A growing wave of anger in the Philippines over corruption-tainted flood control projects is spurring activism among university students and other Filipinos that observers say evokes the spirit of past political uprisings.
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At the University of the Philippines’ main campus in Quezon City, over 3,000 students and lecturers left their classrooms to rally on Friday against what they described as systemic corruption.
The university has long been a cradle of student activism and political dissent. Its students held protests against the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos Snr in the 1970s and 1980s, during the 1986 People Power Revolution to end his two-decade rule, and in the 2001 uprising to force then president Joseph Estrada to flee from office over corruption and other charges.
Raymond Macapagal, an assistant professor at the university’s Centre for International Studies, remembers marching out of the classroom when he was a student and joining his classmates to call for Estrada’s resignation.
On Friday, Macapagal cancelled his remaining classes and urged his students to join the protest on campus over the flood control scandal. He was surprised and moved by their enthusiastic response to his call.
“I usually perceive my students to be studious but aloof,” he told This Week in Asia. “I have now seen, with much pride, that my students are knowledgeable and justly enraged by what their government is doing to the country. I’m happy to see that they want a better future for themselves.”