Bandilang Pula
Written by: Anoymous;
Published: Bandilang Pula, Ika-12 ng Pebrero 1971;
Source: Bandilang Pula, Ika-12 ng Pebrero 1971
Markup: Simoun Magsalin.
The Provisional Directorate has presented the following 8 demands in return for the lifting of the barricades and in taking the initiative for the “normalization” of the university situation:
In connection with the status of the demands, we should be clear concerning the decision to lift the barricades. Two basic misinterpretations surround this decision of the Provisional Directorate of the Diliman Commune to lift the barricades:
It is not out of fear that we lifted the barricades, no matter what some decrepit paid agents of Malacanan and Quezon Hall would like to make it appear. We decided to lift the barricades on the basis of our national democratic and revolutionary principles and primarily on the basis of tactical considerations.
The conditions of the barricades, which were those of an emergency and of actual resistance, cannot be maintained as a permanent condition. The fascist military — of course for its own purpose — has by and large withdrawn its main force by Thursday (Although to belie the propaganda against the students, scattered attacks continued, mostly from the areas of Vinzons, Narra and Area II. Danilo Delfin was shot and several others injured in one of these treacherous attacks). The constant exactions, limited resources, both human and material, and the necessity for consolidation were circumstances that also had to be considered.
The removal of the barricades was also aimed at depriving the fascist military of any excuse to enter the university. The military, we believed, wanted to invade the university, not so much to destroy the barricades, as to arrest student activists, political leaders and progressive faculty members. The futile efforts of the military to cook up these excuses (that students had machine guns, 48 high powered guns, and the numerous provocations) pointed to their intentions.
The process of “normalization” called for by the Provisional Directorate has a totally different orientation, different principles, goals and ethics. It has absolutely nothing to do and is in fact opposed, to the reactionary dictum of “restoration of peace and order” in the campus propagated by the fascist Marcos regime and the hypocritical Administration and its hirelings.
Not only do we expect more mass actions in the coming weeks and months but that “normalization” in the sense of the Directorate is a period of review and criticism, a period of strengthening and consolidation, ideologically, politically and organizationally. The Directorate has a primary duty of securing the best conditions possible for the deepening of the national democratic cultural revolution in the University of the Philippines. It has the duty to consolidate and strengthen its popular base of support and develop itself as an efficient counter-structure, a counter-institution to the reactionary Administration and to the extremely limited Student Council. Without the proper consolidation of gains and a close review and criticism of events and shortcomings, the situation will certainly regress back to the conditions before the barricade mass actions to the detriment pf the national democratic forces in the University.
The reactionary Administration and the Marcos fascist regime knew very well that during the period of the barricades that thev had nothing but the minimum of power in the greater University area. The Administration knew that only one alternative was open to them: a coercive one, namely to call on the military to destroy the barricades and the Commune which so effectively reduced their control over the University to ashes. But the Administration also knew very clearly that to resort to this was virtual suicide. They knew that whatever coercive powers the Administration possessed was but a derivative of the national and central military powers of the Marcos fascist regime. Their unheeded pleadings to the police and Metrocom testifies to their bottomless impotence and helplessness when critical periods occur.
The Administration, however, never really resorted ro this extreme: at least, not obviously and unanimously, for two basic reasons:
(a) the total military occupation of the University which, aside from simply resulting into a nationally explosive event, would simply deprive the Administration of any surviving, albeit, formal, powers and autonomy.
(b) even assuming that the Administration can somehow share power with the military in the event of an occupation without being reduced to nothingness, the Administration also knows that no university, if the intention still remains, can be run or managed on the basis of coercive powers alone. This alternative too is one of inevitable disintegration and loss of dominant control.
In reverse to and contrary to the revelatory experience of the reactionary Administration of its impotence in the heart of the barricade mass actions, all progressive students, faculty and residents who heroically defended the Commune should realize that their actions have revealed a fundamental discovery: that the genuine effective source of power within the university lies primarily in the students but in their solidarity with all progressive faculty members, non-academic personnel and residents.