Thursday, February 21, 2013

Principled disagreement and anonymous black propaganda: A challenge


Over the past few days, I have been receiving reports of anonymous efforts to bring down Alex Castro in the race for USC Chair. As a fellow candidate and in behalf of UP ALYANSA, I wish to voice my strongest condemnation against these malicious attempts.

The campaign is a time not just to show off each candidate's and each political party's strengths and victories, but also a time to educate and to engage in a healthy, passionate, and principled discourse.

In the earlier part of this week, members of ALYANSA made a principled disagreement with Alex Castro's citation of wrong information on the sin tax law. Rooted in our advocacy to make this campaign more about platforms and less about personalities, we demanded an apology from Alex Castro and a retraction of the misinformation that the 15% allocation for tobacco farmers has been stricken off the sin tax law. To this day, we have not received any apology or retraction; so, our principled disagreement and demand continue.

But when a supposed screenshot of an alleged chat conversation between Alex and a "friend" cropped up, I was personally disappointed. Today, a perverted statement entitled "Sex Will Fix" was released in different areas in campus.

These are exactly what ALYANSA has been campaigning against. While we make sure to maintain our principled disagreement with Alex Castro and KAISA on the level of issues and platforms, efforts like these serve as roadblocks to our dream of an informed student body.

The anonymity of these efforts reveals exactly their purpose: Nothing more than to regress to personality politics and blur this campaign into becoming a pageant of reputations rather than clear platforms. I personally challenge the people behind these efforts to come into the open and make a principled choice to inform, rather than to maliciously attack. I challenge the people behind these to reveal their identities and the USC Chair candidate they support, if any, so the students may decide for themselves what to make of the propaganda.

As student leaders, it is our duty to inform and shape the debates in campus to become a discourse of principles, integrity, ideology, and platforms. This campaign is not about me; it is not about Alex Castro's alleged chat messages or motives. This campaign is about the students and their right to make an informed choice on their next University Student Council.




Carlo Brolagda
ALYANSA USC Chairperson candidate
February 20, 2013

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

WE MADE HISTORY.

WE MADE HISTORY.

In a year, we passed in Congress the reproductive health and sin tax bills into laws. Through mass mobilizations and various direct negotiations, we convinced the government to increase the budget for the University and other state universities and colleges. After decades of systemic corruption and misgovernment, we detained former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and impeached her former Chief Justice Renato Corona.

In a year, we have mainstreamed the discourse of gender equality in campus. We stood firm in our condemnation of fraternity-related violence and, for the first time, filed a case as students against warring fraternities. We have institutionalized fiscal transparency and mechanisms of accountability in the USC. We have freed the USC from its former captivity in outdated dogma and transformed it into a body truly reflective of our passions and aspirations.

Today we are at a critical juncture, faced with an obvious choice: Do we continue our momentum of progressive change or do we fall back into irrelevance and empty rhetoric?

ITULOY NATIN ANG NAPAGTAGUMPAYAN. Our victories have only begun. As we weave our individual stories of hopes and dreams, we realize that, as a collective, we are headed towards one destination. As we build on our successes, we affirm our shared journey towards genuine student empowerment, social justice, and social progress.

PARA SA UP. In the advancement of our rights and welfare as Iskolars para sa Bayan, we abandon intangible promises and choose concrete solutions. We refuse sloganeering by merely opposing. We choose to propose. We have chosen to forward amendments based on students’ rights which have been successfully incorporated into the Code of Student Conduct. We choose a more just and equitable system of socialized tuition. We choose to formalize our freedoms and liberties with a national law on students’ rights and welfare.

PARA SA BAYAN. As we fight for the marginalized, oppressed, and powerless sectors in our society, we go beyond oversimplified classifications. We engage government from the outside and within. We refuse to battle wrongs with another wrong. We choose to be proactive. We have chosen to challenge impunity and patronage politics with a freedom of information law. We choose to end indecent labor conditions with a security of tenure law. We choose to address gender inequality with an anti-discrimination law.

Victory after victory, our choice becomes clearer: We choose to continue making history.



ITULOY NATIN ANG NAPAGTAGUMPAYAN. PARA SA UP, PARA SA BAYAN!


VOTE STRAIGHT ALYANSA SA USC ON FEBRUARY 28!
 




ITULOY NATIN ANG NAPAGTAGUMPAYAN. PARA SA UP, PARA SA BAYAN!


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