Lomibao’s legacy

Police Chief and PNP Director General Art Lomibao delivered a good, wide-ranging speech at Wednesday night’s "PNP Night 2005" dinner at the Intercontinental Hotel ballroom. But his most telling remark was uttered almost at the tail-end of the one-hour Open Forum which followed.

Lomibao declared, in response to a query from the floor: "I want to leave as my legacy, when I depart, this achievement: that our people once again, as in my boyhood, begin to trust their policemen!"

This says it all. Sadly, our cops are not trusted by our citizenry. As MOPC President Tony Lopez, editorial director and president of Biz News Asia magazine, wryly put it in moderating the Forum: "When I was a kid, when we saw a policeman we knew we were safe. Today, when we see a policeman, we think we’re in trouble!" It’s not a joke, although such sallies still elicit some laughter.

General Lomibao’s problem is that he won’t have much time as chief of our PNP to deliver on his pledge. He was appointed our 12th Police Chief and PNP Director General (a full four-star general) last March 14 but instead of a turn-over Parade in Camp Crame, as originally scheduled, his take-over turned out to be a baptism of fire, a 30-hour siege at Camp Bagong Diwa in Bicutan in which 22 detainees who attempted an armed break-out, almost all Abu Sayyaf, were gunned down in a firefight.

* * *

Since then he hasn’t been able to stop for a breather.

And he’s retiring, as required by law, on his birthday next year, i.e. on July 5, 2006.

How can Lomibao reform the corruption-ridden police establishment, beef up its morale and performance, and give us a better police force within less than a year and five months? God created the world in seven days. It may not require seven years to "create" a better police force, but a reforming Chief, as many, not just this writer, have said, needs at least three to four years.

What makes Lomibao stand out from among his predecessors is that he’s not long on ceremony, but swift in action. From the beginning, he was on the road, and in the air, personally zooming all over to size up and take command of almost every fast-developing situation. For instance, he personally took over the investigation of the murder of the first journalist slain during his watch, Tacurong City Midland Review columnist and fearless anti-graft crusader Marlene Esperat.

Within a week and a half, the triggerman was nabbed and two of his confederates arrested. He promised the "mastermind", already unmasked, will shortly be apprehended. He declared that the assassination of former Pasig Congressman Henry Lanot will be investigated without let-up and the gunman and instigators caught, no matter how "powerful".

From the word go, Lomibao was compelled to run from one problem to another. As he said, he had to contend not just with the Esperat killing, but the Holy Week bomb threats. (They were probably averted in Metro Manila when his police intelligence agents uncovered a huge cache of "terrorist-owned" explosives in Fairview).

On his third week, providing security for the Inter-Parliamentary Union conference which featured more than 1,000 foreign VIP delegates, had to be addressed, then, on his fourth week, he felt compelled to relieve the entire police apparatus in the Ilocano province of Abra, etc. I was in Taipei when this happened, and my Taiwanese friends expressed shock and surprise at the news that an entire provincial police force had had to be "fired" as the news reports they got indicated! I explained to them that our police officers and cops in Abra had to be replaced since there were so many killings taking place which were politically-motivated. They replied that such things could never take place in Taiwan – or, well, almost never, since there was the unusual failed assassination attempt last year, when they were campaigning, on President Chen Shui-bian and his runningmate, Vice-President Annette Lu. The fact is that murder and violent crime are rare in Taiwan because "gun control" is very rigid there, and only soldiers and policemen are permitted to possess and carry firearms.

In any event, in the five weeks he’s been top honcho of the police, Lomibao has demonstrated himself untiring and persistent in pursuing his gargantuan task.

* * *

I think Lomibao, who took great pains apparently to craft his speech, said a lot about himself when he cited "the nine Principles of War which have been my basic survival kit."

He noted these principles had been his guide in handling the everyday challenges which came his way.

He credited his training at the Philippine Military Academy for imparting to him the best lessons of his life, namely "coolness under fire and stability under pressure."

As for his Principles of War, I might as well cite them as culled from his written address. These are:

Principle of Objective. Direct every military operation towards a clearly defined, decisive, and attainable objective. This most basic of principles is why I have anchored my program on one central and doable target: TO BUILD STRONGER POLICE STATIONS.

Principle of Offensive. Seize, retain and exploit the initiative.

Principle of Mass. Concentrate combat power at the decisive place and time. Our re-orientation of resource allocation towards police units on the ground demonstrates how this principle works.

Principle of Economy of Force. Allocate minimum essential combat power to secondary efforts. Prioritization of tasks and resources is the offshoot of this principle.

Principle of Maneuver. Place the enemy in a position of disadvantage through the flexible application of combat power. Our satellite police stations put the Principle of Maneuver to work.

Principle of Unity of Command. For every objective, ensure unity of effort under one responsible commander. The best example of this principle is my oath-taking late in the night of March 14. Our President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo recognized that there could only be one Chief of the Philippine National Police and administered my oath accordingly.

Principle of Security. Never permit the enemy to acquire an unexpected advantage. The most tangible application of this principle is the Three-Tiered Defense System against terrorism, with Target Hardening as the deterrent in the community.

Principle of Surprise. Strike the enemy at a time, at a place, or in a manner for which he is unprepared. Stealth and secrecy are the weapons of choice in intelligence, as I learned and lived through the years.

