South China Sea: Philippines debates boosting war readiness through mandatory military training for students

Senator Robin Padilla told local media on March 14 that he was getting “impatient” with the bill, which he filed two years ago and was languishing in the Senate.

The part-time training programme would be held over four academic terms, coinciding with students’ studies. The Philippines already offers an ROTC programme that college students may take as a prerequisite to graduation, but it is not mandatory.

“Is the Philippines ready to defend itself?” Padilla asked his fellow lawmakers when calling for the bill to be passed.

“Given the size of China’s military and reservists, they could walk all over us, urinate on us, and we would drown,” he said.

A survey commissioned by the Philippines’ armed forces and conducted by research firm OCTA in December revealed that 77 per cent of Filipinos said they were willing to fight for their country in the event of a conflict with a foreign enemy.

According to data from June last year, the Philippine military has 150,000 active-duty personnel and around 1.2 million reservists.

The Philippines has had a mandatory ROTC programme in the past, but it was made voluntary through a law passed in 2002, after a student from the University of Santo Tomas was killed by senior ROTC officers for exposing corruption within the programme at the university.

Senator Ronald dela Rosa echoed Padilla’s sentiments when he spoke to reporters last week, saying that the Philippines needed to be prepared to defend itself at all times.

“We cannot have a credible defence if we do not have enough reserves. We cannot produce enough reserves if we do not have the ROTC programme. We’re vulnerable without the ROTC programme,” dela Rosa, a former national police chief, said on March 13.

Opposition senator Risa Hontiveros,