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FIRST things first, before the uninitiated gets lost in translation, let’s define our title’s main topics: conscription and ROTC.
According to that very convenient online Oxford Dictionary, conscription is a “compulsory enlistment for state service, typically into the armed forces.”
ROTC, on the other hand, is an abbreviation for Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, “a training programme for university students, graduates of which become commissioned officers in one of the armed forces.”
While most of us are quite familiar with ROTC, particularly the male population, as one way or the other we have gone through it in university, conscription is not so common a term in these islands. For some it’s just something they came across in a book or film or the news, though they probably cannot tell the difference between a fig tree and conscription.
So why are we talking about it? The unpleasant experience most of us had in university called ROTC is just that – an unpleasant memory that we are glad our sons will no longer go through in university as it is no longer a compulsory requirement for graduation. In 2001 then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed into law Republic Act 9163 or the NSTP Act of 2001 which effectively removed ROTC as a mandatory requirement for graduation.
This was the result of the natives up in arms against ROTC as it has already become irrelevant and a major source of corruption and abuse resulting into deaths of several students taking ROTC.
However last Sunday at the opening of the Palaro 2017 in Antique, President Rodrigo Duterte brought up ROTC again and spiced it up with conscription. Here are some excerpts from the April 24 issue of Panay News:
“SAN JOSE, Antique – President Rodrigo Duterte gave the Filipino youth two choices – the revival of the mandatory Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) in college or compulsory enlistment into the country’s Armed Forces.
“Facing thousands of Palarong Pambansa athletes at the newly-renovated Binirayan Sports Complex yesterday afternoon, Duterte urged the youth to take the ROTC, which he plans to make a requirement again to earn a baccalaureate degree.
“’Who else will defend you? America will not die for you. Kayo ang magpakamatay sa bayan. Kayo ang magsakripisyo,’ Duterte told his young audience, citing threats to the country’s security such as terrorism.
“At present, ROTC is no longer mandatory for college students but an optional program component of the National Service Training Program (NSTP), a civic education and defense preparedness program for college students.
“‘You have to go back to ROTC,’ Duterte insisted during the opening ceremony of the 60th Palarong Pambansa that Antique province is hosting for the first time.
“The decision to make ROTC optional was short-sighted, he told around 7,000 elementary and high school athletes plus 5,000 coaches and school officials from 18 regions gathered in the middle of the Binirayan Sports Complex.
“It’s either mandatory ROTC is revived ‘or would you rather that I come up with a law on conscription’ like in other countries such as Israel, Duterte told his Palaro audience.”
I totally agree with President Rodrigo Duterte, America will not come running to our rescue if we are invaded unless it is profitable for them, we are not “little brown Americans.”
No one has got our backs except ourselves; we are the ones who will defend our homes and our country, no one else.
However, I am very apprehensive about the plan to revive ROTC, that program is very much open to abuse and corruption. We are all aware that in any kind of requirement here in these islands i.e. diplomas, drivers license or barangay clearance, some enterprising individual in charge will see it as way to make personal profit.
And the abuses, we all know from experience that those ROTC Commandants and Tactical Officers were not real soldiers. Mostly they were reservists who liked to play “soldier boy” ala Jerry Treñas or Antonio Trillanes.
These “soldier boys” were mostly losers who took it out on the ROTC cadets with “cruel and unusual” punishments for whatever infractions they saw fit or imagined.
In terms of teaching the ROTC cadets the “art of warfare”, I don’t think so. For two years the ROTC cadet spends it marching up and down the field and doing squats and push ups.
If ever they teach you about “real soldiering” the basic rifle they use is vintage World War 2, meaning they belong in a museum, not a training field for modern warfare. What good will it do you if you’re proficient in the M1 Garand rifle when the standard rifle now is the M4 carbine? Even the M16 Armalite is now vintage Vietnam War.
Above all, the most prevalent attitude towards ROTC is that nobody takes it seriously; it’s just something you have to grin and bear to be able to graduate – minimal if not zero sense of nationalism.
If President Rodrigo Duterte wants a well-trained citizen’s army then it has to be the real thing, not some university requirement that everybody hates. Well, not all as there are those misguided souls who take up advanced ROTC and become officers thinking this could make them popular in campus, especially with the girls.
What we need is a well-trained citizen’s army of qualified natives, I mean here both male and female to defend the republic. A conscription program following the successful model of Israel, South Korea and Singapore is what we need to defend these islands and not ROTC. (brotherlouie16@gmail.com/PN)
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