A "situation out of control": Reining in the cops
The country is being described as "a miasma of profit, corruption and contract killing."
There’s new leadership in the Philippine National Police, at least for a few months. But my concern isn’t over the continuing merry-go-round of top brass appointments, but rather, the quiet but I think serious effort, to try to rein in both the military and police after both institutions were not just coddled and pampered by the previous administration, but more uniquely, given carte blanche at a time when institutional cohesion and control is more needed than ever.
The symptom of the disease is the number of political and other murders involving current and former soldiers and cops.
I’ve been covering this topic in my column for some weeks now, and extended further in this newsletter through the following:
Political Murder: Migrating from the margins to the center (March 23)
Political Murder: A Coalition Trap (March 30)
The "Mexicanization" of the Philippine Military (April 13)
On the law instituting a fixed term for the AFP chief of staff and the problems it caused, see my newsletter, The military, police and a law as an apple of discord (January 11).
On the so-called “war on drugs,” you can find a review of my past points, and of research on local governments and the police, in Issue #7 ("Working Towards The Leader") of my newsletter (June 19, 2021). The focus, then, was on whether local executives allowed cops to operate with impunity or tried to rei n them in; what had yet to be fully appreciated, was the effect of sanctioning impunity for the cops as a whole.
The conversation on rogue elements of the police and military causing deep concern in the political class, continues in my column this week.
This week’s The Long View:
THE LONG VIEW
Trying to reassert control over cops
By: Manuel L. Quezon III - @inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 04:25 AM April 26, 2023
Writing in the Asia Sentinel, veteran observer Viswa Nathan has an interesting frame for recent moves by the Interior and Local Governments (DILG) Secretary, Benhur Abalos, against police top brass. It is part, he suggests, of a gradual effort by the President to distance himself from the bloodthirsty ways of his predecessor, while avoiding an open rupture. While the President is paying the maintenance costs for the ruling coalition (keeping former Senator Leila del Lima unjustly detained, and keeping International Criminal Court investigators out of the country), he also wants to invite investments, particularly from Europe, discouraged by the country’s dismal human rights record. And so Nathan frames court-martial proceedings against Brig. Gen. Jesus Durante III (implicated in the murder of a businesswoman in Davao), the investigation of Gerald Bantag for the liquidation of newsman Percy Lapid and various inmates connected with that slaying, as well as the tightening investigative noose around Rep. Arnolfo Teves Jr., as signs of a modest but tangible rehabilitation of the country’s dismal human rights record.
Nathan includes tweaking the so-called war on drugs in this frame and picked an interesting September 2022 quote from the President: “I’m not interested in the kid who makes 100 pesos a week selling weed. That’s not the person that I want you to go after.” Nathan points to PNP Lt. Gen. Benjamin Santos being made to go on leave while and 49 other cops from Santos’s police drug enforcement group are investigated, as further proof of a slow pivot to an investor-friendly atmosphere. The government’s own Philippine News Agency trumpeted the new era as one marked by a “Less bloody, more holistic drug war.” Changes to pampered institutions isn’t something to be done lightly. The armed forces calmed down only after fixed terms for the top brass was acknowledged to be a bad idea, with Congress on track to repeal them. Still, sfter six years of blunt force trauma under Duterte, it’s still surprising to realize there is more than one way to skin a cat. Nathan sees logic in one observer’s claim, that the mass suspension of senior police officers by Abalos is an old-style face-saving exercise to spare bogging down the government in agonizingly-slow investigations while accomplish the main purpose of purging the top ranks of compromised cops.
Almost audible was the President’s sigh of relief over appointing a new top cop, Police Maj. Gen. Benjamin Acorda Jr. The President quipped Acorda would “calm the situation,” saying he’s “very steady” and that “we really need to appoint someone who we can trust as a commander.” His predecessor, Rodolfo Azurin had retired weeks after publicly advising his superior, the DILG secretary, to beware of people giving him the wrong information. He was reacting to Abalos saying there was a massive coverup to protect Master Sgt. Rodolfo Mayo, who’d been apprehended in an anti-drug raid. Azurin vouched for Brig. Gen. Narciso Domingo and Lt. Gen. Benjamin Santos Jr., who were told to go on leave by Abalos.
