Roque offers help in facilitating DND-UP meeting on abrogated accord

Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque on Wednesday offered help in facilitating the meeting between Department of National Defense and University of the Philippines officials regarding the termination of a decades-long accord on military and police presence on campuses.

“I will offer my good office so that the UP president and the Secretary of National Defense can discuss this matter,” Roque said in an interview on CNN Philippines.

A UP alumnus and former member of UP faculty, Roque said he supports UP President Danilo Concepcion's move to seek a dialogue with Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana regarding the matter.

"My personal opinion, if it worked for 30 years, let's talk why it shouldn't continue for another 30 years," Roque said of the accord, which the DND unilaterally abrogated on January 15.

Under the agreement signed in June 1989, soldiers and policemen were prohibited from entering the premises of any UP campus or its regional units without prior notice to the UP administration.

In explaining the DND's decision, Lorenzana said the accord is already "obsolete" and claimed UP has become a "safe haven" for enemies of the state.

Roque said President Rodrigo Duterte was not consulted on the matter even though he supported the termination.

“As far as I know, he [Lorenzana] did not [consult with the President],” Roque said. “It was a decision of the DND as privy or a party to that contract between UP and DND.”

Various UP student councils meanwhile denounced the DND's move as an attack on academic freedom as well as on freedom of speech.

Roque said he is confident that UP students will not be "cowed" by the termination of the agreement, saying the university had survived the "darkest days" of President Ferdinand Marcos' Martial Law.

He also said the termination would not stifle academic freedom.

“I don’t think so. As I said this is only a 30-year accord and in the darkest period of Martial Law we did not have this accord and it did not have the effect of the students allowing anyone to interfere with the exercise of their rights,” Roque said. 

Another UP alumnus, Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo, gave the same opinion.

“The termination of the agreement does not violate academic freedom. With or without it, UP remains to be the sole authority of what courses to teach and the manner by which the same is taught. It decides who the faculty members will be,” Panelo said in a statement.

“The freedom of expression and of speech is not abridged. Nor is the right to peaceably assemble prohibited. Neither does the abrogation proscribe or stop the faculty and students of UP from thinking freely on any subject.”

Panelo, however, said giving prior notice to UP before conducting lawful operations and serving warrants “impedes law enforcement.”

“National security requires that the law enforcement and the military, as enforcers of law and the protector of the people, respectively, can not be impeded or derailed in the exercise of this constitutional duty,” he said.   —with Virgil Lopez/KBK, GMA News