Note: This is a reprint of an original article by Adelfo Cyrus Alanis & Kenneth Roland Al. Guda published in the Philippine Collegian sometime in the 90s. If you want to view the original version, just click
here.
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The student political party known today as SAMASA hails from a different party alliance bearing a different principle altogether.
Founded in 1980, the original Sandigan ng Mag-aaral para sa Sambayanan (SAMASA) which at its peak was composed of more than 100 member organizations aimed to protect and advance the democratic rights of students. SAMASA sought to pressure the Marcos dictatorship into reinstating the University Student Council (USC) after Marcos abolished it in 1972. However, when the USC was restored a year after, many derivative parties branched out of the mother alliance, such as the Nagkakaisang Tugon (TUGON) and the Independent Student Alliance (ISA). Nevertheless, SAMASA continued to hold sway over campus politics until it suffered its first defeat in 1985.
Thus wrote the present SAMASA when it described the event during that time: "In 1985, SAMASA was tagged as composed of rah-rah activists perennially 'talking above the heads of students.' The students could not identify anymore with the politics of SAMASA, tackling more national issues than local ones."
This observation manifested the beginning of SAMASA's uncertainty, faltering in its analysis of its historical relevance. Choosing to abandon the struggle, it instead complied, even patronized, the present disposition of the students. In assuming a reactive role, it did not attempt to trace the root of student apathy and discontent.
This mystification was further reinforced during the post-EDSA period, when the progressive mass movement itself was experiencing a clouding of its principles. Views such as "democratic space" were being entertained. Some were led to believe that the times were different now, thus calling for different approaches to society's ills. Fancying revisionism and reformism, some of the movement's leaders took to the extent of capitulating. As expected, the periodic context of 1986 trickled down to the student sector, significantly influencing SAMASA's performance in the succeeding years.
Since the "common enemy" - Marcos -- was already vanquished, and the disturbance in the national level was already "pacified," it was thus time to concentrate on local, university concerns. This was reflected in SAMASA's attempt to change its flag's color from red to orange to supposedly tone down its militant image.
Although SAMASA continued to take collective positions regarding national issues such as the US Bases, the alliance's concentration was essentially skewed, leaning towards local concerns. Despite undergoing a consolidation of its ranks, the alliance did not lay emphasis on its political education. SAMASA failed to analyze that present conditions of society have not changed. Instead of reaffirming the struggle, the alliance slackened in its militancy.
This confusion was underscored when the STFAP was introduced by UP President Jose Abueva in 1989. Those who remained militant in the alliance called for its complete rejection while others were willing to settle for revisions as an alternative. In 1991, due to the STFAP, the tuition fee increased from P40 to P200 per unit. SAMASA lost in the elections the following year.
Slowly, the brewing contradictions resulted in a division within the alliance: the "militant bloc" and the "alternative bloc." The attempt towards "unification" within the alliance occasioned the latter to prevail. However, the futility of pursuing such a reformist line was exposed when the tuition fee further increased to P300 in 1992.
But despite the tuition fee increase, SAMASA's alternative bloc was more occupied with winning the next elections. Inspite of the huge setbacks and a substantial slackening of its time-tested militancy, SAMASA leaders refused to engage in serious self-reflection and criticism. Instead, it virtually turned itself into an electoral machine. True enough, SAMASA clinched a landslide victory in 1993 led by USC Chair Teddy Rigoroso. But even though SAMASA was able to secure all the USC posts, no further discussions were conducted regarding the STFAP issue.
Notwithstanding the landslide victory, the internal struggle intensified. But once again, the catchword "unity" - albeit unprincipled - resolved the disparity. This confidence would prove to be the militant bloc's own undoing when it was their initiative to run for the elections in 1994. With minimal support from the alternative bloc, SAMASA candidate for Chairperson Renato Reyes lost by 55 votes to ISA's Ricky Ismael.
SAMASA's defeat led the militant group to reassess its past performance, relearning from history in line with the analysis of the present conditions within society. Attempts towards integrating with the masses, reliving the community experience, even in the countryside were conducted. After one year of rectification, the militant bloc was prepared to assert its conviction.
During the SAMASA Congress in 1995, the militant bloc composed of seven organizations asserted that the alliance uphold its historical and traditional role. Noel Colina, one of the leaders of the "militant bloc," said that their group called for an assessment of more than ten years of SAMASA history.
"We were still calling for unity of the alliance," said Colina. This time, though, the militant bloc stood by their principles. The bloc relayed their assessment of the SAMASA history, based on the alliance's principles, and enjoined the body in further assessing history and present conditions. The alternative bloc, now composing majority of the Executive Committee (EC) of the alliance, vehemently ignored such calls.
The arguments presented during the Congress highlighted extreme differences between the two blocs. principles, analyses and directions between the two blocs. Using the SM strike which occured the previous year, the alternative bloc even ventured to weigh the gains that the students derived for participating in such an "outside concern." This tendency utterly invalidated the alliance's confidence in the basic masses sector from which it attributes the party's name - Sandigan para sa Masa - confirmed the complete digression in principles, analyses, and directions on the part of the reformist bloc. The stage was thus set for the split this time. There was no room for unification, nor compromise.
"It was dragging on, going nowhere," recalled Colina. "The alternative bloc was consolidating their ranks, in an effort to foil our initiatives." In frustration, representatives from the seven organizations comprising the militant bloc, composed of the original founding members of the 1980 SAMASA, walked out of the Congress and formalized the split.
The walk-out, Colina maintains, was not because they no longer believed in SAMASA. Rather, they wanted to uphold the principles that SAMASA stood for when it was first founded. "SAMASA's student leadership," according to Colina, "found its strength in uniting the students' struggle for democratic rights with the people's struggle for genuine liberation," a basic premise which the reformist bloc was prepared to disown.
The militant group formed their own alliance carrying SAMASA's original name (Sandigan ng mga Mag-aaral para sa Sambayanan) with a qualifier - Tunay, Militante, at Makabayang Alyansa (TMMA). In 1996, SAMASA-TMMA would spearhead the formation of the Student Alliance for the Advancement of Democratic Rights in UP (STAND-UP), an alliance espousing the very same principles the original SAMASA stood for in its formative years.
Both STAND-UP and today's SAMASA claim historical lineage from the original SAMASA. The group, which held on to SAMASA - at least in name and logo - changed the terms the initials stood for into what is now known as the Sandigan para sa Mag-aaral at Sambayanan.
The "loyal" bloc argued that the times called for less "dogmatic" and more "creative" forms of student leadership, disowning 'traditional' forms of protest like mass mobilizations and pickets. "We in SAMASA have always believed that every generation defines for itself, its own meaning of service and sacrifice," according to Jeremiah Asis, when he ran for USC chair under SAMASA after the split. "We have to consider the contextual condition which we now face and let these hundreds or millions of definitions go through a collective process." However, as to what definition of service and the present contextual conditions the alliance adhered to, Asis and SAMASA did not specify.
"They were using the catchword 'Generation X,'" explains Colina. "The youth of today are confused, therefore, according to their logic, it is futile to enlighten them through 'orthodox' means. You have to let them be, find their own meaning. This is very dangerous: it brings the students to complacency and a false sense of hope."
Only time can fully unmask the extent of regression SAMASA underwent.
