‘For the constituents who will remain in Makati, they will lose the UMak that offered them the quality education benefit that very few LGUs provide their residents.’
I saw an aerial shot the other day of the University of Makati campus and was amazed. The buildings looked modern, the campus was tight (by the UP standards I grew up with) but well planned, and the wow factor for me was the track and field oval that was long a dream for us in Diliman.
It reminded me of another university, Imelda’s University of Life in Pasig which had great facilities but never really took off as an academic institution. If I remember right, the UL was built allegedly after the then FL felt slighted when UP students objected to having her as the commencement speaker during which she was going to be awarded an honorary doctorate.
The UMak, as Makati University is called, wasn’t built to spite anyone. It was built by Jejomar Binay to provide his beloved constituents in Makati with the opportunity for academic excellence fully funded by the city.
Now, it seems, UMak will soon be called UTag, the University of Taguig, or PaTag even, for Pamantasan ng Taguig. This inevitability is what is in part making the mayor of Makati climb the walls, as it will be a major loss to the city both in terms of investment in infrastructure as well as a loss of a major benefit that Makati residents have long enjoyed.
Could it be recompensed somehow for this loss, I wonder?
But the loss of the campus is not the only issue that makes this Makati-to-Taguig transfer of seven barangays a major problem for the mayor as well as the city. The bulong-bulungan centers around the fact that the mayor’s husband, Rep. Luis Jose Campos Jr., will lose a significant portion of his constituents in the Makati district he represents in Congress. And he is losing a lot of the very voters who have time and time again propelled the Binays into public office — the ordinary folk who have always identified with the politics of Jejomar Binay and who have provided the winning margin to defeat the upper-crust crowd from the exclusive villages who have not been too keen to vote for them.
So yes, there’s more to this issue than meets the eye. For the constituents who will remain in Makati, they will lose the UMak that offered them the quality education benefit that very few LGUs provide their residents.
The city will lose a significant portion of its territory, and income too, of course. And there will be a loss on the voting population that can impact the politics not only of the city in general but of District 2 in particular.
And that’s why this is an issue that, I suspect, won’t go away that easily.
