9/8/10

A DEMOCRATIC CREED

University of Sto. Tomas
Faculty of Arts and Letters

(Standard creed of UST Students' Democratic Party, political party founded on June 12,1981)



We believe in the dignity of man and the worth and value of every living soul, no matter in what body housed, no matter whether born in comfort or born in poverty, no matter to what stock he belongs, what creed he professes, what job he holds.

We believe that every man should have a free and equal chance to develop his best abilities under a free system of government, where the people themselves choose those who are to rule them and no one can set himself up as a tyrant or oppress the many for the benefit of the few.

We believe that free speech, free assembly, free election, free practice of religion are cornerstones of such a government.

We believe in justice and law. We do not believe in curing an evil by substituting it with another evil. We are unalterably opposed to class hatred, race hatred, however manifested by whosoever instilled.

We believe that political freedom implies and acknowledges personal and economic responsibilities. We do not believe that any state is an admirable state that lets its people go hungry when they might be fed, ragged when they might be clothed, sick when they might be well, workless when they might have work. We believe that it is the duty of all of us, to see to it that such conditions are remedied wherever and whenever they existed in our country.

We know that our democratic system is not perfect. We know that it permits injustices and wrong. But with our whole hearts we believe in its continuous power of self-remedy. The power is not a theory—it has been proven. Through the years, democracy had given more people freedom, less persecution, and a higher standard of living than any system we know. Under it, evils have been abolished, justice remedied, old wounds healed, not by terror and violent revolution but by peaceful revolution of consent in the minds of the people. While we maintain democracy, we maintain the greatest power people can possess—the power of gradual, efficient, and lawful change.

Most of all, we believe in democracy itself—in its past, its present and its future—in democracy as a political system to live by—in democracy as the great hope in the minds of the free. We believe it is deeply rooted in the earth of this country that neither assault from without nor dissension from within can ever wipe it entirely from the earth. But, because it was established for us by the free-minded and the daring, it is our now, in danger as in security, to uphold and sustain it with all that we have and are. We believe that its future shall and must be even greater than its past. And to the future—as to the past of our forebears and the present of our hard won freedom—we pledge all we have to give without any material reservation or purpose of evasion.
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Professor of "The Humanities" at the Lyceum of the Philippines University. Law Student at the Far Eastern University, Institute of Law. President and former Auditor of Legal Network for Truthful Elections (UST Chapter) Former Vice President- Internal of Batas Tomasino: The UST Law Society, Former Chairperson of UST-Students' Democratic Party. Former Vice President- Internal of UST UNESCO. Former Public Relations Officer (PRO) of UST Arts and Letters Student Council. Former Vice President Internal of Community Achievers' Association (UST-AB). Bachelor of Arts in Legal Management (University of Santo Tomas, '09) High School Education (Christian Academy of Manila, '05)