‘Impurisima’

It perhaps should not have come as a surprise that the instinctive reaction of Philippine National Police chief Alan Purisima to the preventive suspension order issued by the Ombudsman was to try to avoid heeding it. The country’s top policeman has built a reputation for seeing nothing wrong with questionable transactions that prove advantageous to him, but questioning the propriety of or ignoring government actions meant to call him to account.

On Dec. 4, the Ombudsman ordered that Purisima and other police officials be placed under preventive suspension, as it investigates a possibly anomalous P100-million contract the PNP entered into with a courier service company. Purisima’s immediate response was to file a petition with the Court of Appeals for a temporary restraining order, and then a few days later to question the authority of his immediate superior, Interior Secretary Mar Roxas, to serve the suspension order.

His petition alleged that Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales committed grave abuse of discretion because her order was “not supported by substantial evidence and is in violation of law and/or jurisprudence since there is no evidence of guilt whatsoever against petitioner.” A statement was also issued in his name calling Roxas’ serving of the suspension order “patently illegal.”

Purisima enjoys the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, like any other citizen, but these initial attempts to avoid accountability are ridiculous. When understood in the context of his earlier effort to justify controversial transactions that ended up benefiting him, they are nothing less than hypocritical.

When he finally showed up before the Senate public order committee last September after failing to honor at least two previous invitations, he strained reason and the senators’ patience with his show of belabored innocence. About his controversial purchase of a Toyota Land Cruiser worth P4.5 million from a San Fernando, Pampanga car dealer for only P1.5 million, he told the committee that he got the discount because the dealer gave it to him. An exasperated committee chair, Sen. Grace Poe, asked the question many viewers and listeners were asking: “I’m not saying it’s your fault that you were able to get it at a discounted price. But you should have taken a second look at that big a discount…. Ask yourself, why is this being given to me at a cheaper price?”

A P3-million discount would be seen by any police investigator as a potential bribery or at least a conflict of interest, but when it comes to enjoying personal advantage Purisima’s police instincts seem to be on mute.

At the same committee hearing, Purisima also defended the donation of a total of P11 million from some of his friends to help in the construction of the so-called White House, the PNP chief’s official residence. Sen. Sergio Osmeña III questioned Purisima’s apparent gullibility for accepting the donation as if there were no strings attached. “They’re not doing that out of the goodness of their hearts. As long as you’re in office, they know they can get something. Human nature being what it is and debt of gratitude being a strong cultural trait in our society, in our country, that’s what will happen.”

Again, any police investigator would have seen that donation as potentially problematic, but because it is Purisima enjoying the benefits, his own instincts have gone silent.

On the other hand, when Roxas implemented the preventive suspension order against him, Purisima had the temerity to quibble over legal language. His lawyer argued at a news conference that it should be the National Police Commission that should carry out the order, rather than the Department of Interior and Local Government. “We don’t recognize what the DILG served because legally speaking, it should be the Napolcom… Perhaps there was just a confusion because the DILG secretary is also the ex-officio chair of the Napolcom.”

There is no confusion, unless it is to Purisima’s advantage to claim it exists.

His initial attempts to avoid accountability prove Poe’s simple point yet again: Purisima has lost the moral authority to run the PNP.