In terms of a more institutional form of the oversight function, it’s Congress that has the sole and highest authority to perform the task. This is especially so when a critical constituency, in this case, the Philippine National Police, experiences disruption, displacement, and dismemberment arising from a rather convoluted call for courtesy resignations of its level 3 top brass.
Not a day or week, much less a month, should pass that the operations of a civilian police force — imbued with the critical role of internal security, counterinsurgency, peace and order — are placed in a general state of disarray because the heads of the PNP’s key offices had resigned from their positions. The resignations arose from the call made by the interior secretary who is supposed to oversee the PNP with extraordinary ends, not extraordinary means.
The secretary’s call for 953 generals and full colonels to resign en masse as part of a purging process because of purported drug links was sounded on 3 January. The officers were given until 31 January to submit their resignations. The same failed to achieve a 100 percent success rate as five officers had retired, six were retiring, and 1 invoked his personal prerogative. Suppose nine of these 12 officers were “ninjas” or “narco-cops”? Were they deemed excluded from the equation?
The interior secretary failed to explain the possibly serious implications of the courtesy resignations considering there would be no equal number of colonels and generals to take over the positions in the void so created. Neither did he explain who would take charge or exercise authority and responsibility while a five-member panel deliberated the resigned’s futures; and so forth.
To add insult to injury, how come the panel members with their professional backgrounds are more like square pegs in round holes since they are graduates of the Philippine Military Academy rather than the Philippine National Police Academy? Suppose the “mistah culture” deeply ingrained in their psyches beclouds their judgment if some of the police generals and colonels belong to their respective PMA classes.
Meanwhile, the Civil Service Commission wants us to believe that the generals and colonels were “presidential appointees” and thus it was within legal bounds to ask them to resign. However, if we push that argument further, we realize that this bureaucratic worldview stands on an ice floe — it does not make sense as a template for streamlining.
It seems beyond difficult, disposition-wise, how a general or colonel will go about writing a formal resignation letter when he is asked to give up his office or position to give way for a probe, purging, or cleansing to take its course. How will he justify surrendering the mandate of his office, cutting the line of authority or mantle of responsibility, or stating his case in all honest candor after a hard climb to the top of the career ladder?
Such a “big bang” approach that adversely affects morale, the “chain of command,” and the institutional integrity of the entire organization cannot yield the outcome it envisions. Perhaps, the five-member panel (four named plus one unnamed) to judge the fitness of the PNP top brass can also be questioned since it’s voluntary and dominated by PMAyers.
And how fast will they get through with the arbitration job toward a range of possibilities — retention, removal, retirement, reinstatement, et cetera — if this endgame simply puts careers, futures, and missions hanging in the balance? It might end in negative externalities inimical to the service never before imagined.
Sadly, PMA graduates still have to reign over the police service rather than its very own PNPA graduates. In short, if there are still a good number of PMA graduates in the PNP top echelons whom the panel would vet, chances are the “arbitrators board” might serve as the wrecking crew of those otherwise involved in drugs or criminal tradecraft.