Thousands gather at UPLB to “receive cash”
People totaling of over a hundred thousand gathered Saturday morning at the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) after being told that there would be a “general assembly” where they will be handed cash from the Marcoses.
The “assembly” was initially deemed as a cooperative meeting called, “One Social Family Credit Cooperative General Assembly” and was a part of the activities of the university for the day.
According to their traffic advisory, the event was approved by the department of human kinetics– College of Art and Sciences.
Participants of the “assembly”, sources say, came from different parts of Luzon, mostly hailing from the CALABARZON area.
John Pagunsan, a UPLB Student, said that the event was not a movement. “It is wrong to classify the collective as Marcos loyalists, people there were deceived by the promise of money not because they wanted to show "support" for Marcos,” he explained in an online interview with The Fourth.
Sources say that the UPLB lower grounds were filled with people handing out pamphlets that listed the achievements and success and photos of late President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. during the martial law era.
There were also people who rented jeepneys with their provinces’ names attached to the windshields and carried out the supporters who apparently “came and gone in batches” as they were called “Marcos beneficiaries” by former UPLB faculty member, Lynette Serrano. Although others claimed that they didn’t know what they were doing, where they were exactly, and what was going to happen.
Pagunsan also mentioned that such event can be parallelized to "vote-buying.” “The difference is people were just not ‘aware’ with the intention of the event and in defense of those who went, there were many who were dismayed with the event because they had to sacrifice their savings just to reach Los Baños,” he added.
It was said that there were speakers at the event who addressed every single one of Marcos’ achievements.
Los Baños police officers, as reported in Inquirer.net, said that they knew that it was a cooperative event happening in UPLB but the Marcos relation of the event was unknown to them.
The university’s student council released a statement with regards to the event, stating that “they strongly condemn the evident lack of respect of Bullion Buyers, Ltd. to UPLB, its community, and its history as one of the “bastions of student activism” during the Marcos regime.” No prior statement was given that it was catalyzed by Bullion Buyers, Ltd.
On a Facebook post last September 24, the UPLB student council demanded that the university’s administration should own up to its involvement in the matter and that the event was allowed to continue despite the evident infractions committed by the organizers.
“We call for the vigilance of the UPLB community and administration in events like these. Under no circumstance should UPLB be the grounds for pro-Marcos propaganda and UPLB must not be the tool by which the poor are taken advantage of,” as said on their post.
