The military, police and a law as an apple of discord
The military and police are the sum of all fears
My column today and my recent article in
are part of a piece: getting to grips with some pretty confusing goings-on in military and police circles. My Inquirer column today actually serves as a kind of introduction/prologue to my earlier piece.
I. This week’s The Long View
THE LONG VIEW
The prize causing military quarrels
By: Manuel L. Quezon III - @inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 04:00 AM January 11, 2023
From 1987 to 2007, the Philippines experienced periodic bouts of military adventurism abetted by the armed forces having formed part of the trinity of institutions—the military, the clergy, and civil society—that toppled the sclerotic and senile Marcos dictatorship in 1986. Three factors served to eventually wean the armed forces away from the dangerous delusion that it could govern better than civilian politicians. The first two were presidential stratagems that appealed to the cupidity and careerism of the officer corps: Military pensions were (and remain) lavishly and uniquely based on current salaries, guaranteeing constant raises for the retired; presidents resorted to a revolving-door policy concerning promotions to the top brass position of chief of staff, which accommodates the ambitions of more and not fewer classes of the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) from whose ranks most officers have sprung; and the Filipino people themselves, as a pragmatic electorate, has rewarded military adventurism with elected office, on the simple yet effective Peter Principle of promotions (raising ex-officers to their own level of civilian incompetence by making them senators: In its centennial year, the Senate had three senators who were ex-military rebels or participated in actual regime change).
There may be a fourth, often unheralded factor, all the more remarkable because accomplished under the watch of a former general: the abolition of the old Philippine Constabulary by President Fidel V. Ramos in 1991, despite his career in the Constabulary (or perhaps, because of it; the Constabulary was long considered the most corrupt service in the armed forces, not least because it originated, and served as, a branch of the military focused on the suppression of domestic challenges to the government’s authority). Even as it remained fabulously corrupt and highly incompetent, the police, now turned into a nominally civilian institution (dominated, however, by ex-military who chose to remain in the police even after it was civilianized), branched off on its own institutional, evolutionary path, tied root and branch to domestic political concerns while the armed forces increasingly focused on transnational threats such as terrorism and territorial defense.
If Ramos brokered breathing—and growing—room for the country’s newly restored democracy, through adroit peace negotiations with communist, Muslim, and military rebels, then Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, herself brought to power in a bout of people power in 2001, dexterously divided all three mandate-conferring institutions (the military, clergy, and civil society) so they could never again combine to achieve the toppling of an elected government through street demonstrations and backroom negotiations. Future historians might eventually date to her administration, a trend that bore fruit in the Duterte administration, which was the remilitarization of the police, something the police finally achieved with the restoration of military-style ranks, returning the prestige they keenly felt they’d lost when the Philippine National Police adopted police-style ranks. This underscores the quiet expectation of presidents from Arroyo to Duterte: that in times of doubtful military loyalty, the police could be groomed to somehow represent a blocking force to counter putschists.
If President Marcos Jr. is the first chief executive in a generation to boast some sort of military experience (which bears some qualification: it was as a junior commissioned officer in the Philippine Constabulary, which, combined with some supposed training by the SAS to place him in the ranks of the hawks during his father’s final crisis in 1986), his ties to the post-Marcos military seem slender at best. The President himself was “adopted” as many national politicians are, by the Philippine Military Academy’s Class of 1979. But the current generation of senior generals in the armed forces (which has a relatively young mandated retirement age of 56) are the PMA classes of 1988 and 1989.
Indeed, Mr. Marcos belongs to a curious subset of post-Marcos presidents: scions who achieved the highest office without the wide and deep network one would expect a successful presidential candidate to have and which was a feature of the presidencies of Ramos and Arroyo. Instead, like Benigno S. Aquino III and Duterte, the Junior Marcos seems to have a very small circle of political and social intimates, perhaps understandably so (as in the case of both the Aquino and Marcos scions, both lived through extended periods of political and social ostracism aimed at their families; Duterte as a provincial baron neither had a need for nor sought, a wider network, until unexpectedly catapulted to power in 2016).
