Unguarded

Last week, a UP student was sexually assaulted as she traversed a rather dim road leading from the campus to busy Commonwealth Avenue. This is not the first incident of criminal assault on this road and will probably not be the last – even if the University had it lighted and installed CCTV cameras. After dark, foot traffic along this road is scarce.

This latest incident brings to mind that silly “UP-DND Agreement” forged in the nineties that banned law enforcers from patrolling the Diliman campus. The agreement has since been abrogated and Defense Secretary Gibo Teodoro declared there was no need to revisit the matter.

It is a wonder this agreement was ever signed in the first place. In a sovereign nation, no crevice should be exempt from law enforcement. The Diliman campus is not a separate sovereign entity even if some might want to imagine it to be so.

What we call the UP Police Department is a tiny unit with insufficient equipment to keep watch over a sprawling campus. It is consigned to traffic management duties while dozens of blue guards have been hired to secure the colleges.

It appears the main duty of the blue guards is to shoo away students attempting to park in areas reserved for the faculty. The most distressing issue in this “University of the People” is the severe lack of parking spaces. At some point, the university administration might have to consider investing in multilevel parking buildings even as they will surely be an eyesore.

If the UP Police is to be enlarged and properly trained to improve campus security, the money will be taken from the University budget. There has never been a constituency on campus to support that.

I recall, a few years ago thieves walked casually into the Student Union building and made off with several laptops. This can only happen because the campus is unguarded – the result of that earlier ban on law enforcers entering university grounds.

More recently, when police entered the campus to serve a warrant against a professor for failing to pay social security benefits to her domestic workers, leftist agitators raised a howl over the violation of the “UP-DND Agreement.” That led to a review of the agreement and its scrapping.

The unlamented “UP-DND Agreement” is iconic of many things demanded by leftist agitators that suited their parochial interests but harmed the larger community. It was an arrangement instituted to shield leftist groups from surveillance at the sacrifice of campus security.

There are other instances such as this. The leftist groups opposed the institution of a national identification system and managed to delay it through court injunctions for over two decades on the grounds that it violated human rights. The national ID system is the building block for modern e-governance.

The leftists opposed the cash dole-outs to the poor because this would weaken their political bases. They oppose the NTF-ELCAC for the same reasons even if this brought concrete benefits to the most isolated communities. For the same parochial motivations, the leftists long resisted registration of mobile phones.

Controversial

Among the BBM administration’s strongest suits is the quality of public officials appointed since the President took over. The President’s admirable choices were well-received, especially the choices made for the economic and infrastructure team – including the choice of new BSP governor.

But there will be slippages here and there eventually, particularly in the choices for agency heads made due to representations made by factions in the ruling coalition. One such recommendation for the appointment of Atty. Vigor D. Mendoza as LTO head was forwarded to the Office of the President by the DOTr on representations made by DILG Secretary BenHur Abalos. This is bound to be controversial.

Mendoza has a rather colorful history in public service. In 1999, when Joseph Estrada was president, he was dismissed from the LTFRB board on the strength of Administrative Order 97. The dismissal was done on the recommendation of the Estrada-era Presidential Commission Against Graft and Corruption (PCAGC).

Mendoza’s lapse, in this case, happened when as officer-in-charge of the LTFRB he effectively lifted the moratorium on processing public utility buses entering the city. That lifting had the effect of reversing standing policy seeking to decongest city streets. The existing policy was set by the collegial board and implemented on the strength of Memorandum Circular No. 97-009 signed by former LTFRB chairman Dante Lantin.

Then, as now, Mendoza owns and operates a fleet of public utility vehicles. Clearly, if he is installed as LTO chief, the hazard of conflict of interest is opened.

Those concerned over the possible appointment of Mendoza question the endorsement made by Abalos. The Interior Secretary seems to be overreaching into the province of the DOTr, the agency with direct supervision over the LTO.

Transport Secretary Jaime Bautista wrote a brief cover letter to Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin indicating his office “respectfully endorses the recommendation from the Department of the Interior and Local Government Benjamin C. Abalos Jr.” The Abalos letter is simply attached. This does not seem to indicate the DOTr is head over heels over the possibility one of its key agencies will be headed by someone earlier removed for unilaterally reversing a standing policy.

Those apprehensive of this possible appointment might be assured no decision has yet been made on the matter of who will head the LTO. This is an agency already plagued with issues concerning delayed license plates and the prevalence of fixers in its offices.