Tolentino: Senate has enough votes to pass ROTC bill

Senate Majority Leader Francis Tolentino is confident that Senate Bill 2034 — which seeks to make the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) program mandatory for tertiary school students — has enough votes to pass in the upper chamber.

“I believe we have reached a level of support where the ROTC program will be revived. I’m quite confident,” Tolentino said in a statement on Monday.

“The primary goal of the ROTC Bill is to encourage and develop discipline and a deep sense of nationalism among our youth,” he pointed out.

According to Tolentino, the principal author of the ROTC bill, the proposed measure is “timely and crucial” to the country’s interest amid the ongoing conflict in the West Philippine Sea (WPS).

He, however, said the proposed measure does not mean the country is preparing for a war with China. “No, we are not preparing for war. Enacting this bill is timely and crucial for our national interest and future, with or without the conflict in the WPS,” he stressed.

Tolentino noted that the measure had hurdled the third reading at the House of Representatives, and will be included on the agenda of the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council meeting on Tuesday.

Prior to this, former Senate president Juan Miguel Zubiri in April said the upper chamber would prioritize the ROTC bill once the session resumed in May. However, the controversial bill remained pending on second reading before the chamber’s plenary as of 24 June.

To recall, the murder of Mark Welson Chua, a student from the University of Santo Tomas, was the pivotal event that led to the abolition of the mandatory ROTC program in 2002.

Chua, along with fellow cadet Romulo Yumul, exposed the corruption in the university’s ROTC program in a write-up published in their campus publication, The Varsitarian.

After the story was published, Chua went missing.

On 18 March 2001, Chua’s body was seen floating in the Pasig River, wrapped in a carpet, with his face covered with masking tape and his hands tied.