BY VICTOR REYES and WENDELL VIGILIA
PNP CHIEF Gen. Rommel Francisco Marbil yesterday said nearly 300 policemen from the Police Security and Protection Group (PSPG) were recalled last month from security assignments to current and former government officials, retired generals, and private company officials, among others.
Marbil made the statement to stress that the PNP did not single out Vice President Sara Duterte when they pulled out 75 PSPG personnel securing the country’s second highest leader.
Duterte last month criticized Marbil as she called the recall of the 75 policemen “political harassment.” Yesterday, she stepped up attacks against the administration on various issues, including health care, poverty, flood control, and the International Criminal Court’s investigation into bloody war on drugs campaign implemented by her father, former President Rodrigo Duterte.
Marbil said 298 PSPG personnel were recalled and reassigned to other police units a few weeks before the recall of the 75 detailed with the Vice President.
He said 143 of the 298 personnel were recalled from “key officers” of private companies and 57 from retired police generals. The rest were from other personalities, including current and former national and local government officials, “resident aliens,” and business leaders.
“These officers are now serving local communities, ensuring that police resources are maximized for the broader public,” said Marbil, referring to the total 373 PSPG personnel recalled from detail with Duterte and the other personalities.
DEPLOYMENT RATIONALIZED
Marbil said the 373 policemen have a combined monthly salary of around P12.5 million in taxpayers’ money.
“The PNP’s decision to rationalize the deployment of our officers is part of our commitment to better serve the people. This is to ensure that our police force is deployed where most needed, enhancing our public order and safety efforts,” said Marbil.
He said it was important to rationalize the deployment of PSPG personnel, prioritizing individuals with serious threats, to move towards the ideal policeman-to-population ration of 1:500, from the current 1:2,000.
“Rationalizing PSPG deployment will help us achieve a better ratio, reduce unnecessary security assignments, and improve support for field operations and critical policing needs,” said Marbil.
In a statement, the PNP said it released the data in “response to speculations that Vice President Duterte was singled out in the recall process.”
“Gen. Marbil dispelled these claims, stating that 298 PSPG personnel had already been recalled and redeployed to other police units several weeks prior to the recall of the 75 personnel from the Vice President’s detail,” the PNP Public Information Office said in a statement.
SARA’S `MESSAGE’
The Vice President, in her “Message to My Muslim Friends,” said the country’s security is more important than her own. She said the country should be led by “people who gave empathy and ability to run an honest government and ensure the nation’s progress.”
“Subalit ang Pilipinas ngayon ay pinamumunuan ng mga taong walang katapatan sa trabahong sinumpaan. Kaya ang tanging nananaig sa atin ay takot para sa kinabukasan ng ating mga anak (But the Philippines now is being led by people who are dishonest to their sworn duty. That’s why the only thing that overcomes us is fear for the future of our children),” she said.
She said the country should be leading in its part of the world “but the Philippines now continues to be hungry, poor, and sinking because of the deceptive people who wanted to sit in power.”
“We’re so tired of seeing Filipinos get left behind, being treated like they have no value, undesirable and subservient to other races. We, Filipinos, deserve more than what we are hearing and seeing from the government right now. We, Filipinos, deserve better,” she said in Filipino.
She assailed the administration for allegedly allowing foreigners to meddle in the country’s internal affairs amid reports that the it cannot stop the Interpol if the International Criminal court (ICC) seeks its assistance in going after her father and all the others who are responsible for the thousands of deaths caused by his war against the illegal drug trade.
“The Philippines, being a free country, should stand against foreign interference in our domestic affairs. However, the Philippines now easily bows down and follows whatever foreigners like the ICC wants,” she said.
CALAMITIES
The Vice President said the Philippines, being typhoon-prone, should have a comprehensive and strong infrastructure plan against such calamities “but the Philippines now has a government that admits it does not even have a flood-control master plan.”
She continued to attack the administration for allegedly not having an effective health care system to alleviate the people’s suffering whenever a member of the family is hospitalized.
“But the Philippines now have a PhilHealth which, instead of being improved, has been turned into a fund source for things that do not have anything to do with the people’s health),” she said.
Training her sights on the House of Representatives, she saying its “should be the ones who should truly understand the real causes of the shortage in the police to population ratio — that the shortage is a figure that cannot be solved during our lifetime due to the annually ballooning population and lack of budgetary resources to hire more personnel.”
She said the country should have representatives who understand that, in order to fully address the shortage, “there is a need to leverage available technology and leapfrog into the future where policemen are armed with the best security products that do not require their physical presence all the time.”
She also slammed airport officials, saying that instead of the working to have world-class facilities, they do not even protect the security and privacy of passengers, especially young children.
She was obviously referring to the proliferation of videos of her and her family waiting for a flight to Germany while the country was being battered by typhoon “Carina.”
She said the airport officials’ mouth are shut when it comes to security threats “and do not even conduct a thorough investigation every time there is a threat such as the publication of a video footage, flight details and other sensitive information about passengers, even minors.”
‘FALSE CLAIMS’
Sta. Rosa Rep. Dan Fernandez, the chair of the House committee on public order and safety, belied the Vice President’s claim there is a shortage of policemen in the country, saying that with 228,000 members of the PNP, the country has an ideal police-to-population ratio of 1:507.
“I beg to disagree. We have like 115 million Filipinos and the ideal ratio is 1:500, one policeman to 500 people,” he said.
Based on the current police-to-population ratio of 1:507, the 75 recalled policemen can be reassigned to secure the safety of 38,025 Filipino citizens, he said.
Fernandez said the same goes for the members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) assigned to secure her, which numbers 400 according to the military service itself.
He slammed the number of soldiers assigned to the Vice President, noting that the country has 150,000 soldiers, which means that more or less 75 soldiers are in charge of protecting per inhabited island, which numbers at least 2,000.
“Having said that, if the VP has 400 soldiers assigned to her and we have 75 soldiers per island, I think that is excessive and that is somehow irrational),” he said.
Reps. Jefferson Khonghun of Zambales and Paolo Ortega V of La Union urged the Vice President to stop deflecting issues and address her absence during the onslaught of “Carina,” the unexplained use of P125 million in confidential funds, extrajudicial killings in Davao, and other issues.
“Ma’am you were not in the country when super typhoon Carina battered Filipinos,” Khonghun said. “Please do your duty as the country’s No. 2 official.”
Ortega said, “The last we heard from her was when she left with her entourage at the height of super typhoon Carina, while the President and all of us were preparing for the storm’s onslaught.”
Khonghun said the Vice President has not even satisfactorily explained how she spent her P125 million confidential funds, in just 11 days while Ortega cited the extrajudicial killings in Davao City when she was mayor.
Duterte’s message also thanked the Muslim tribes of Iranun, Kagan, Maguindanao, Maranao, Sama and Tausug for expressing support for her and her family after she complained that the PNP has recalled 75 or her police escorts.
