Aquino not PNP commander in chief under 1987 Philippine Constitution

For the sake of accuracy, I wish to correct the repetitious mistaken reference to President Aquino as the commander in chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP).

The 1987 Constitution is explicit and categorical in providing that “The President shall be the Commander in Chief of all armed forces of the Philippines” (Section 18, Article VII, 1987 Constitution). The provision on the PNP is found in Section 6, Article XVI of the same Constitution: “The State shall establish and maintain one police force which shall be national in scope and civilian in character, to be administered and controlled by a national police commission.” The President is not mentioned as commander in chief thereof.

Being civilian in character, the PNP is not among the major services of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the military arm of the government, which includes the Philippine Army, the Philippine Air Force and the Philippine Navy.

From the constitutional perspective, the PNP may rightly be described as an agency in the category of a bureau or office belonging to the executive department. It is simply an instrumentality of the executive power of the president who exercises “control of all the executive departments, bureaus, and offices” (Section 17, Article VII, 1987 Constitution). In actuality, when the president issues orders or directives to the PNP, he does not do so as commander in chief but as the executive exercising his control power alongside the power to ensure that the laws are faithfully executed.

It is clear then that as strictly designed by the 1987 Constitution, the president is the commander in chief of the AFP, not of the PNP.

—BARTOLOME C. FERNANDEZ JR.,

retired senior commissioner,

Commission on Audit, Makati City