Tactics was created in 1922.
As for the CHEd, it was only in August 15 last year when the CHED finally got around to issuing the guidelines for issuing serial numbers to the graduates of the nonmilitary component of the NSTP. This would be part of setting up and maintaining a centralized NSRC Reservist database, which will be maintained by the National Disaster Risk Reductionand Management Council. This database is supposed to be updated regularly by the NSTP offices throughout the country.
Operation Mercy Trident
THIS failure in following through with the provisions for creating the NSRC can be clearly be seen when Supertyphoon Yolanda [international code name Haiyan] rampaged across the country in 2013. Yolanda’s rampage affected more than half of the country’s regions, crippling early attempts to mount a national disaster-relief effort. There was no pool of NSRC personnel to draw upon.
As for the third, much criticized program of the NSTP, the various ROTC units mobilized on its own and mounted their own synchronized disaster-relief efforts for the survivors of Yolanda.
Among them was the UP ROTC, which teamed up with the 161st Philippine Coast Guard Auxiliary (PCGA) Squadron and the South African volunteer group Gift of the Givers.
The UP ROTC and the 161st PCGA Squadron mounted Operation Mercy Trident, which brought food, medicine and medical personnel to Leyte. The operation used three modes—land, sea and air—to ensure the arrival of supplies and personnel to Leyte.
The air aspect involved the air transport of the South African physicians and nurses along with their equipment to Cebu. From Cebu, the movement was by sea to bypass the bottleneck existing, at that time, at the Tacloban airport. Further follow-on supplies were brought by land convoy and ferry from Luzon to Leyte via the Batangas port. Elements of the Philippine Army supported this movement by providing trucks for transport and personnel for security.
Other developments
ACCORDING to publicly available records, there were four ROTC bills pending in the House of Representatives under the Aquino administration. These were House Bill 144, which was filed by Liberal Party Rep. Francis Gerald A. Abaya of Cavite City. This bill has been pending with the House Committee on National Defense and Security since July 23, 2013.
Another bill was filed by then- Rep. Eduardo R. Gullas of Cebu City in 2010 in the Committee on Higher and Technical Education. Two similar bills were filed by then-Party-list Rep. Pastor M. Alcover Jr. of ANAD and Rep. Erico Aristotle C. Aumentador of the Second District of Bohol in the same House committee a year later.
None of the bills passed. However, it is likely new bills of a similar nature will be filed in Congress under the Duterte administration.
One proponent of restoring mandatory military training in campuses is Mark Javier, who was UP ROTC Corps Commander in 1967. Javier reminded this writer that Duterte has gone on record before the campaign that he wants ROTC in the college curriculum.
“Strike while the iron is hot,” he said, adding that he believed that once mandatory military training is restored, a proper program to implement can be made.
He said there was a window of opportunity for stakeholders to create a viable mandatory training course for college students. This opportunity was provided by the implementation of the K to 12 Program.
Regina Sevilla Sibal, an educator, agreed with Javier’s view. She said that, because of the implementation of the K to 12 Program, stakeholders of in the ROTC system have about two years to come up with a viable idea.
“There will be about two years when there will be no one graduating from high school because of the K to 12 Program,” Sibal explained. “That’s a two-year window for those involved to create a new and viable mandatory ROTC program for colleges.”
Kenneth Tirado, a tactical officer in the UP ROTC and former Department of Education spokesman, said “there is a need to shore up the numbers of the AFP’s reserve force.” “One way of doing so is to restore mandatory ROTC in campuses,” Tirado said. “However, if such a program is to be undertaken, it should be fully funded and supported. Otherwise, it would not succeed.”
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The National Service reserve Corps is headed by its National Director, BGEN JUANITO W DALMAS AFP (RET)