Abalos’ gambit is a band-aid solution, won’t address corruption in PNP

It was thoughtless and inconsiderate of Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Secretary Benjamin Abalos Jr. to call—amid reports of the return of “ninjas” involved in the recycling and resale in the market of illegal drugs seized in previous anti-illegal drug operations—for “courtesy” resignation of police colonels and generals in the Philippine National Police. It is unfair and unjust for any of those senior officers who have no record of involvement in the illegal drug trade, to be associated with the doings of ninjas, given the timing and context in which the DILG secretary made that unfortunate call. More seriously, as a retired Army officer, I worry that the call could demoralize and discredit the entire police organization, which could lead to a larger national security concern. I appeal to the DILG secretary to rescind his call posthaste before matters get worse.

The DILG secretary explained that the courtesy resignations will speed up cleansing in the ranks of the PNP. I doubt that he could go far, given recent news reporting of growing demoralization and tension in the police ranks—a consequence of what I consider to be his ill-thought-out adventure of dismissing from the service, without due process, those suspected of being involved in the illegal drug trade—with “enforceable” courtesy resignations as a guise. And what if 900 or so officers who are clean together take advantage of the courtesy resignation ruse, get their retirement pay, and go? Isn’t that cleansing the police organization of men of character and integrity? What happens then to the command structure of the PNP?

Abalos’ gambit is a band-aid solution that can only scratch, if at all, the surface of the ingrained problem of corruption in the police organization, which, sad to say, exists in most other sectors of our society. I would say, in that regard, that the PNP organization is a microcosm of the corrupt, decadent Philippine society. It is concerning that like in other sectors of our society, corruption in the PNP has become endemic. In that environment, the courtesy resignation stunt of the DILG secretary “to speed up cleansing of the police ranks” is a puny, if not laughable, attempt at eliminating corruption in the organization. It won’t work.

The public’s trust in the integrity of our police organization has been severely eroded by a culture of impunity and abuse of power, and the recurring involvement in corruption and crimes, big and small, of police officers. In my opinion, the PNP has lost its raison d’être. It is time now to nullify the constitutional mandate to establish a police organization “that is national in scope and civilian in character,” and dissolve the PNP fashioned after that organizational concept.

With the PNP’s dissolution, its mandate on organized crime and other high crimes, including violation of illegal drug laws, can be devolved to the National Bureau of Investigation, which should absorb the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency; its anti-insurgency operation and anti-terrorism functions to be taken over by the Army, and its community peace and order functions absorbed by local police units under the operational and administrative control of local government units. LGUs are to assume accountability for what their police units and personnel do or fail to do.

Pending its dissolution, the PNP should be absorbed back into the Armed Forces of the Philippines, with its officers and men becoming subject to military justice and military discipline. Pending and future cases of police personnel who are absorbed by the military should be tried and resolved by courts martial—for a much speedier dispensation of justice than can be provided by civilian trial courts, the National Police Commission, and the Civil Service Commission.

I propose that the DILG secretary and President Marcos Jr. drop the courtesy resignation idea and go, instead, for the formulation and implementation of a comprehensive and viable systemic approach to the problem of corruption in the PNP, pending its dissolution. The policy framework developed for the PNP could be the template for a strategic, systemic approach to the problem of corruption afflicting our society as a whole.

Col. Leonardo O. Odoño (Ret.),

PMA Class of 1964