Two decades of military adventurism primed all three to be wary of the military and to continue, in their own way, the all-carrot approach to pacifying the officer corps. Perhaps the freest and least apologetic about this was Duterte with his repeated forays into military camps to demonstrate liberality toward both officers and enlisted men; after his alliance with the Left was broken, he gave carte blanche to the military to go after communist rebels in a manner reminiscent of the way he actively encouraged the police to engage in drug-war-justified liquidations. The armed forces and diplomatic service also managed to convince Duterte to dial back some of his pro-Beijing rhetoric and save much of the country’s security relationship with Washington.
On May 16, 2022, a little over a month before his term ended, Duterte signed a bill into law instituting a fixed term for the position of armed forces chief of staff. A similar measure had been vetoed by Aquino back in 2011 on the basis of two objections: first, that the Philippine Constitution (responding to Ferdinand Marcos’ repeated deferment of the retirement of favored officers) disallowed the extension of service, and that the position is one that requires the full confidence of the chief executive. It was an apple of discord masquerading as a reform law (for the Greeks, “the phrase ‘apple of discord’ to refer to a much-desired object or person by two different people, which may result in a quarrel between them”).
At the time that Duterte signed the bill into law, then Secretary of National Defense Delfin Lorenzana pointed out it would reduce the number of generals from 196 to 153. This was alarming because this provision in itself has the potential to be a grudge-inducing poisoned pill. Aquino, in his veto message, suggested another problematic provision of the proposed law: presidents could fire chiefs of staff but only after they reached the compulsory retirement age: viewed from a different perspective, what the chief of staff term limit thus provides for is an extension in service. But where one is extended, everyone else, in turn, is denied a promotion. Bad enough there will be fewer general officers; fewer still, will have a chance at the top job while one, every three years, will have an outsized career advantage over his contemporaries. The only question now is if the President will brazen it out, or discreetly try to pacify all classes, while Congress figures out how to revoke the law while saving face.
II. My article in Asia Sentinel
What's Behind the Philippine Army's Musical Chairs?
What's Behind the Philippine Army's Musical Chairs?
The sum of all fears
15 hr ago
By: Manuel L. Quezon III
A politically intriguing firing and hiring took place in the Philippines last week while President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. was in Beijing. It was announced that the incumbent Armed Forces Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Bartolome Vicente Bacarro, was stepping down, and that Marcos had appointed Gen. Andres Centino to take his place. a
Two things were surprising about this: the first was that the incumbent chief of staff, Bacarro, had only been appointed last August and that, while he reached retirement age on January 7, had also been the first appointed according to the provisions of a new law signed into law on May 16, 2022, little over a month before former President Rodrigo Duterte’s term ended, a fixed term for the armed forces chief of staff.
A similar measure had been vetoed by President Benigno S. Aquino III back in 2011 on the basis of two objections: first, that the Philippine constitution (responding to Ferdinand Marcos’ repeated deferment of the retirement of favored officers) disallowed the extension of service, and that the position is one that requires the full confidence of the chief executive.
Bacarro had thus been expected to serve a full, three-year term. The second surprising thing was that Centino, who suddenly replaced him, had been the immediate previous chief of staff. Appointed by President Duterte in November 2021, he’d been replaced by President Marcos who, however, nominated him to be ambassador to India. Some military observers noticed, however, that despite relinquishing the position of chief of staff, Centino did not retire from the armed forces, and, as former chief of staff, continued to occupy the sole slot in the military hierarchy for full general.
In turn, this prevented Centino’s successor from being promoted to full general; and then Centino was recalled to active service to re-occupy his previous post. This represented a fundamental break with tradition: since the modern position of chief of staff was created in 1935, not a single officer who’d once held the post, had been reappointed to it.
On January 7, the day the change of command ceremony was to take place in the military’s headquarters, golfers at the military’s Camp Aguinaldo golf course found it closed, the caddies instructed not to report to work: things are tense indeed when not even Covid-19 restrictions could stop generals from playing golf. This was a sign of trouble that went unnoticed by the public at large; but something else played out on social media: a spurious image of a police memorandum declaring a high alert in response to possible military mischief circulated with enough traction that a vigorous official denial had to be made the police.
