The past month saw various student council election campaigns in campuses across the country. For some students and for those of us who have graduated, there is a tendency to dismiss student council elections in major universities as irrelevant child play. For me, though, and I’m not saying this just because I have always been involved in campus politics, I believe that student council elections are legitimate exercises of students democratic rights. It serves as a rehearsal for students of their part in the larger context of Philippine society. I also believe that the leadership of the student council is decisive and crucial in the formation of student mass movements against commercialization of education and campus repression.

In the University of the Philippines Diliman, the militant Student Alliance for the Advancement of Democratic Rights – UP (STAND-UP) regained the leadership of the University Student Council, after two years of losing the Chairman position. The Alternative Students’ Alliance for Progress – Katipunan ng mga Progresibong Mag-aaral ng Bayan (ASAP-KATIPUNAN) in UP Manila similarly regained the leadership of their University Student Council after three years of losing. STAND-UP and ASAP-KATIPUNAN’s nationalist counterparts in the other UP campuses in UP Baguio, UP Tacloban, UP Miag-ao, UP Cebu and UP Mindanao also scored resounding victories. This is indeed a reaffirmation of the genuine leadership that nationalist and militant activists offer and the potency of militant and collective activism in challenging attacks to students’ rights and welfare and in engaging the different issues that plague the country.

A few weeks ago, I went to the Polytechnic University of the Philippines in Sta. Mesa, Manila, another one of the country’s leading state universities, to campaign for Kabataan Partylist and the Sandigan ng mga Mag-aaral para sa Sambayanan (SAMASA) Alliance during their miting de avance. I was surprised at the intensity of the political atmosphere in PUP. I always thought UP Diliman had the most interesting student council election season in the country.

Incumbent SAMASA eventually emerged as the resounding choice of state scholars, against the yellow-clad Liberal Party-sponsored student political formation in campus (I remember one of their candidates said in the miting de avance, “Anong masama sa pagtaas ng tuition?!” and he was met with boos and invectives).

I am pleasantly amazed that basic tuition rate in PUP has remained affordable to the people at P12 per unit. Perhaps part of it can be attributed to the consistent, genuine and militant leadership of SAMASA in the central student council. Any attempt to increase tuition over the past decade has consistently been challenged by the collective protest of the students under the leadership of SAMASA. This is simply one of the many examples that reinforce the potency of militant leadership in the student council and the collective action of students.

Elsewhere, as state universities and colleges and private institutions of higher education follow international trends of tuition increases due to budget cuts on social services imposed by governments (and prescribed by foreign financial institutions), students’ collective action serves as the most potent tool of resistance.