Sulong Tayo? We See Right Through You

PART ONE: Same Colors, New Packaging: Why Sulong Tayo! Has No Credibility

The flyers are colorful. The slogan, “Tunay, Palaban, Makabayan” rolls off the tongue with practiced ease. The candidates smile from campaign materials, flanked by the word “independent” in careful, deliberate typeface.

But no one is fooled.

The Sulong Tayo! Coalition, which announced itself last Thursday with much fanfare and a five-point common agenda, is not a new political formation. It is not a fresh alternative. It is not an independent movement of students finally breaking free from old loyalties.

Sulong Tayo! is STAND UP’s convenient escape hatch from accountability, dressed differently, but unmistakably the same. And the only thing they are running from is their own history. Because exactly what has STAND UP done with the political machinery it spent years building inside UP Diliman?

Political baggage

In 2023, during the Aktibisita forum, multiple allegations of sexual harassment and assault involving STAND UP members surfaced publicly. The organization was compelled to issue a rare public admission and apology. It acknowledged systemic mishandling of abuse cases, admitting that organizational “unity” and the broader “struggle” were often prioritized over survivor justice.

The fallout was immediate. College chapters disaffiliated. Even Gabriela Youth UP Diliman—an organization politically aligned with STAND UP at the time—publicly condemned the abuses. Survivors came forward to describe isolation, backlash, and an institutional culture that protected perpetrators while silencing the harmed.

STAND UP promised reforms. But a promised reform is not the same as accountability. And as subsequent events would prove, the underlying political culture never truly changed.

The most damning example came in early 2026.

Jobert D. Pillas, College of Arts and Letters Representative to the University Student Council, was elected under the Laban Kabataan coalition, which was Sulong Tayo!’s direct predecessor. He also served as head of the USC Finance Committee, an enviable position, according to one former member of Anakbayan in UP Diliman, because of its access to funds and resources. 

On February 27, 2026, the Quezon City Police arrested Pillas for alleged violation of Republic Act 8353, the Anti-Rape Law.

What happened next wasn't the typical conspiracy involving leaked memos or secret directives. What happened next was, in the context of activist student governance, worse: an ironic failure of transparency by a USC dominated by the same political bloc now attempting to reinvent itself under the Sulong Tayo! banner.

Compounding the issue was a clear conflict of interest. USC chairperson Joaquin Buenaflor, who presided over the council during the controversy, had previously acted as Pillas’ legal representative and was described by insiders as a personal friend. Buenaflor also served as chairperson of SALiGAN sa CSSP in 2024, a political party at the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy and a member of STAND UP’s network.

The result?

Council members reportedly voted on Pillas’ suspension without knowing they were voting in the context of an on-going rape case. Students from the College of Arts and Letters were not immediately informed that their representative had been detained on allegations of sexual assault. The USC withheld critical information from its own members and the student body, which prevented informed judgment on the severity of the situation.

This is not how a body that constantly invokes “student rights” and “safe spaces” should respond to allegations of sexual violence. This is how institutions protect their own.

And the Pillas case was not an isolated controversy. It merely exposed, once again, the same political instincts that STAND UP itself admitted to back in 2023.

The pattern is difficult to ignore. Survivors who speak out describe being ostracized, pressured to remain silent, or warned that pursuing complaints would “harm the [national democratic] movement.” Organizations that aggressively demand accountability from the administration and the state suddenly become opaque when abuse allegations emerge within their own ranks.

And when the controversy becomes too large to contain, the branding changes. That is precisely why Sulong Tayo! exists.

The 2023 admissions. The disaffiliations. The unresolved credibility crisis. The mishandling of the Pillas controversy. The growing perception that organizational loyalty matters more than accountability. STAND UP now carries political baggage that even its own organizers understand has become electorally toxic. 

The solution, apparently, was not to fundamentally confront the political culture that produced these problems. The solution was to rebrand.

Eat cake

From STAND UP to Laban Kabataan to Sulong Tayo!, the names evolve while the machinery remains intact. And Sulong Tayo!’s own figures have practically admitted as much.

Moira Alfonso, the coalition’s chairperson aspirant, herself noted that the same mass organizations continue pushing the same political line “regardless of campus party labels.” She is correct, but not in the way she intended. Because the label is irrelevant precisely because the machinery remains identical.

The same networks. The same allied organizations. The same political culture. The same refusal to seriously confront internal failures. Sulong Tayo! is not an independent coalition courageously breaking from old politics. It is a strategic repackaging operation designed to create plausible distance from accumulated controversy.

When voters ask about the 2023 sexual harassment scandals, the answer becomes: “That was STAND UP, not us.” When voters ask about the Pillas controversy, the answer becomes: “That was the Laban Kabataan USC, not Sulong Tayo!” When questions of accountability arise, the answer becomes: “We are independents. We are a coalition. We are something new.”

Sulong Tayo! and its network of national democratic organizations cannot have their cake and eat it too. They cannot inherit the same votes, the same machinery, the same organizational backing, and the same political capital while disowning the consequences attached to them.

And this is what makes Sulong Tayo!’s repeated use of the word “independent” especially dishonest. The word has meaning. It suggests freedom from entrenched political machinery. It suggests candidates who answer first to students rather than organizational discipline or coalition strategy.

But Sulong Tayo! candidates are not politically independent in any meaningful sense. They are supported by the same long-standing activist machinery that previously operated under STAND UP and Laban Kabataan. The branding may have softened. The structure did not disappear.

What Sulong Tayo! is asking is for students to pretend institutional memory no longer exists.

What accountability looks like

To be sure, political organizations are complicated. Individuals are not automatically defined by the worst actions of their allies. And as former members of the CPP-NPA-NDFP can attest to, reform is possible. But reform requires transparency, accountability, and institutional honesty.

Real accountability would have meant immediately informing the USC and the student body that a sitting councilor had been arrested for rape. It would have meant publicly documenting what council members knew before the suspension vote. It would have meant a transparent independent review of how the USC handled the controversy.

Real accountability would have meant confronting the organizational culture that repeatedly allowed political loyalty to supersede survivor-centered accountability. Instead, what students received was silence, opacity, damage control, and eventually another rebrand.

Sulong Tayo! now asks UP students to believe that a new coalition name, carefully crafted campaign materials, and the strategic use of the word “independent” are enough to erase years of unresolved controversies and institutional failures.

But political accountability does not disappear with a new logo. Because the same machinery remains. The same networks remain.

And until those organizations show genuine transparency instead of simply changing labels every election cycle, UP students have every reason to see right through the packaging.