The curious state of affairs affecting the armed forces took place even as the police themselves were in the midst of a leadership crisis and when senior officials in the civilian leadership had suffered major humiliations at the hands of its own agents. Back in October, the son of the Secretary of Justice was arrested and charged with trying to import marijuana. Three months later he was acquitted. It is fair to say the only thing surprising about the outcome of the case was that it came so swiftly. But then again, what was most surprising about the case was that it was filed to begin with. The position of Secretary of Justice is one of the most powerful in the government; it would require nerves of steel –or pretty serious political backing—to inflict such a potentially career-killing humiliation on an incumbent secretary. A government agency implicating the son of the Secretary of Justice is the kind of action that is more than a surprise, it’s a provocation.
The question, then, of means, motive, and opportunity – all other considerations of the case aside – has been grist for widespread political scuttlebutt. But the context that matters most is suggested by a contemporary analysis of the Marcos administration at that point in time, when it was poised to mark the politically-auspicious hundredth day in office milestone. Veteran journalist Glenda Gloria back in October asserted based on her sources that “It’s in the PNP and the armed forces where the Dutertes are well-entrenched.” She characterized the “persistent and evolving plans to move this general, promote this other one, demote another” as “a low intensity conflict” because “this is an administration that is purging like it won a revolution, not an election.”
This, in turn, points to the nature of the ruling coalition that swept to power with the first majority mandate in close to two generations: while President Marcos and his Vice-President Sara Z. Duterte proved an unbeatable tandem (a deal often attributed to former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as powerbroker), former President Rodrigo Duterte hasn’t been shy about his dissatisfaction with the deal and his contempt for the incumbent president. The same October 2022 analysis of the Marcos administration zeroed in on Marcos Jr. wanting to adopt a different tack in the so-called war on drugs, a policy in which the Secretary of Justice would have a role to play (in general he has toed the Duterte-era party line rejecting the authority of the International Criminal Court to investigate former President Duterte and others). Most of all, Marcos has rapidly repaired relations with the United States and other Western countries, which brings up the question of what he might do in terms of Duterte’s defiant dismissal of human rights, one of the foremost irritants with the West.
The public saw the civilian side of post-victory purges during the first hundred days of the Marcos administration, not least with the rebuff to the Vice-President even before they both assumed office, when she demanded, and he rejected giving her, the defense portfolio. Independent power blocs in the administration were eliminated, as shown by the fall from power of the President’s first Executive Secretary; but as Glenda Gloria mentioned, if a purge of the police and military has been afoot, then provocations in the form of allies of former President Duterte expressing alarm over what they say is the return of drug syndicates (implicitly criticizing Marcos’ anti-drug policy) or agents being emboldened to arrest the relatives of members of the cabinet, aren’t surprising.
Nor is the administration raising the ante, in turn. Two days before the Secretary of Justice’s son was acquitted, the Secretary of the Interior made a surprising announcement: he asked the entire senior leadership (colonels and generals) of the Philippine National Police, to submit their courtesy resignations by the end of the month. Two days after that, on the same day the acquittal occurred (and the offending anti-drug authority issued a statement it would take heed of the court’s declaration it had bungled the case) the majority of the police top brass announced they’d comply. The purpose of the demand for resignations? The possibility senior police officials are implicated in the drug trade. The president for his part doubled down on the idea, which after all affects 429 senior officers who, on the whole, owe their current ranks and promotions not to President Marcos, who has only had the opportunity to promote a few, but instead, President Duterte, who’d raised police salaries but also undertaken repeated revamps and promotions during his presidency.
The day after that (last Saturday) President Marcos's wife, Liza Araneta Marcos, recorded a video message vigorously denying that she interfered in the appointment of military intelligence officials. She then threatened anyone engaging in such rumor-mongering with a veto on their appointment by her husband. There has certainly been no shortage of agenda-setting announcements, formal and informal, by the administration.
Meanwhile, by February 6, the recently-returned armed forces chief of staff will reach the mandatory retirement age of 56, and, on his successor-predecessor’s short stint, law or no law providing for a fixed term, Marcos can put him out to pasture and the real test of presidential fortitude concerning the officer corps will take place. Because whoever Marcos appoints to succeed Centino can then enjoy a fixed term, which in turn represents a permanent veto on the ambitions of a whole slew of generals who will be deprived of the closing career prospects that the revolving-door policy used to offer. It kicks the problem of the military leadership to the Marcos mid-term election in 2025, and it takes out of the running, entire PMA classes who’d enjoyed the patronage of Duterte and who might harbor residual loyalty to him. It puts their juniors, in turn, on notice that their prospects depend entirely on the incumbent president and no one else.
