Justice for Kristel Tejada!
Justice for the Filipino youth!
In a genuine democracy, the state must ensure full support to education. If a student’s life is perished because of the State’s negligence to provide her free and accessible education, then that’s murder.
We in the Partido Lakas ng Masa (PLM) mourn the passing of University of the Philippines-Manila (UPM) student Kristel Tejada, who reportedly committed suicide because the UPM administration denied her right to study because of her failure to pay the P10,000 tuition required for admission in the country’s state university.
We view her death not as a suicide, and it’s criminally vulgar to blame her and her family for her financial woes. We view her demise as State murder, for the State failed in its mandate to provide free education to its young constituents, and worse, it even denies the masses admission to its educational institutions because of the lack of capacity to pay the soaring tuition fees in state universities.
The death of Kristel Tejada is the most tragic thing that happened to our education system in recent memory—a system that measures the youth on their capacity to pay the cost of schooling, and the capacity to serve the dictates of the market upon graduation. This is unlike the alternative education system we have been long proposing—education that is accessible and free to everyone and will ultimately serve for the full development of society and humanity.
How can a minimum-wage, non-regular cab driver, like Kristel’s father, afford a supposedly State-subsidized college education worth (at a discounted rate) P10,000? How can a common market vendor afford the voluminous papers and readings needed to cope up with school? How can a factory worker pay for the laboratory and miscellaneous fees for his son?
And UP, as supposedly the premier state university of the land, could not consider these real-life predicaments of the masa student who only yearns for quality education to bail herself, her family, and her class from the strangling claws of poverty! Nay, it blatantly turns a deaf ear to this noble yearning!
What’s worse, Malacanang even admitted that it is “helpless” in preventing the rise of tuition while the Commission on Higher Education gave the convenient excuse of “studying” the incident and to wait for the result of police investigation.
What can we expect from a government blind to the basic necessities and rights of the poor? Can we expect a hacendero to lead the government to be responsive to the masa? Can we expect capitalists and technocrats to lead a state university in pushing the government to fulfill its constitutional obligation in providing free and accessible education at ALL LEVELS, when their measure of poverty is based on abstract figures and concept?
We must hold President Noynoy Aquino, the Commission on Higher Education, Congress and Senate, and the UP Administration accountable for murder on the death of Kristel Tejada. Their continued insensitivity to the issue just adds insult to injury.
Let us bring justice to Kristel Tejada by starting a strong and consolidated movement that will push for free education to all, in all levels! If this is realized in poor countries such as Cuba and Venezuela because of their people’s united action, then we must do it in the Philippines.
EDUCATION IS A RIGHT! IT MUST BE PROVIDED BY THE STATE FOR FREE! JUSTICE FOR KRISTEL TEJADA!
March 17, 2013
Contact person: Merck Maguddayao 09267101392
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