Principle of Simplicity. Prepare clear, uncomplicated plans and clear, concise orders to ensure thorough understanding. Clarity of purpose translates to clarity of action, and this has been my trademark in my more than three decades of service.

To these Principles, I add one from my own experience.

Principle of Confusion. Adapt a cryptic mien and confuse the enemy, as I will try to do tonight to avoid tortuous questions.

The above-quoted Principles of War (plus his added "Principle of Confusion… not Confucius" as the well-read PNP Chief quipped, apparently sum up Lomibao’s battle plan. There were many other points discussed, including the specifics of the "stronger police stations" he intended to set up in every locality as a practical answer to the problem of terrorism, illegal drugs, and criminality "on the ground."

He envisions police stations manned by a minimum of 15 "determined, well-trained personnel, and equipped with the requirements to move, shoot, communicate and investigate."

Priority, he pointed out, would be given to "insurgent-affected municipalities and tourist destinations."

Where’s the budget to come from? That’s another question.

* * *

Lomibao stated that the killing of ex-Congressman Lanot in a public restaurant, by a gunman who simply walked into the place, underscores the need to confiscate loose firearms. There are already 400,000 loose firearms known to exist, the PNP Chief revealed. How did he get this figure? Simply from the fact that there "are approximately 400,000 unrenewed firearms licenses!" By golly.

For this reason, Lomibao has ordered the Directorate for Intelligence to draw up a watchlist of loose firearms holders and private armed groups, and also ordered the Firearms and Explosives Division to update the list of unrenewed fiearms licenses.

"Those on the list," he warned, "have two options: to surrender their unlicensed firearms or to renew their license and pay the appropriate fees." He disclosed, in an aside, that since word of his orders had circulated, there has been such a rush on the part of gun-owners and firearms-holders to register their weapons that the PNP ran out of card-forms the other day.

"I am having thousands of new registration forms now being printed," Lomibao announced, while assuring his MOPC audience that every gun and firearm will be properly checked.

How his predecessors in the PNP permitted such an immense hoard of unlicensed firearms as 400,000 weapons to accumulate is beyond me. Sanamagan. Yet, every previous Police Chief kept on loudly declaring that loose firearms were being mopped up during his tenure. The yawning between press release and reality has contributed mightily, sad to say, to the loss of credibility of our police.

* * *

One of the most interesting and fascinating bits of information surfaced during the Open Forum. In the course of answering a query from his audience at the Inter-con, General Lomibao tossed the ball to Senior Supt. (Col.) Wilfredo Fuentes, the Deputy Director for Administration, Civil Security Group. What most people don’t know is that the colonel is the husband of Governor Daisy Fuentes of South Cotabato, but that’s neither here nor there.

Senior Supt. Fuentes revealed that the Police Protection Service is currently under review for the purpose of recalling the policemen assigned to provide security for VIPs to active police duty. They will be replaced, he said, by private "personal security protection" agents to be trained and licensed by the police. These personal security protection agents are, unless I’m mistaken, under PDA’s or Private Detective Agencies. I guess these are not to be confused with the PSA’s or Private Security Agencies, which are better known as uniformed "Security Guards", just like those you see guarding banks or manning entry posts in subdivisions, etc.

Colonel Fuentes said, in answer to a question, that the PNP has licensed 300,000 uniformed security guards. This drew a gasp from one of the European diplomats attending the MOPC affair. He exclaimed to me later that: "Three hundred thousand armed security guards is bigger than many national armies in other countries!"

You bet. We’ve become an armed camp in this country – and, it’s embarrassing to admit, violence seems to be escalating rather than abating. To put a stop to this is, to my mind, the most serious challenge facing General Lomibao.

But after all, as a young lieutenant in the old Philippine Constabulary, then a combat organization dedicated more to fighting insurgency rather than dealing with crime, he received an on-the-spot promotion from the late President Ferdinand E. Marcos for his capture of the most dreaded and resourceful New People’s Army chieftain, the almost-legendary Commander Dante, alias Bernabe Buscayno. This "coup" took place in August 1976. "Dante" in his old age now lives as a farmer, and used to organize farmers’ cooperatives under the sponsorship of the late Doña Aurora Aquino, the mother of our hero Sen. Ninoy Aquino, and mother-in-law of former President Cory Cojuangco Aquino.

If Art can summon up the git-up-and-go of those days, and apply his Principles of War (and cunning) to his job – resisting all "pressure" from above and below – he’ll leave behind him, as he vows, a legacy of which he can be proud. For, when all is said and done, our policemen are the first line of defense of our citizenry against crime, violence and terrorism. Salus populi est suprema lex – the people’s welfare is the highest law – the old Latin maxim goes. The police must, once again, become the guardians of our people, keeping them safe, secure, and happy. They have defaulted on this duty. It’s time they were reminded of it – the corrupt punished, and a new spirit instilled in the rest.

In our boyhood days, the policeman who walked the beat was a figure of respect in our neighborhood. The Philippine Constabulary, for its part, was valiant, as its motto emblazoned: "Always outnumbered, never outfought." Those days can come again. But only if Lomibao and his officers demonstrate the intestinal fortitude to dare – at great risk and effort – to make things right.