EDITORIAL - With quality food assured comes the itch

It is always good to learn from experience, even if you are the police. And so, learning from the bad press it got when complaints hounded the food served policemen serving security duty during the first round of meetings of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in Cebu, this time the hundreds of police security detail will be provided "quality food."

This was the assurance given by Senior Superintendent Rey Lyndon Lawas, the chief of the regional directorate staff of the Police Regional Office-7, at the start of the APEC second round meetings. A decent officer and a true gentleman, it is easy to take him on his word. At least the policemen will now be provided for well as they perform their internationally-sensitive tasks.

It is good that the police organization acted swiftly and decisively on the issue because, unlike other issues that occasionally hound the police, the matter of food is a rather sensitive one owing to its very personal and human nature. Everybody eats -- policeman, diplomat or private citizen. And in everything they do, all draw sustenance from food. They can also fall ill from the lack of it, or from the condition in which food is served.

And so, apart from its inherent importance, there is truly a common attachment that a person, any person, can have for his food. And so, as soon as the first complaints surfaced at the time of the APEC first round meetings a month ago about the kind of food the police security details were provided -- rice, springs rolls and hard-boiled eggs -- it swiftly became an issue.

It did not even matter that in reality only a few policemen dared to come out and complain while the rest just accepted their lumpia and eggs in silence. It was simply because it was not a matter to be weighed in sheer numbers but by the fact of its sheer occurence. And because the fact of that spartan menu cannot be denied, the police had to bear the consequences of the flap with a lot of red faces.

It was not the kind of hot potato anyone would want on his lap during an international event of this magnitude. And so it was good that the police organization acted swiftly to prevent a recurrence. In fact, corrective measures were taken right then during the first round of the meetings. But by then it was too late to do much about the damage done.

But life is not really fair. Now that the policemen have been assured quality food, they now face a new problem -- how to deal with an unscratchable itch. A new directive from Deputy PNP Chief Marcelo Garbo Jr., a former Cebu assignee, bans policemen from scratching in public. Anybody who has had to deal with an itch in the crotch will probably swear it better to eat hard-boiled eggs forever than not to scratch that damn itch deep down there.