Military still favors mandatory ROTC amid death of cadet, says incident not ROTC-related

The military is standing firm on its position of requiring students in Grade 11 and 12 to undergo Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) even after the death of ROTC cadet in Iloilo, saying the incident stemmed from a personal matter.

Armed Forces spokesman Brigadier General Edgard Arevalo was referring to the case of 23-year-old Willy Amihoy, who was allegedly killed by 22-year-old Elmer Decilao, reportedly the ROTC corps commander of Iloilo State College of Fisheries (ISCOF) Dumangas Campus.

“What happened was a criminal act that sprung from an altercation between two private individuals over [a] personal matter. There is no way that this is ROTC-related incident or that it could have happened in a ROTC training environment,” Arevalo said.

Further, Arevalo said suspect Decilao, who is now under police custody, has never been named ROTC corps commander.

“This [report that he is the corps commander] is a distortion of facts and resort to a lie by some groups desperate to discredit both the ROTC program and malign the reputation of the President,” Arevalo said, referring to President Rodrigo Duterte who is pushing for a mandatory ROTC.

“The Armed Forces advocates for the ROTC Program to be a requirement for Grades 11 and 12 because it believes that the program will help instill nationalism and patriotism to the youth and inculcate on them discipline, sense of purpose, respect for the laws, rules, regulations, and the authorities and the elders,” Arevalo added.

The National Service Training Program law, which made ROTC optional, was enacted into law in 2001 in the aftermath of the murder of ROTC cadet Mark Welson Chua of University of Santo Tomas (UST) in March of the same year.

Chua, then an engineering student, was killed by his fellow cadet officers after exposing corruption within ROTC ranks to UST's official student publication, The Varsitarian. Worse, Chua's body was found floating in Pasig River, his head wrapped with a packaging tape, hands tied with shoestring and his legs bound by a packaging tape.

Only two of Chua's killers, Arnulfo Aparri and Eduardo Tabrilla, have been convicted. Two others, Paul Tan and Michael Rainard Manangbao, remain at large. — RSJ, GMA News