We don’t recruit rebels, school reminds Duterte

MANILA: Officials of the state-owned University of the Philippines (UP) on Thursday struck back at the President Rodrigo Duterte who threatened to “defund” or withhold funding for the school because it allegedly continues to “recruit communist rebels.”

Elena Pernia, the UP vice president for public affairs, belied Duterte’s allegations, stressing that the while the school has a history of militancy, UP is “not anti-government.”

“We don’t recruit. We don’t recruit for the communist party. We are an educational institution. We teach, we do research. We do public service. We don’t recruit,” Pernia told ANC News in an interview.

In a separate statement posted on its website, UP said: “We encourage critical thinking which, at times, may manifest to be dissidence and antiauthoritarianism.”

The Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed component the New People’s Army (CPPNPA) have been waging a Maoist-style insurgency against the government for more than 50 years, considered the longest in Asia and the Pacific.

Earlier, hundreds of UP faculty members signed a petition calling on the school administration to immediately end the semester mainly due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the successive cyclones that devastated wide areas and which prompted Duterte to declare a state of calamity in the entire main island of Luzon.

“Students and faculty alike are subjected to unjust workload and mental burden on top of anxieties that the pandemic has inflicted,” the petition read.

“The struggles of the learners,” the petition added, “are further intensified by the recent calamities, leaving students and faculty from Bicol, Cagayan, Isabela, Marikina and Rizal, among others, with an indefinite and debilitating loss of electricity and internet connection, destruction of properties and homes and loss of loved ones.”

In his nationwide televised address late on Tuesday night, Duterte threatened to cut funding for UP as state scholars criticised the government for its response to the recent calamities, the latest of which was the havoc inflicted on the main island Luzon by typhoon Vamco (local name Ulysses).