UNPOPULAR OPINION | The GASC is a CPP Playground

The General Assembly of Student Councils (GASC) at the University of the Philippines was envisioned as a democratic space — a venue where student leaders across the UP system could gather to discuss pressing issues and select the student regent who would represent them before the Board of Regents. In principle, it should be the highest expression of student leadership and solidarity.

But in practice, it has increasingly become a machinery for the CPP to consolidate its power in student activism across the UP system. Over the years, it has turned what should be a forum for diverse voices into a staging ground for its partisan agenda. The presence of CPP-led councils system-wide has tilted the balance of power, especially in the GASC.

Not all student councils—much less all Isko and Iska—are influenced by the CPP, and it is important to make that distinction. There is also something to be said about the seeming apathy in UP Diliman, for example, where student political participation has steadily waned. Few candidates now run for both university-wide and local college posts, and voter turnout remains low. Even STAND UP, the longtime CPP-aligned bloc in the student council, is in shambles, unable to field a full slate since 2024. To stay palatable to the studentry, many activists have had to rebrand themselves as “independents,” masking the same old politics under a different label.

Elsewhere, however, militant groups remain dominant — ensuring that GASC becomes less of a democratic forum and more of a political convention.

GASC 2025

This dynamic was on full display in the recent GASC, when the UPLB University Student Council issued a misleading statement about the supposed “crackdown” on human rights advocates in Mindoro. They went so far as to portray armed combatants killed in an encounter as mere civilians—even, in one video, referring to them as “kasama.” 

A student leader openly calling NPAs kasama is telling enough—a Freudian slip that exposed where their loyalties lie. Instead of addressing genuine student concerns, they veer off into ideological grandstanding, all while unresolved cases of sexual harassment and abuse persist within their own organizations.

The session also turned its attention to UP Mindanao, where the presence of the 11^th Regional Community Defense Group (RCDG), a reservist unit of the Philippine Army, became a discussion point. GASC leaders demanded that the RCDG be removed from its location near campus, calling it “militarization” that infringes upon academic freedom. On August 13, Kabataan and ACT Teachers Partylists filed House Resolution No. 129 in support of the GASC resolution.

In GASC plenaries, other political parties or independent councils are drowned out, outnumbered by the organized lobby of CPP-led delegations. In such an environment, the outcome of deliberations, and most importantly the student regent selection, becomes a foregone conclusion. The next student regent is either another CPP or Kabataang Makabayan member, as has been the pattern for years. Here, any semblance of genuine student representation has eroded. When one political bloc monopolizes the discourse, councils cease to reflect the diversity of the student body. Instead, they serve as recruitment grounds and echo chambers for a partisan agenda.

Student power?   

So how did the CPP manage to hijack the GASC? The influence of national democratic groups in the GASC has long been justified as “pure student power.” In truth, it is Party machinery at work. Through groups like Anakbayan and the League of Filipino Students, the CPP has built political parties within student councils to secure the broadest possible reach. Their sheer numbers overwhelm other factions, leaving little space for competing voices. 

But that is only one side of the coin. Opposing student groups also struggle to present a brand of progressiveness untainted by violent radicalism. While the CPP lobby is propped up by a sprawling external network (think urban mass movement machinery of labor centers, peasant organizations, multisectoral alliances, and party-list groups), technocratic or more moderate student factions enjoy little to no outside backing. In the grand scheme of student politics, this leaves them perpetually outnumbered, their ideas drowned out in a forum where organizational muscle often matters more than genuine representation.

So then whenever other progressive groups try to take the spotlight, launch their own initiatives on social issues, or dare to criticize the national democratic bloc within student politics, their efforts are almost always dismissed as politically motivated. The narrative is twisted into a ploy to “silence” a vocal representative or discredit a so-called movement. Worse, dissenting groups are often branded as state collaborators, much like how liberal youth organizations were maligned when they used to participate in UP student politics.

The last stand

Why is the CPP so intent on holding sway over student councils anyway? Historically, the Philippine communist movement has always depended on the well of intellectuals from universities, where young, idealistic minds are most open to the idea of waging a revolution. Student councils, as the most legitimate and influential representation of the student body, provide the platform to recruit, radicalize, and mobilize.

And arguably, this agenda is even more urgent today. With their armed movement in ruins, the CPP has every reason to see the youth, especially the university intellectuals, as its last viable pool of recruits. Controlling student councils, particularly in institutions like UP, is not about serving students’ welfare, it is about securing the future of a movement that has otherwise lost its foothold. 

We have to recognize this for what it is: not pure student power, but a hijacking of student democracy in service of an outdated war. The bigger challenge now for the broader student community is to keep the GASC from the clutch hold of the CPP by the only means the Party cadres themselves understand and fear: organizing a bigger, more genuine, and more representative movement of student power.