Keep off the teachers

IT always amazes me how our uniformed services manage to target unarmed groups and tag them as threats to the Republic.

Year in and year out, we see dissenting groups being branded as either communist legal fronts or sympathizers of the revolution. They seem to be devoid of the capacity to distinguish legitimate dissent and armed insurgency.

A news report from ABS-CBN online news on Sunday quoted Joselyn Martinez, Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) national chairperson, as saying that police officers went to their school in Malabon on Thursday to ask the school principal for the names of members of ACT.

On Sunday, a copy of the supposed order to inventory members of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) with the signature of a Chief Insp. Rexson Layug of the Manila Police District Intelligence, circulated on Facebook.

In the same news article, National Capital Region Police Office Director Guillermo Eleazar has denied ordering the “school visits.” However, the intelligence chief of the Zambales provincial police confirmed the memo on the ACT is genuine and that they were “just following orders.”

First, the memo in direct violation of the Magna Carta for Public School Teachers. Second, the right of every citizen of the Republic to self-organization, freedom of expression and assembly, and the right to privacy are enshrined and guaranteed in our Constitution. Well, that is unless Congress changed it over the New Year.

Third, a simple Google search would show you that ACT is a listed organization with the Securities and Exchange Commission plus it is recognized by both the Civil Service Commission and the Department of Education. So, what’s next — an inventory of people inside CSC and Deped who recognize the legitimacy of ACT?

What’s the matter? Aren’t you contented of using public schools in hinterlands as de facto camps of paramilitary and soldiers? Now, you’re going after teachers, too?

In a statement, ACT slammed the order to inventory their members as part of the Duterte administration’s grand fascist scheme to suppress all forms of opposition.

I couldn’t agree more. Right off the bat, this administration has been consistent in stifling legitimate dissent. It has been using Marcosian means to silence anybody who has grown cojones to stand up against it.

If you can’t lay your hands off the public schools in the boondocks, at least, keep off the public teachers. Remember, their wage increases were postponed because Digong Dada thought it best to increase your salaries first.

You are all government workers. You share a common goal. You have sworn to serve and protect the Republic. So, I’d like to remind you that you should serve and protect the people not just a certain sector of powerful people.

As I have posted on my Facebook wall a week ago: I do not hope for government workers to do their job. I expect it.