With neither endorsements nor confidence from sectoral groups, UP President Angelo Jimenez’s mandate to take the university’s helm had long stood on tenuous grounds. He had his chance to earn his constituents’ trust, veer away from his predecessor’s pro-commercialization slant, and repudiate the opaque leadership of the university administration that landed him his seat. But that chance has long passed.
After being initially slated to operate in August, Robinsons Easymart in DiliMall will open today despite strong contestation from the UP community. While the opening ceremony will be accompanied by a day-long bazaar, a protest is expected to ensue as multisectoral groups will flood the site to register their opposition.
Such a disconnect between the protesting sectors and the officials participating in the ribbon-cutting ceremony captures the larger problem at hand: The DiliMall contract, now coming to its fruition, is an indictment of an administration whose top-down, patronage-driven leadership erodes community participation in crucial university affairs.
Deference to patronage, which always entails the need for a return on investment, imperils constituents in service of profit. The Gokongweis’ longstanding sponsorship of the UP Men’s Basketball Team seems to be finally paying off, following the renewal of Robinsons’ commitment to the team for another 15 years last September.
More ventures are expected to emerge in the coming years, with Jimenez’s vision of having “economic zones” in UP aligning with the thrust of “maximizing” UP’s land in an attempt to strengthen its fiscal autonomy. After donating part of their land in Dasmariñas, the land-grabbing Villars—one of whom was conferred an honorary degree by UP last year—got to secure the construction of a UP campus in Cavite.
UP’s reliance on donations and partnerships with the private sector stems from its oft-repeated justification that it needs additional funds for academic and research, especially in the face of government budget shortfalls. Yet such a lazy, unimaginative claim is blunted by the toleration of the Ayalas’ years-long unpaid rent in UP Town Center and Technohub where no academic undertakings are being pursued, and the marginal contribution of business income to UP’s funds compared to its allocated budget.
Despite pressure from sectors, Jimenez has also failed to take definite stances on key national issues such as charter change, jeepney phaseout, and budget cuts in his seeming attempt to curry favors from the national administration instead of rallying with his constituents to secure higher educational subsidy. By kowtowing to powerful patrons, both private and state interests, the administration eschews community participation and renders its constituents powerless in running university operations.
Unlike the UP Shopping Center (SC), DiliMall undermines community pleas through opaque deals, a questionable contract, and a third-party master leaseholder CBMS Research and Management Consultancy Services whose key interest is oriented toward profiteering.
Jimenez may argue that DiliMall is a deal made before his administration, but that in no way absolves him of his refusal to find means to honor the 2004 memorandum of agreement between the UP Diliman administration and stallholders, allowing past tenants to be prioritized in the reconstructed SC. It also does not excuse his refusal to initiate or even accommodate requests for further town hall meetings and dialogues with sectors that will be affected by the deal. Consultations have been sparse, if any at all. The few times that he approached protesting students, he did so with arrogance and utter disregard.
The ramifications of DiliMall operating is thus far-reaching. Bypassing sectoral consultation underlies past detrimental measures and may push to generate more dangerous ones in the future. There have already been many instances of such: Clearing operations were conducted in Area 2, a declaration of cooperation with the military was signed, and the administration still refuses to institutionalize a systemwide committee to protect human rights and academic freedom, among others.
The administration’s brazen top-down leadership must be met by a bottom-up sustained groundswell. Disruptions may be deemed necessary, reminding those at the leadership posts that it is their constituents that run the essential operations of the university and thus also have the power to halt them.
If Jimenez learned anything from his years of being a supposed student-leader, it will do him good to remember that obstinate leadership is nothing compared to an even more stubborn community that refuses to surrender its struggle for just treatment and recognition.
The community, thus, must make sure that unconsulted decisions by officials will not succeed. It must level the greatest possible pressure in all forms until the administration agrees to face them again at the negotiating table, the contract is rescinded, third-party developers are shunned, and the UP community has reclaimed and taken control of the establishment and space where the SC once stood.
The unrestrained continuation of commercialization as university policy is an existential threat to the key principles of community participation and democratic deliberation. Jimenez’s chance has since passed. UP’s sectors must now establish the bedrock of communal leadership that this administration has so blatantly tarnished. ●
