Herbie Gomez IT would be interesting to read a proposal that would amend the existing law on the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) which is still being drafted, according to President Duterte’s chief legal counsel Salvador Panelo. We are told that the proposal is aimed at strengthening the ROTC “to instill love of country and good citizenship” in line with the government’s campaign against illegal drugs. It’s going to be a waste of time. Making students stand side by side and march under the heat of the sun for hours, and do push-ups won’t make them patriotic. Neither will it make anyone intelligent. Instead, make the students read more books so they’d acquire stock knowledge or send them to poor communities to help people. I think the best time for citizens to develop their sense of patriotism is during their scouting age or even when they’re younger. Parents and teachers are in the best position to help in this development by imparting to them the correct outlook. Teach the kids history, the meaning and essence of being Filipino, and narrate to them stories about what our patriots did and their sacrifices so that we could be what we are today as a nation. That would arouse patriotism among our children. (The tragedy is that many of our adults today know nothing about our history--they need to attend “make-up classes.”) I don’t see how “military training” (if baking children in the sun can qualify as military training) figures in the anti-drug war. Didn’t the President link police generals who were trained in the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) to the drug trade? If they are really what the President says they are, then government must concede that military training won’t keep people from becoming junkies or makers of junkies. I see a vast disconnect here. Discipline? A program that promotes something that could pass off as corporal punishment is discipline? Let’s see the draft and the proposed amendments. Maybe, they’d come up with something very good. I hope so. But for sure, baking kids in the sun will only give the fair-skinned a tan and make the dark-skinned look like eggplants. The kids can develop sunburn blisters, but it won’t turn them into patriots.
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Sen. Ralph Recto raised a really good point when he called on the Duterte administration to put a stop to the contractualization of labor in the government if it is really serious in its pronouncements against the practice in the private sector. Across the country, there are about 120,000 workers in government who don’t enjoy benefits regular employees are entitled to because they’re “contractuals” or hired only under the so-called “job order” and “emergency hiring” schemes or through memoranda of agreement, according to Recto, citing 2010 figures from the Civil Service Commission (CSC). I would venture to state that many of these workers are there because of political accommodation or patronage politics. Now, it’s either the government absorbs them as regular workers or get rid of its excess fats but that will have social costs. Either way, it will come with a price. Let’s see how the Duterte administration would handle this. Point is, if the so-called “Endo” (end of contract) must stop in the private sector, then government, which should set an example and walk the talk, must also stop engaging in the same practice. It must also cease to become a big buyer of outsourced labor in the country. It cannot threaten to “kill” those behind “Endo” in the private sector and then turn a blind eye to “Endo” in government. This must stop, Mr. President. Pastilan.