Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict spokesperson Lt. Gen. Antonio Parlade Jr. is not only red-tagging personalities, but also institutions when he claimed the country’s top universities were recruiting grounds for the New People’s Army, former Vice President Jejomar Binay said Wednesday.
“He is now red-tagging institutions,” said Binay.
He made his statement even as Senator Pia Cayetano urged officials of the University of the Philippines and the Department of National Defense to engage in dialogue with an open mind, and in the spirit of finding solutions to differences that led to the unilateral abrogation of the 1989 UP-DND accord.
“I ask both parties to come in with an open mind. Come in assuming that you have a child studying there [in UP],” Cayetano said Tuesday as the Senate tackled a resolution expressing its sense to welcome the DND’s decision to answer various calls for a dialogue with UP on the termination of the long-standing agreement.
Binay accused the military of mounting an assault on critical thinking.
“They want our universities to produce citizens who are pliant, obedient, and unquestioning. They forget that critical thinking leads to advances in science, medicine, arts, and society. Stifle it and you choke progress,” he said.
On Saturday, Parlade tagged 18 schools in the Philippines as “recruitment havens for the New People’s Army.”
Those schools include the University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University, De La Salle University, Far Eastern University and University of Santo Tomas.
“By attempting to stifle critical thinking, they are also stifling democracy itself, since democracy draws its strength from critical thinking and the process of renewal that it proffers,” said Binay.
The former Vice President said in a democracy, the role of education goes beyond providing a steady workforce for enterprises, and it is imbued with the noble purpose of providing citizens the tools to think independently and critically, to see themselves as contributors to the regeneration of society.
“Without critical thinking, democracy and its institutions will atrophy. Incessant assaults, especially from forces from within, could lead to its demise, unless it is confronted and defeated,” he said.
Binay also said like the government’s all-out war against drugs being enforced by the National Police, the military’s war with the “Left” makes no distinction between hardcore leftists and liberal-minded advocates, activists, supporters and civilians.