The Philippine Collegian clashes with a new law: Repression or accountability?

The Philippine Collegian clashes with a new law
Repression or accountability?
By Junette B. Galagala

THE UNIVERSITY of the Philippines (UP) has already selected the Philippine Collegian editor in chief for the following academic year, but the conflict over the UP Diliman publication’s funds has yet to be resolved.
Disagreeing interpretations of a new law, Republic Act (RA) 9184, also known as the Procurement Reform Act, brought on the deadlock between the UP administration and the present Collegian editorial board.
Signed into law in 2003, RA 9184 was strictly implemented by the UP administration in June 2006, at the end of the previous Collegian editorial board’s term.  In April last year, the Chancellor’s office issued a memorandum on the application of the new law.  The memo stated that a bidding process facilitated by the Supply and Property Management Office (SPMO) should be conducted for acquisitions by government agencies that amount to P250,000 and higher.
The Collegian editorial board canvassed for a printer for its first two issues in June 2006.  However, the vouchers for the payment of the printer were not approved. The UP SPMO called the Collegian’s attention to the fact that a bidding was not undertaken.  A canvass was not good enough.
Explaining its position, the university said the money collected during enrollment that is specifically allotted for the Collegian is a public fund since it is collected by a government unit. As such, government accounting rules should be applied on the use of the money.  One of those rules requires that the printing job for the Collegian should undergo bidding.
The Collegian, however, averred that the school publication is not under the government, that its budget does not constitute a public fund, and that therefore it should be exempt from RA 9184.
And while the UP admi-nistration claimed that it was just complying with the law, the Collegian says the university is violating campus press freedom.

Legal tangle
RA 9184 covers the “procurement of infrastructure projects, goods and consulting services, regardless of source of funds, whether local or foreign.”  It includes all government branches and agencies as well as government-owned and controlled corporations and local government units.
The law aims to ensure transparency and accountability in the purchases that government offices make.  Article IV, Section 10, of the law mandates that “all procurement shall be done through competitive bidding” except for “emergency purposes not exceeding P50,000 and for regular office supplies not exceeding P250,000.” The printing of the Collegian costs about P1.2 million per school year.
Of the P60 pesos that each UP enrollee is required to pay every semester, P40 goes to the university paper. The latter, which is exclusively for Collegian expenses, is placed in a trust fund under the university.
But even as the administration collects the fund from the students, the Collegian editorial board, in its position paper titled “Autonomy Under Siege,” maintains that “the full discretion of handling of Collegian fund” belongs “to the duly selected editorial board.”
Alnie Foja, one of the Collegian’s legal counsels, wrote in her legal opinion that while RA 9184 includes state universities and colleges, it is not applicable to organizations that are “inde-pendent of and have a separate existence from the state university or college in which they exist.”  The Collegian, she wrote, is one such autonomous entity.
But Ibarra Gutierrez, himself a former Collegian editor and now director of the UP Law Center Institute of Human Rights, says that even though the Collegian fund is “not technically… a public fund,” it would “not (be) unreasonable” to apply the accounting requirements. He says this is because the administration has aquired a “potential liability” by virtue of its involvement in the collection of the fee.
UP Vice President for Legal Affairs Marvic Leonen bluntly says,”You must remember that because UP collected, we are accountable to each and every student that contributed (to the fund). And as far as UP is concerned, there is only one way that we can assure transparency and that is to follow the law. And the law says you bid it, unless there’s an exception.”
Because of the controversy, an investigative journalism class in the UP College of Mass Communication studied the nature of the Collegian funds but declined to have the results publicized.

