Tonight I thought I'd stop by AS on my way to dinner to find out what was going on. They're having a cultural night, with performances from various artists that depict the history of the struggle of the university and its students.
What an auspicious way to spend the night before the university makes history once more. Tomorrow, UP students and administrators will walk all the way from Quezon City to Mendiola, along with other state and private universities, to signify their opposition to Noynoy Aquino's abhorrent policies. They will march in opposition to yet another hefty budget cut the national university is poised to sustain. They will march in opposition to cuts to the budgets of state tertiary schools. They will march in opposition to Aquino's gross underfunding of the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) and of public health in general.
Simply put, UP will march all the way from Diliman to Mendiola because our President has neglected his responsibility to his nation's youth and people too gravely.
Frankly, I do not think Aquino will be shaken in the least by tomorrow's demonstration. His policy—to gradually drop quality tertiary education from the list of his government's responsibilities—has been rock solid since last year. No matter how resonant our call is—and more fundamentally, how crucial quality college education is to the development of a nation—he will probably not listen to it.
But what will matter is that he will know that we know what he is doing. He will know that we won't forget, neither will future generations, and neither will history. He will know that even as he has not been in power for two years, we already know what he will be remembered as: the President who shirked his responsibility to the nation's future.
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