Lt. Gen. Narciso Abaya, a West Point graduate, replaced Lt. Gen. Ernesto Carolina yesterday as chief of the military’s Southern Command (Southcom) based in Zamboanga City.
Carolina, who served as Southcom chief for barely five months, was reassigned to Abaya’s largely administrative post of deputy chief of staff at Camp Aguinaldo.
Abaya’s appointment came three days after Abu Sayyaf bandits killed 11 Marines and wounded 25 others in a gunbattle in Patikul, Sulu, where the gunmen hold hostage three Indonesians and four Filipina Jehovah’s Witnesses Christian preachers.
Military sources said Carolina was also reassigned for his failure to contain two bomb attacks in the southern cities of Zamboanga and Kidapawan that killed a US Green Beret and nine Filipinos and wounded scores of others, one of them another American soldier.
Military spokesman Brig. Gen. Eduardo Purificacion denied the speculation.
"It is actually a promotion (for Carolina), which is the third highest position in the Armed Forces," he told reporters. "The swapping of officers is part of a rotation of officers to provide enhancement in some other fields that they are experts."
He pointed out that there was a similar swap in 2001 when then Armed Forces deputy chief Roy Cimatu replaced then Southcom chief Lt. Gen. Gregorio Camiling.
Sources at Camp Aguinaldo said Abaya’s new assignment might boost his chances of being appointed to the top AFP post. Armed Forces chief of staff Gen. Benjamin Defensor is scheduled to retire on Nov. 18.
"General Abaya is being groomed as chief of staff," one of the sources said.
Sources said the Southcom post is considered prestigious in the military and a "breeding ground" for future chiefs of staff because of its huge responsibility of containing the decades-old Muslim insurgency in Mindanao as well as the Abu Sayyaf in the western part of the island.
About 40 percent of the country’s military force is deployed in the troubled South.
Abaya is a "seasoned combat officer who is familiar with the ground and knows the enemy well" while Carolina is an expert on management, Purificacion said.
The bomb attacks have been blamed on renegade members of the secessionist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Abu Sayyaf, which the Philippine and US governments have linked to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network.
The MILF has been waging a Muslim rebellion for an independent Islamic state in Mindanao since 1978.
Abaya in 1991 headed a military task force targeting the Abu Sayyaf shortly after they seized 21 mostly European hostages in a cross-border raid on a Malaysian beach resort.
The hostages were later freed after negotiations brokered by the Libyan government.
He also led the task force that rescued US hostage Jeffrey Schilling in April 2001 after eight months in Abu Sayyaf captivity in Sulu.
Abaya also served as army commander in Zamboanga del Sur province, where he led his troops against the communist New People’s Army rebels and splinter groups from the MILF and the Abu Sayyaf.
Carolina, on the other hand, graduated from the Philippine Military Academy in 1970. — With Marichu Villanueva, AFP