The University Council added, “When GMA is caught lying, she either stonewalls or orders an investigation which churns out prefabricated results. These actions are in stark contrast with two objectives which are cherished by the University – getting at the truth and forging a democratic society. Both of these are obviously anathema to GMA.” The NBN-ZTE Deal is a mockery of the plight of the Filipinos. With the government barely allocating enough budget for social services, government officials, and the president at that, still has the gall to pocket money and overprice government projects for their personal gains.

In the education sector, the government allots P17.3 billion pesos for all the state universities and colleges in the Philippines, according to the 2007 General Appropriations Act. Out of the P17.3 billion allotted for SUCs, the University of the Philippines system receives P4.8 billion or 27 percent of the total budget for SUCs.

The budget for SUCs could have been bigger had education been prioritized over the NBN project. UP could not have resorted to tuition and other fee increases and leasing lands to, say, Ayala Corp. in order to augment its meager budget.

Corruption has not only tainted the credibility of the Arroyo administration but has also deprived the Filipinos the social services that they pay for through their taxes – services which they rightfully deserve. According to IBON Info, independent think-tank IBON Foundation’s electronic magazine, “major corruption scandals under [the Arroyo administration] cost Filipinos over P7 billion.”

According to IBON, this could have been channeled to the health and education sectors.

“It could have been used to help the Department of Education (DepEd) bridge its resource gaps of classrooms, textbooks and teachers. According to DepEd figures, its 2008 budget is still P8.43 billion short in order to bridge its resource gaps for the year. It could also have been used to increase subsidies for indigent patients in government hospitals such as the Philippine General Hospital,” IBON said.

The NBN-ZTE deal also has dire economic consequences. China’s offer of a $329 million loan to finance the NBN project is a move to “offload” its $1.33 trillion foreign reserves, said Raul Fabella and Emmanuel De Dios of the University of the Philippines School of Economics in a paper titled “Lacking a Backbone: The Controversy over the NBN and Cyber-Education Projects.”

Through “tied foreign assistance,” or “officially supported loans, credits or associated financing packages where procurement of goods or services involved is limited to the donor country or to a group of countries,” China “pass[es] off some of its idle reserves as loans to developing countries as an incentive for the latter to import from Chinese home firms, thus sustaining employment and the breakneck growth at home.”

This setup is advantageous to China but not necessarily so for the Philippines, as this may “trap” the Philippines as China forwards its “mercantilist purpose,” Fabella and De Dios said in the paper.

Moreover, Fabella and De Dios said that in resorting to foreign borrowing to finance public infrastructure projects, “since no budgetary allocation is required, the executive branch evad[es] the parochialism of congressional priorities – but also eluding congressional scrutiny, except for the odd ex post congressional investigation or so.”

With this, “the only backbone the government needs today is a moral one: not fiber optic but fiber politique,” Fabella and De Dios said in the paper.

Filipinos have had enough of government corruption. Students have had enough of government corruption. It is in this light that the Advocacy for Sustained Accountability and Reform (Asar) movement, composed of students from various universities, was formed.

The campus tour was marked by the students’ rallying cry: “Asar na ba kayo? (Are you mad enough?)” one cried, to which the students responded, “Asar na asar na asar na kami (We’re mad enough).”