(Response delivered by Rep. Edcel C. Lagman, 2022 UP Most Distinguished Alumnus, at the Bahay ng Alumni, UP Diliman on 11 November 2022)
UP President Danilo Concepcion and officials of the University, UPAA President and Regent Reynaldo Laserna and officers of UPAA, distinguished fellow awardees and their respective families, members of the UP community, and friends.
On behalf of the honorees this year, I humbly and happily express our heartfelt gratitude to the University of the Philippines Alumni Association for our selection as the 2022 Distinguished Alumni awardees.
Recognition is not sought. It is deservedly bestowed. We do not work to be recognized, but we must assure that our work is meritorious.
I have the courage and the humility to say that this year’s awardees, like those in previous years, are exemplars of the elite breed of UP graduates which the University and the country can truly be proud of.
I am certain all of us awardees excelled in our chosen fields not to be cited, but to give back and honor UP for giving us quality education and imparting in us fidelity to patriotism and passion for freedom.
Each awardee has a mission to fulfill, a crusade to wage and a destiny to meet. Everyone excelled and contributed to the betterment of others to richly deserve recognition.
More than 60 years ago I started my UP education, four years in liberal arts and four years in law. Much of my enduring advocacies and steadfast commitments were honed here in UP.
My UP education taught me the option to conform, but more instructively, the right to reasonably differ. Indeed, critical thinking is the hallmark of UP.
During my entire political life spanning more than three decades, most of the time I was and still am with the authentic opposition. During the few times I was with the majority, I was a fiscalizer.
Unanimity, either by feeble volition or coopted conscription, is anathema to democratic governance and institutions. Democracy is the rule of the majority. But the majority can blunder. Perforce, the minority must be accorded an enabling space to articulate critical dissent and the opportunity to become the majority.
The right to dissent is integral to a free society and is at the heart of democracy. It encompasses our individual and collective rights to freedom of expression, association, assembly, and participation in nation-building. Dissent encourages debate. It is vital in making informed decisions about issues of public concern.
When I filed the debt cap bill during the 8th Congress, which proposed the pegging of the Philippine foreign debt service to not more than 10% of our export receipts, I was critical of the failure of President Corazon Aquino’s government to repudiate or negotiate for the condonation of the odious and behest loans contracted during the martial law regime.
When I co-authored, and subsequently single-handedly sponsored and defended, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Bill, now R.A. No. 6657, I challenged the dominance of the landed gentry over the impoverished peasantry of landless tenants.
When I authored R.A. No. 9346 abolishing the death penalty, I dissented from its restoration by the administration of President Fidel Ramos after our very Constitution jettisoned capital punishment.
When I authored the triumvirate of human rights laws – the Anti-Torture Act, Criminalization of Enforced Disappearance Act, and Compensation and Recognition of Martial Law Victims Act, I championed the heroic dissent of Filipinos whose human rights have been derogated.
When I principally authored the enactment of the Reproductive Health Law, an unrelenting odyssey of more than 13 years, I challenged the hegemony of the Catholic hierarchy over the reproductive health rights of Filipino women and couples.
Now I am advocating for the reinstitution of absolute divorce in the Philippines to challenge the conservatism of policymakers and the dogmatism of the Catholic Church for denying the liberation of abused wives from dysfunctional and long-dead marriages.
Verily, dissent can prevail!
Allow me to acknowledge the presence of all of my seven children, five of whom are also UP graduates like their mother, the late beloved Ma. Cielo Burce-Lagman; my two sisters and a niece are likewise here.
My two younger brothers are gone. Ka Popoy, a committed, irrepressible and fiery labor advocate for the workingman was assassinated two decades ago at the very footsteps of the side entrance of this hallowed Bahay ng Alumni. My other brother, Hermon, a UP graduate, was the first lawyer to have been forcibly disappeared during marital law, more than four decades ago for his courageous and steadfast struggle as a labor lawyer against the oppression and repression during marital law.
My in-laws are also here many of whom are UP graduates; five of my 17 grandchildren, together with one of my three great grandchildren, are present. Incidentally, two of my grandsons are currently enrolled in UP.
Let me likewise acknowledge the presence of my balae, Prof. Mely Ramirez, a mentor of generations of UP graduates.
Earnest thanks also to Bicol University President Arnulfo Mascariñas who graciously nominated me for the 2022 Most Distinguished Alumnus Award.
Finally, on behalf of the awardees, I call on all Filipinos to courageously fight for and relish freedom, and exercise the right to expression and dissent fearless of prior restraint or subsequent reprisal.
The freedom of expression is abused today by the proliferation of inordinate misinformation which malevolently manipulates public opinion and the electoral will. Consequently, let us also be sentinels of truth and verities against the purveyors of lies and false news.
It is also incumbent on UP to start extensively teaching, if it has not yet started, media or news literacy so that our youth will be able to readily discern truth from falsehood.
Thank you once again!