STUDENT Leaders Against Mandatory (SLAM) ROTC, a newly launched coalition of high-school learners, appealed to members of the Senate to halt a measure for the two-year mandatory National Citizens Service Training (NCST) program, and a non-compulsory four-year Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) course.
Failure to do so will compel the group to “turn to the street-parliament,” as it vowed to greet the new year with swarming protest actions to block the passage of House Bill 6687, or the National Service Training Program (NSTP) Act, which the House of Representatives passed on third and final reading on December 15, 2022.
“We deplore the 276 congressmen who gave their affirmative votes. With only a little over six months since the national elections, you have already forsaken us, giving us a grim image of what to expect for the rest of your terms in office, and more motivation for us to take it upon ourselves to oppose your leadership,” said Sophia Beatriz Reyes, current president of the Philippine High School for the Arts student government—one of the councils that initiated the alliance.
“We would like to send an early message to our senators who plan to emulate their house counterparts and desist from pursuing NSTP and ROTC if they don’t want the youth to flood the streets in 2023,” Reyes added, as she echoed the last lines of their joint statement about carrying the demands in all possible spaces.
SLAM ROTC is composed of representatives from student councils and student publications in senior and junior high schools nationwide, with the common goal of deterring such bills in time for the senate deliberations.
Student leaders abhorred that there was nary a single lawmaker—both from the lower and higher houses of Congress—who reached out and talked to them, despite being central stakeholders in the proposed measure.
“This is what a dysfunctional democracy looks like,” Reyes claimed. “Millions upon millions of our country’s future are being enrolled by the government to a program that will divert our attention away from our academics; yet, not a single one of us [was] consulted.”
For joint convenor Braille Nichole Kwek of Camotes Visayan Institute in Cebu, the coalition is “not in the business of merely opposing the enactment,” but also would like “to redirect the attention of lawmakers to the more pressing issues they need to prioritize.”
“We need their promised and long-overdue review of the K-12 program. We need additional funds to address the ever-widening gaps in the education sector since the [pandemic’s] outbreak. We need transportation and housing subsidies. We need them to reinstate the scholarships they took away,” Kwek asserted.
The joint statement of the student councils is posted at tinyurl.com/SLAMROTC, and remains open for signatories of student organizations from local high schools.