UP beloved

E·N·Q·U·I·R·Y
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

UP beloved
Sunday, 06 22, 2003

A syndicate that flaunts its Islamic connections has sliced 77 hectares off the 493-hectare UP Diliman campus. The syndicate is selling possessory rights for P15,000, and ownership over a hundred square meter area for P100,000. UP is helpless, notwithstanding the strength of many cases decided in its favor by no less than the Supreme Court, which affirmed the ownership of UP and declared the titles of the spurious claimants as fake.

The vast expanse of the UP campus makes it extremely difficult for the puny, underpaid and unarmed anti-squatting task force of the university to ward off incursions of people who consider the area as theirs for the taking. Although UP has successfully thwarted the efforts of spurious claimants since 1949, the latest invasion has grown into frightening proportions. The occupation by a group of Moslems was aided by an injunctive writ issued by the Quezon City Regional Trial Court, preventing the chief of the UP police from disturbing the possession by the syndicate of the last remaining forest reserve in the Metro Manila area.

Twenty-five years ago the landgrabbed area, appropriately called UP Arboretum, was a model for the preservation and propagation of trees in the midst of the concrete jungle that is Metro Manila. Anyone traversing the highway toward Fairview could not fail to notice the pristine condition of the trees that blanketed the area. It was a park for lovers and lovers of nature. The occasional incursion of a few who really needed a few square meters upon which to build their shanties was tolerable, and manageable.

Not anymore. Over a period of three months, the brazenness with which the latest syndicate of squatters grabbed the area, the magnitude of their operations involving four previous invasions that were thwarted, with a fifth finally giving them success, all tend to indicate that a lot of money has been poured in greasing the palms of some shadowy “persons of consequence.” Aided by high-powered firearms and an injunctive writ, the invaders and squatters look like characters that we see only in the movies. They threatened all the lawyers of UP – recalling the incident in 1986 when the same syndicate kidnapped and stripped naked a university lawyer whose only mistake was that he appeared in court everyday to prosecute the intruders into UP. They also doused a member of the UP police with gasoline and threatened to set him on fire. They now occupy an entire four-storey building constructed by UP in the 1980s. They repainted all markings attributable to UP’s ownership over the property. They cut down the trees for which Emil Sotalbo and his group had lovingly cared, for years.

Adding insult to injury is the appalling refusal of the Quezon City police and city authorities to intervene and come to UP’s rescue. Although they know fully well that the writ does not apply to UP, they are intimidated by the injunctive writ and fear being cited for contempt if they make a move against the squatters. The Quezon City authorities have been given the proper advice, and yet, it would seem all these have fallen on deaf ears and numb minds. We suspect something fishy here, and the rage we feel about this deplorable situation is perhaps best summarized by the stream of expletives let loose by UP Secretary Martin Gregorio, an out-of-character display of temper he has not done so before. Perhaps, the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority should now be enlisted to confront the syndicate and evict the squatters with the same zeal it has applied against the hawkers and vendors all over the metropolis and along Katipunan Avenue to the back of the campus.

Meantime, to protect other areas from squatters, UP should now move forward with its plan to lease its open spaces to property developers, with a tie-up for use of their development with the academic requirements of the university. The possibilities are as numerous as they are varied: An IT park that ties up with its computer and engineering courses; a hotel and recreation mall that ties up with its tourism, hotel and restaurants program; a tri-media conglomerate that augments its mass communications program; a cultural center that showcases the university’s music, theater and arts program; a sports compound that enhances its sports and human kinetics program; a bar/judicial complex that offers facilities for its law program; a BOT housing/dormitory development that houses the faculty and students in a compact, interactive environment.

Those of us who saw the trees grow from mere saplings to sturdy, leafy trunks and then diminish to give way to the squatters, are sad. Alumni are being enlisted by UP President Dodong Nemenzo to stave off this assault on the university. And would it not be to their everlasting credit and pride if these sons and daughters of UP instead of warring over control of the UP Alumni Association, channel their energies, influence, power, money to save their alma mater from being gobbled by these greedy syndicates?

The UP Charter of 1908, described by Nemenzo as “an incoherent and badly outdated document,” is due for a major revision. It cannot be denied with the turn of the century and the changing times, there is need for legislation of modernize, update and revise the organizational structure, rights and responsibilities of UP as an educational institution. UP alumni in Congress are spearheading efforts to give UP a facelift, making it the national university where its unique and distinctive leadership in higher education is asserted; its fiscal and institutional autonomy strengthened; the guarantee of academic freedom mandated. In such eventuality the Board of Regents could then assume greater powers over governance of the university, to make better and fuller use of its resources in all sectors; the administrative and the research staff will be empowered; and the expansion of the system of autonomous universities system will be facilitated. UP then will no longer fear losing its faculty to the higher-paying private universities – UP lost 199 of its Ph.Ds the past three years to industry and private educational institutions and begs annually for its paltry budget.

Nemenzo has been pushing the charter change since day one of his presidency. He will definitely get it, as a fitting cap to his enlightened and activist leadership of UP, what with the support he has in Congress, led by Sen. Ed Angara, himself a former UP president.



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