The recent and worrisome challenge , albeit politely couched as a request , of the Marcos Administration to certain officers, specifically colonels and generals, of the Philippine National Police seems harmless on its face. Please hand in your courtesy resignation, so the friendly encouragement says. It is meant basically to give erring officers a free pass in the government’s new drive against the illegal drugs. Thus, those who think it’s a radical idea whose time has come can’t help but praise it to high heavens as noble and honorable.
Interior and Local Government Secretary Benhur Abalos has even sounded like he’s doing the officers a great favor with his solicitous offer for the good of the police organization and the nation as well. Just do it , and they can disappear in the night, no questions asked. The nation need heroes in the fight against illegal drugs, especially at a time when police officers, and even non-officers, are believed to be involved in the nefarious trade. So-called drug ninjas in the PNP are still around. Apparently, Abalos and company know who the suspects in uniform are; they just want to rid the organization of rogue cops once and for all, especially ranking officers, in a bloodless way.
ATTENTION International Criminal Court: the war against drugs by the Marcos Administration will be unlike the one launched by former President Duterte for which the ICC is salivating to put the former strongman on the dock for crime against humanity. The Philippines has since dropped out of the ICC to stop the proposed probe , which the present dispensation has backed up. The ICC wants justice but both the Duterte and the Marcos regimes have said it’s none of its business , conveniently forgetting that the Philippines had agreed to the terms and conditions of the Rome Statute for such a probe when it signed off.
All politics is local, given that Marcos’ return to presidential power was made possible by his team- up with Duterte’s daughter, Sara as his vice president. Marcos has signaled his intention to pursue the war on drugs on a different, higher level, maybe morally. Where Duterte applied swift and brutal justice sans due process, Marcos wants swift justice,too but with mercy, yet without the requisite due process. In this sense, both administrations have made a virtual mockery of the Constitution, or at least the Bill of rights.
Section 1 of Article 3 of the Charter, which has survived several attempts to revise it , clearly puts human rights in no uncertain terms: no one shall be deprived of life, liberty and property without the due process of law and everyone is entitled to the equal protection of the law. There is also the abiding legal principle that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty in court of law. The implication of the call to resign voluntarily and live happily ever is hard to miss. The presumption of innocence is already in question until a committee of five declares otherwise.
Sen. Coco Pimentel, a bar topnotch, has questioned this specious short-cut move by Abalos. Why make it complicated when the tried and test method is simple, straightorward and fair? Charge those police officers the government has prima facie evidence that their hands are in the illegal drug trades. Let the rule of law prevail. Let the Lady Justice rule with a blindfold, not politics.
So far, the balls not the brains ,appear to have ruled . Around percent of the officers have reportedly accepted or complied with the Abalos call. More are expected to heed the call. The response could be a confluence of pressure, pragmatism and political correctness. In the era of ‘golden’ onions,the alternative could be worse. And here is where the rubber meets the road: prudence is the better part of valor but cross your fingers.
The courtesy resignation call is not a novel idea. It was tried during the administration of the late President Ramos but it had a different objective. Junior officers were already growing impatient about moving up the ladder because of a glut of generals upstairs. Ramos asked a courtesy resignation from all generals to make the situation more fluid.
In Ramos’s time, it was also evident that something was wrong in the PNP character . He implemented a moral recovery movement, a general program of moral reform in the organization, no insinuation of the presence of drug ninjas among top officers. When Duterte became president, the issue of generals involved in illegal drugs came to a head, with no less than a former PNP chief, a Duterte choice, accused of confiscating illegal drugs and reselling them.
But Abalos’ call may not just be a well-intention, if legally questionable, strategy to weed out the PNP of undesirable elements vis-à-vis the continuing war against drugs. There is now an emerging issue that there is more to it than meets the eye or challenges something between the ear. It appears loyalty among officers to the Marcos administration is in doubt. The talk is that the resignation call is aimed to nip in the bud what is felt to be shaping up in the PNP. Denial , of course, is part of smoking out the smoke, not its source.
The visible indications invite motive, apart from malice. For one thing, the sudden change in the AFP leadership is one that has kept tongues wagging in and out of the military circle. The seemingly unrelated call for courtesy resignation adds up and makes great sense in the bigger picture. The unity call by Marcos resonates with every move he does to build his vision of the Philippines. He has confessed his admiration for Machiavelli, and for a reason. To be decisive is to be creative and vice versa.
Time will prove whether the Abalos’ gambit was just meant to cleanse the PNP of scalawag colonels and generals. Or it suddenly dawned on him and his principal and peers that it could be stone that could be used to kill two birds with just one swing.
By the way, Abalos is lawyer from an Ivy League university, according to lawyer friend. Meaning, he probably knows what he’s doing. Once upon a time, there was another Abalos with another bright idea.
