With great power, the comic-book hero was advised, comes great responsibility. No one can deny that national police chief Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa wields immense power under the law-and-order administration of President Rodrigo Duterte—but now it’s time for Bato to take his job to the next level by going after rogue policemen who may reverse the gains of Duterte’s war on illegal drugs.
Dela Rosa has basked in the national limelight as chief implementor of Duterte’s anti-drug campaign. No less than a former PNP chief who made a second career out of politics, Senator Panfilo Lacson, has implied that Bato could seek elective office when he retires next year, if he does his job well.
But Lacson correctly observed that Dela Rosa should focus on the job at hand, which now includes going after so-called “ninja cops.” These are the lawmen who are using the anti-crime drive as a means to keep doing what they’ve been doing —illegal stuff like drug dealing, kidnapping for ransom, grand and petty extortion and providing protection for all sorts of unsavory activities like gambling and prostitution that have given the police force a bad name.
Here I must state that I remain convinced that majority of the members of the PNP are not involved in illegal “sidelines.” But the sad fact is, the corrupt and criminal cops have never left us—and any campaign against criminality will fail unless Duterte and his sidekick Bato rid the police ranks of these embarrassments to the force.
Now, the PNP (the righteous as well as the corrupt) have mostly gotten a free pass from Duterte, as long as they are focusing on ridding the country of the scourge of illegal drugs. But the killing of retired Korean businessman Jee Ick Joo, right inside the PNP headquarters in Camp Crame late last year at the hands of policemen who had earlier arrested him for alleged involvement in the drug trade, has shone a bright light on abuses that could be committed in the name of Duterte’s signature campaign.
Even Duterte has been given pause by the killing of Jee, who was allegedly strangled to death by one policeman even after his wife had paid millions in ransom money. “Are they not afraid of me?” Duterte asked in wonderment, amid calls to make the cops involved in the sensational crime accountable just like the drug suspects targeted by the campaign against illegal drugs have been.
Naturally, the outraged citizenry—and some opportunistic anti-Duterte politicians who will jump on anything that could take the President down a notch or two in the eyes of the public—have demanded that Dela Rosa should also take some of the heat and possibly even resign. But now that Duterte has declared that he would retain Bato, the PNP chief should not believe that nothing else is expected of him and that he can carry on as before.
On the contrary, Duterte’s decision to keep Dela Rosa carries with it the unspoken directive that the latter should now up his game and take the anti-crime campaign to the next level. And he can do that by focusing on the ninjas in the ranks of the police —and probably stop drawing attention to himself as some sort of celebrity-cum-police mascot.
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Dela Rosa can look to his former boss in the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force, Lacson, as a model. After all, Lacson has an obvious soft spot for his former junior officer—the senator can act as Dela Rosa’s mentor and save him from himself, while helping Duterte’s anti-crime campaign besides.
The knock on Bato is not that he doesn’t do a good job as the country’s top cop. It’s that he seems to want to be in the news so much—and even when he isn’t seeking publicity, it seems to find him, especially when he gets involved in controversies that he wished he had not gotten into.
For instance, Bato landed in the center of a recent kerfuffle when he accepted the invitation of Senator Manny Pacquiao to watch the latter’s last fight in Las Vegas, Nevada, paid for in full by the lawmaker. And then there was Bato’s appearance at a recent concert, while the Jee murder by his own cops was already hogging the headlines.
I think Bato is still titillated by his own celebrity and enjoys talking to the media and guesting in variety shows, where he invariably explains the need for the public to support Duterte’s anti-drug campaign. But perhaps Dela Rosa is still unaware that the same media that made him a household name—and which is now picking him as a shoo-in for a Senate seat in the midterm elections in 2019 —will also turn against him the moment he becomes the bad guy.
So far, the novelty of Bato has not yet totally dissipated. He is still one of the most popular policemen to have held the position of PNP chief; he is not perceived to be corrupt or lazy and has even gained fans for his perceived sincerity and empathy.
But now the shine of Bato’s celebrity is no longer matched by the gleam on his shaved pate. It’s time to buckle down to work—and Job Number One is taking down the corrupt policemen who are hell-bent on sabotaging Duterte’s anti-crime campaign.