Refusal to bid
The Bids and Awards Committee (BAC), of which the SPMO is a member, facilitates bidding procedures in UP.  If the procedure is followed, the end user of the fund, in this case the Philippine Collegian’s editorial board, lays down the requirements it is looking for in a printer.
The bidding is then advertised and potential suppliers submit their bids.  The BAC checks if the interested suppliers meet technical qualifications. The suppliers then submit sealed envelopes containing their bids, which will be opened simultaneously. The contract will be awarded to the lowest bidder if it meets post-qualification checks.
Leonen says, “The people who will be conducting the bidding are not the top officials of UP…The Bids and Awards Committee are technical people. They do not look at the content of what you’re going to say; they simply look at (questions like): Is this printer not a fly-by-night operator? Is this a printer that can meet the technical specifications of the newspaper that we’re about to publish?  And can they print it the cheapest?” He therefore doesn’t see why the students say the bidding issue is “a matter of principle.”
In its position paper, the Collegian says that the administration’s intervention in the paper’s financial affairs could result in suppression of campus press freedom.  It fears that the administration might delay the printing or the release of the fund by tampering with the process of selecting the printer.
Jose Cosido, president of the College Editors Guild of the Philippines (CEGP), says the administration can manipulate the bidding.
In response, the UP administration  proposed to the Collegian that the editorial board collect its own funds so it could be excluded from government accounting rules. But the Collegian  opposed the suggestion, pointing out that it does not have the machinery to collect from the more than 20,000 students in UP Diliman and its extension in Pampanga.
If UP does the collection, Leonen pointed out, then the Collegian must go through the bidding process.  “You cannot have one system that assures transparency for all our other procurements and another one especially for the printing of the Philippine Collegian.” He assured the students that under the process, they would be involved “from the beginning.”

Attempts at compromise
UP Diliman Chancellor Sergio Cao says the administration has tried to address the funds dispute. In a dialogue, the Commission on Audit (COA) had agreed with the administration that until a bidding is completed, UP may pay the printed Collegian issues as “delivered service.”  This was on the condition that the printing of the remaining issues would be subjected to bidding.
Since the bidding process would take a while, the administration and the COA decided on a “negotiated purchase” until July, two weeks after the Collegian was supposed to start bidding procedures.  The Collegian, however, refused to go through the bidding and managed to print six more issues.
Eventually, the issue reached a deadlock.
Karl Castro, the Philippine Collegian editor in chief, says that the “agreement” was really just “the administration’s assertion of their position.  They wanted us to submit to the bidding.”
Cash-strapped, the Collegian nevertheless managed to put out in November last year a Rebel Collegian through a donation from Renato Bello, an alumnus from the UP College of Engineering. Its front-page editorial declared, “This is not your regular Collegian. This is a declaration of dissent. This is proof that no matter how tight the administration maintains its grip on the publication’s operations, it can never contain its fierce resistance.”
In December, alumni regent Gari Tiongco initiated talks between the administration and the Collegian in an attempt to break the deadlock. Tiongco met with Castro, the Collegian’s legal counsel Homobono Adaza, and Leonen.
It was agreed that the Collegian would seek the court’s interpretation of RA 9184, and that UP would comply with the court’s decision.
In the same meeting, Tiongco facilitated the loan of P120,000 from the UP Law Foundation to enable the Collegian to continue publishing.  Leonen is the treasurer of the Foundation.  With the money, the paper was able to print three more issues, from December 2006 to January 2007.  As of press time, however, the Collegian still has not taken the issue to court.

COA rules
Administration officials say that if they allow the  release of the funds without  approval from COA, they could be ordered to pay for the amount that was discharged or face charges of graft and corruption.
On the other hand, the Collegian editorial board cites Section 5 of the Campus Journalism Act (CJA) that states, “In no instance shall the Department of Education, Culture and Sports or the school administration concerned withhold the release of funds sourced from the savings of the appropriations of the respective schools and other sources intended for the student publication.  Subscription fees collected by the school administration shall be released automatically to the student publication concerned.”
Cao, however, avers that the implementing rules and regulations of the CJA provides that, “Disbursements of student publication fund shall be made according to accounting and auditing regulations.” (Rule V, Sec. 2)  He adds that the CJA’s provision for the direct turnover of funds applies only to secondary schools, not to state universities and colleges.
The implementing rules of the CJA also states: “The members of the editorial board of the tertiary student publication shall be responsible to the school/college/university, to third parties for its decisions, actions, policies and legal consequences arising from such.” (Rule IV, Sec. 3)