Ana Marie Pamintuan tartly classified Azurin as being able to “claim honorary membership in the new ‘naghaharing uri,’ the GI or Genuine Ilocano.” The new PNP top cop actually is a GI. A sign of the way things are, is that aside from loyalty, brief tenures are the name of the game. Azurin retired after nine months as top cop; his successor will serve even less time, retiring in December. But of at least equal importance to the selection of a PNP chief, are the officials backstopping the President in selecting these essentially temporary hires. Recall that in the initial reconfiguration of the President’s office, a position for a presidential adviser on military and police affairs was recreated (because it had already existed since the time of Presidents Diosdado Macapagal and Ferdinand Marcos in 1963 and 21967, respectively) This “new” post was placed under the purview of the Special Assistant to the President. In August 2022, PNP Brig. Gen. Roman Felix (ret.) was given the job, along with Maj. Gen. Ariel Caculitan (former Marines commandant, ret.) and PNP Maj. Gen. Isagani Nerez (ret) as undersecretaries –all Philippine Military Academy alumni. Felix had served as Ilocos Norte police director when the President was still governor, and campaigned for Marcos in 2022. Nerez forms part of the five-member panel tasked with reviewing courtesy resignations to decide by May, who will be retained.
It’s the unenviable mission of these advisers to help navigate a way back to asserting command-and-control because of the looming specter of cops and soldiers, both active and retired, turning into guns-for-hire. This is a troubling phenomenon made truly alarming by the Mexican-style possibility of police and military brass eventually figuring out they can be more efficient mafia-style kingpins than the existing mafiosi that hire them. Put another way, since it seems the authority of the national (and local) government ends where the enticement of having Pogo operations begins, and since the so-called war on drugs of Duterte had the effect of liquidating old networks, it would be unsurprising if at least some cops didn’t decide to become apex predators themselves, then an inevitable confrontation between these new players and old ones, including politicians, was inevitable.
Observers are taking notice. Back in January, writing in Foreign Affairs, Margaret Simmons headlined that “The Philippines Is Losing Its ‘War on Drugs’” while in February, writing in The Monthly, she reported that, “The deaths continue, but the operation has gone underground. Many killings go unreported. Increasingly, the media reports what the police tell them, uncritically. And there is evidence that, six years after the so-called war began, the situation has slid out of the control of government and become part of a miasma of profit, corruption and contract killing.” A chilling detail from her report: “But one piece of information circulates freely across Manila. We asked several people in the slums how much it cost to have someone killed these days. The answer was consistent: 30,000 pesos (about $800). More if it is someone prominent, when there might be a fuss.”
A note on Institutional Memory:
In my column I briefly noted that the Presidential Adviser on Military and Police Affairs was a “re-created” position. That’s because it would have been just as easy (and perhaps much more logical) to further amend the brief for an already extant position, that of Presidential Adviser on Military Affairs, with the rank of Secretary, which began in 1963 under President Diosdado Macapagal, as the Military Adviser to the Presidenr; renamed by President Ferdinand E. Marcos as Presidential Assistant on Military Affairs in 1966; renamed Presidential Consultant on Military Affairs under President Corazon C. Aquino in 1986, again renamed Presidential Adviser on Military Affairs and its functions itemized under President Joseph E. Estrada; the position continued to exist up to President Benigno S. Aquino III: to this day, the online official directory still lists Aquino’s adviser, Rear Adm. Danilo Cortez (Ret.) as the incumbent!
Further reading
An interesting piece that came out recently was Politics, power and private armed groups in the Philippines by Vincent Kyle Parada in East Asia Forum. The author is “a defence research analyst at the Office of Naval Strategic Studies and Strategy Management, Philippine Navy,” and thus suggests the trend of thinking in defense circles. Here, the author places recent political murders in the context of militias authorized by the government and the control local officials have over these forces:
Degamo’s assassination was the latest in a string of politically-motivated killings that saw at least three more local executives injured or killed between 17 February and 4 March 2023. No stranger to electoral violence, private armed groups (PAGs) have been a staple of Philippine politics since its post-WWII independence. Since the 1940s, political and economic elites have actively employed private armies for two reasons — to influence the outcome of elections and politics and for the protection of self and property.