If the sum of every president’s fears over close to forty years has been how to tame the military, it may be that the acid test of Marcos’s presidential chops is the systematic dismantling of the networks of loyalty invested in and relied upon by his predecessor’s assiduous cultivation of entire generations of the military and police top brass, who are about to find themselves put out to pasture.
III. Postscript
The morning after my article came out, news came that the Jose Faustino Jr., Senior Undersecretary and officer-in-charge of the Department of National Defense, had resigned; he was replaced by Gen. Carlito Galvez Jr. (ret.), a former AFP chief of staff.
No reason was given for Faustino’s resignation, but there’s this interesting tidbit from the news item:
No announcement from Malacañang was made regarding his appointment as defense secretary. And that’s not even counting the fact that the AFP has been lacking a vice chief of staff, a flag officer in command of the navy, and a commander of both the Southern Luzon and Western Mindanao Commands for quite some time.
Also, Faustino was expected to formally become Secretary of National Defense in November, 2022 when the one-year ban on retired officers assuming the defense portfolio expired. It didn’t happen, however.
Related to this is another report with an ex-senator’s speculation:
Former senator and retired police general Panfilo “Ping” Lacson reportedly stated that the resignation of Faustino could have been triggered by the removal of newly retired Lt. Gen. Bartolome Vicente Bacarro as the AFP Chief of Staff.
A report the day after in the Inquirer further zeroed in on this reason:
No official reason was given for Faustino’s departure but he had been rumored to have tendered his courtesy resignation supposedly for having lost the president’s trust. He had reportedly been kept out of the loop in Centino’s reappointment and the sudden exit of Lt. Gen. Bartolome Bacarro.
On Saturday, Faustino, a known Bacarro supporter, was conspicuously absent when Centino reclaimed the AFP leadership from Bacarro five months after the latter replaced him in August last year.
At the time, Centino had been put on “floating status” and was later nominated as ambassador to India, a post he never assumed.
After its report came out, Faustino confirmed what the report had said:
A follow-up Rappler article added,
The series of top-level changes in the military has sent shockwaves throughout the defense sector, with the Marcos administration’s current reorganization efforts bypassing the military’s usual vetting processes.
In the selection of an AFP chief of staff, the Board of Generals vets nominees for the post, with the defense secretary later sending a short list for the President.
Which ties into my two articles, really: the fundamental going-on here, is a purge of the top brass.
A tart response came from the Executive Secretary later that day:
(Rubbing in how Centino had never retired and so retained the sole 4-star rank in the Armed Forces!)
Moving on: together with Fuastino, other subordinate officials also resigned:
Returning to Galvez, he’d been the Covid-19 Czar of Duterte and served in both the Duterte and Marcos Jr. administrations as Peace Adviser (it seems possible he hasn’t relinquished this post). He brings to the table continued (civilian) service plus his military experience; he is also armed with what his predecessor lacked, full appointment.
In the meantime, another report, quoting House Deputy Minority Leader France Castro, perhaps says it all:
Republic Act 11709, which was signed by President Rodrigo Duterte in April last year, imposes a fixed term of three years for eight of the most senior AFP officials, including the chief of staff and commanders of the Army, Air Force and Navy.
"It seems that the law is creating tensions or divisions within the military, as some members may feel that they have been passed over for promotion or that the selection process was not fair," she said.
Castro said some military officers are strongly lobbying for the repeal of RA 11709. "So political favors are expected to be owed when that happens," she said.
A final postscript also from the Inquirer’s January 10 report, is on the police memo that was declared fake but might not have been fake after all:
On Monday, the PNP chief, Gen. Rodolfo Azurin Jr., said he ordered an investigation into the supposed memorandum placing all police units on heightened alert status “in view of the resignation of all the [DND] personnel.”
The investigation would look into the supposed signatory of the circulating memo, Lt. Col. Dexter Ominga of the Cordillera regional police office, he said.
“The appropriate charges as well as the consequences of the lapses, if any, will be meted to [Ominga],” Azurin told a press briefing.
But an intelligence source told the Inquirer that the PNP memo was authentic and had been traced to the originating unit.