Defining autonomy
The Collegian insists on its autonomy as an institution, with UP students, not the UP administration, as its publishers. Castro believes that organizational skills are honed when a group’s members are left to operate on their own.  He says that being in the Collegian trains students to become leaders and claims that the UP administration denies them this chance when it separates fiscal autonomy from campus press freedom.
UP journalism professor Luis V. Teodoro, says, “I think the administration was afraid that they would be sued. But whether they intended to or not, by saying that the funds are government funds, in effect, they affected the autonomy of the Collegian.
Teorodo, who is also a former Collegian editor, says that whatever motivated the administration to act the way it did, the “objective consequences” of its actions constituted “an infringement on the autonomy of the Collegian.”
For as long as UP students and alumni could remember, the Collegian has been left pretty much on its own to manage its finances. Under martial law, it has been known as the newspaper of reference not just for UP students but other sectors as well, such as labor, the urban poor, the farmers and just about anyone who wanted a view of reality that was not reflected in the controlled mainstream press.
Some Collegian editors during martial law were arrested and jailed, such as the late Abraham “Ditto” Sarmiento Jr. One of its former editors, Antonio Tagamolila, joined the underground movement during the most repressive years of Marcos’s rule and was eventually killed by government forces.
The tradition of independence is therefore one that has been fiercely upheld by most editors of the Collegian in the face of perceived threats from both outside the university and inside.

Evil plans?
Today, in the issue currently befuddling the campus paper, Castro says “the UP administration does have a plausible and very clear motive for not having the Collegian at this time,” referring to issues the paper has been very vocal about, particularly the 300-percent increase in tuition and other fees.
Cosido questions the delayed implementation of RA 9184, saying that the Collegian had been allowed to print its issues without conducting a bidding for the past two years since the law was ratified.  He believes that the university officials “want the Collegian silenced (so they could) pursue their evil plans to increase tuition in UP.”
Cao, however, explains that government agencies are given a transition period to adjust their systems before laws are fully implemented.  The deadline for the grace period that COA gave UP unfortunately caught up with the 2006-2007 editorial board.  He adds that UP could not ask for a further delay in the implementation; otherwise, other govern-ment units would do the same.
Leonen, moreover, says that the admi-nistration has in fact been supportive of the Collegian as it has released all the other expenses that the publication requires, such as the staff’s honoraria, utilities, newspaper subscription, among other things, from the Collegian funds.
He insists that the admi-nistration is not withholding the printing funds. “What we’re saying is, bid it and we’ll release it,” he says.

In other state universities
At UP Manila, the administration also collects the subscription fee for the Manila Collegian as part of the enrollment fees. After the paper submits its financial statements, proposed budget and receipts/vouchers for auditing, the administration turns over the fund in full to a savings account under the Manila Collegian. The paper is then left to manage its finances and allowed to select its printer through a “bidding” process that the editorial board facilitates.
Polytechnic University of the Philippines’ The Catalyst used to collect its funds as part of the fees from more than 60,000 students.  In 2001, the administration took over the collection. While the university cashier transfers the money to The Catalyst’s bank account, the funds are released only upon the submission of financial statements and the approval of the dean of student services. The paper has contracted the same printer for several years.
The administration of Philippine Normal University also collects the funds for the university student paper, The Torch.  The editorial board needs to request the amount as well as submit a financial report for the funds to be released.  The Torch’s editorial board chooses its printer by canvassing.

Truce
When summer rolled around and with two more issues to print, the Philippine Collegian requested SPMO that it be allowed to merely canvass for a printer since the printing cost for the last issues was below P150,000.  The administration agreed.  The Collegian has already released issues 14 — 15 (“Eleksyon 2007”) on May 11.
The incoming editorial board under the incoming editor in chief, Jerrie Abella, has agreed to follow RA 9184—in the meantime. Saying it was a “very difficult decision” for the staff to make, Abella—who is news editor in the current Collegian staff—says the immediate concern is to secure the release of the funds and get the paper printed. The board, however, has proposed that bidding for the printing services be concluded by June (the start of the new academic year) and that the printing expenses of the previous issuesthe first eight published from June to July and the 13th printed in March—which were loaned from the printer—be paid.
Still, the incoming board is not about to give up on the position taken by the current editorial board. It still plans to file charges against the administration for allegedly holding on to the Collegian’s funds and to seek a clarification from the Government Procurement Policy Board on whether RA 9184 includes the university paper.
Observers would find it easy to see the legal and practical considerations behind the moves of the UP administration. But perhaps one needs to be a UP student to understand the tenacity and zeal with which the Philippine Collegian guards its autonomy against any possible threat. One journalism student puts it this way: “The Collegian is like the soul of UP students.”

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