IT would be wise for Congress to thoroughly examine the causes why plunder and corruption involving men in uniform are often occurring and has caused restiveness not only among millennials and young men in uniform but also the elderly.
To do this, our lawmakers should start from the mother of all causes: The existence (or nonexistence) of a clearly defined Table of Organizations of the police and military organizations.
Unknown to the public, both setups are still trapped under their respective multilayered command and control system under the general headquarters of the police and military organizations that are complex, confusing and expensive to maintain.
The system, like the United Area Commands in the military and the Regional Commands in the police, are identical multilayered structures with overlapping functions and responsibilities and are operating under a centralized but unreliable command and control network at general headquarters.
Under a presidential type of governance where strict auditing and accounting of public funds are required with transparency, the cumbersome multi-layered command structure is anathema to an orderly and coherent structure because of the inherent temptation of men in uniform to commit plunder and corruption.
A case in point is the National Capital Region (NCR). Here local executives are helpless because, while they bear the legal and moral responsibility to maintain peace and order in their areas of responsibility, they do not have the command and control authority over police and military forces.
Many people may not be aware that NCR is like a garrison state, surrounded by military and police headquarters of varying sizes, with over 40,000 people assigned to them. One can just imagine the needed armaments, transportation and communication equipment, and most of all, the budgetary requirements for maintaining offices and personnel.
If one draws up a schematic circle, using Camp Aguinaldo and Camp Crame along Edsa as the nerve center, he will find 27 small, medium and large police and military headquarters operating in a constricted 30-kilometer radius with overlapping functions and responsibilities. These are the headquarters of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), the Unified Area Command, the Logistics Command, the National Regional Command, and the Intelligence Services of the AFP in Camp Aguinaldo, Quezon City; the Philippine National Police (PNP), the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, the Philippine Center on Transnational Crime, the Traffic Management Group, the Firearms and Explosives Unit, and the Crime Laboratory in Camp Crame, Quezon City;
The Army, the Special Forces, the Marines, the Army Logistics Command, the Light Armored Brigade, and the Reservist Command in Fort Bonifacio; the Air Force and seven wing commands, in Villamor Air Base; the Navy and three commands, on Roxas Boulevard, Manila;
The PNP Western Police District on UN Avenue, Manila; the Northern Police District in Caloocan City; the Central Police District in Quezon City; the Southern Police District in Fort Bonifacio; the National Capitol Command in Bicutan, Taguig; the PNP Special Action Force in Bicutan; the Presidential Security Command in Malacañang, Manila; and the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency in Quezon City.
Compounding the problem is the preponderance of headquarters elements: police regional and provincial commands, military area commands, divisions, brigades and various task forces.
Armed and in civilian clothes, these men often mix with the population such that, hardly any one sees the difference between a lawman and a lawbreaker anymore. This explains why a good number of military personnel and policemen in the past and even at present get easily involved in criminal activities.
Some officers and enlisted personnel, notorious for their abuse of power, are viewed by most citizens as predators rather than protectors, and support for insurgents and criminal elements is often a by-product of alienation from the government because of its failure to professionalize the men in uniform.
Before the advent of the multilayered command structures in the late 1960s, the military and police were evenly dispersed beginning with the headquarters for the police in Camp Crame and the military in Camp Aguinaldo.
From these headquarters were the three police and military area commands for Mindanao, Visayas and Luzon whose command structures were properly delineated to avoid confusion and buck-passing.
Then came the unexpected: the extension of the services of retired police and military generals and their employment in choice civilian positions in government, one identified with the faction of Police General Fidel V. Ramos, who’s a cousin of President Marcos, and Gen. Fabian Ver, who was Marcos’s chief security and later the AFP Chief of Staff, that stunted the promotion of young officers and thus factionalized the police and military organizations.
The rest is history, and today that history is repeating itself.
To reach the writer, e-mail cecilio.arillo@gmail.com.