PAGs found a third function by the 1970s when, under president Ferdinand Marcos Sr, the Philippine government co-opted existing private armies into its counterinsurgency efforts. This strategy was earlier utilised by president Ramon Magsaysay against the communist Hukbalahap (‘People’s Army Against the Japanese’). Marcos’ establishment of the Integrated Civilian Home Defense Forces — armed volunteers supervised by provincial governors and municipal mayors — further legitimised the use of paramilitary forces. Soon enough, groups which had originally been formed to serve political and business interests found themselves facing communist and Muslim insurgents while state-sanctioned groups were subordinated to political and business interests.
While the state’s informal agreement with the oligarchy allowed PAGs to serve as ‘force multipliers’ for state security forces, the tolerance of their existence had established a precedent which privatised control over legitimate violence – a monopoly traditionally held by the state. This was further complicated by the Republic Act 6975 s. 1990 which demilitarised the Philippine Constabulary and empowered local chief executives with ‘operational supervision and control’ over the Philippine National Police (PNP) in their jurisdictions.
Inextricably linked with the political establishment, it was unsurprising that many low-ranking former AFP and PNP personnel would find employment under local warlords and dynastic families. A consistent demand for violence coupled with poverty and the padrino (patronage) found no shortage of men willing to work as hired guns for monetary gain. After all, these were men already licensed to kill — only this time, restrictions were looser and the pay proved better.
In 2009, Maguindanao province became the site of the ‘single deadliest event for the press in recent history’ as the rivalry between the Ampatuan and Mangudadatu clans ended with the massacre of 58 people, including 32 journalists. A Human Rights Watch report later found that members of the Ampatuans’ private army were mostly come state-sanctioned paramilitaries, including members of Civilian Volunteer Organizations (CVOs) and Citizen Armed Force Geographical Units (CAFGUs).
This was possible because former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo signed Executive Order No. 546 in 2006, which allowed for the recruitment and arming of CVOs. That same year, the AFP also authorised four new Special CAFGU companies for the Ampatuans – auxiliary units specifically contracted by local governments and businesses to serve as private security.
The rise of president Rodrigo Duterte in 2016 gave state security forces an open endorsement to use violence to support the government’s war on drugs and the intensified campaign against the Communist Party of the Philippines. As the country slid from democratic principles to an authoritarian oligarchy, political and economic elites took the opportunity to consolidate their positions through PAG recruitment. Violence against politicians reached its deadliest climax under the Duterte administration, averaging around 90.2 killings annually from 2016–2022 compared to 43.75 under president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and 54.34 under president Benigno Aquino III.
Degamo’s assassination was only one of many incidents brought about by unbridled PAG proliferation. While sustained gains against communist and Muslim insurgents led to a gradual decline of PAGs, PNP officials still estimate that as many as 155 PAGs operate across the Philippines. This is lower than the 558 active in 1993, but it is still an all-too-common feature of the country’s political establishment. Politicians continue to lord over their jurisdictions like petty kings over tiny fiefdoms, wielding private armies and state security forces in the manner of a knightly retinue.
A note on the above: the author says poor wages and so on tempted some cops and soldiers to become guns for hire; this needs further context since presidents have generally been generous when it comes to military and police salaries —and pensions in particular. At the very least it suggests an interesting point to consider: enlisted personnel may be tempted to become guns for hire, but was that the case, until recently, anyway, for officers? Since they enjoy generous pensions pegged on current and not past salaries.
The author then summarizes what, in his view, is the President’s dilemma and a potential way forward:
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has inherited one of the first major controversies of his presidency. Marcos Jr would do well to answer Degamo’s assassination by calling for the immediate dismantlement of unauthorised PAGs and outlawing private armies under Article XVIII, Section 24 of the 1987 Philippine Constitution.
But with the continued prevalence of political dynasties, such a policy forms only part of the solution. Legislators and civil society alike have been trying to introduce an anti-dynasty law for the last three decades. Passing a law like that requires a great deal of political capital — capital which Marcos Jr, part of a dynasty himself, may not be willing or able to expend.
In the absence of an anti-dynasty law, policymakers must dismantle PAGs as a preliminary step toward the dismantlement of political dynasties. To remove the means by which local elites have monopolised violence is to remove the very mechanism by which they remain in power. Doing so will open up new avenues for political opposition, democratic participation and genuine reform through the power of the ballot.
A tall order.