There are two important changes in President Duterte’s team. Important in the sense that the changes are in the area that might eventually define his presidency.
One was the replacement of Department of Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre by Senior Deputy Executive Secretary Menardo Guevarra. Second, the assumption of Oscar Albayalde, the current police chief of the National Capital Region vice Police Director General Ronald de Rosa, the current chief of the Philippine National Police.
There is little doubt that the two outgoing officials were the poster boys of law enforcement in the country for the last two years. They will always be associated with the President’s style of crime fighting. Whether this will hound them with legal problems in the future is too early to tell and will also depend on many factors, one of which is politics. If the next administration comes from the opposition, then it is almost certain that both will be made to account for their actions. If however, the next government will come from the President’s political party, then both officials will be safe and whatever the critics say of what they did will eventually be forgotten. Sometimes, the people have a short memory of a lot of unpleasant things. Soon, they might put at the back of their minds what has happened in the first two years of the administration of President Duterte with regard to the controversial war on drugs. Western media have described it as brutal, but the majority of Filipinos continue to support it.
It appears that the two new officials, Guevarra and Albayalde have some similarities. They are both eloquent and deliberate. It remains to be seen however, how committed they will be to the drug war being waged by the President. Will Albayalde be a copycat of de la Rosa or will he wage the drug war with some variation so as to concentrate on big-time suppliers and the neutralization of drug laboratories? Surely, with President Duterte saying that the drug problem has been reduced by 25 percent, there will be less compulsion to mount a campaign that will be as violent as in the earlier stages of the drug war.
We do not know however, where the President got his figures because it seems new. It is the first time that the public is hearing it. Did it come from the PNP, PDEA or from sources that only the President knows? On Guevarra’s side, will he be basing his decisions solely on what the law say as he has mentioned? Before he can even hit the road, he is now faced with what to do with the recent report that former Secretary Aguirre shredded a lot of documents prior to leaving office. We do not know when this was done and by what authority. It gives the impression that the Department has no policy with regard to the disposal of documents which should raise some concerns. What sort of documents were shredded and why were these documents destroyed? To protect him and destroy evidence in any future investigation?
Secretary Guevarra said that he would look into the report and we hope that he does. If it was done to hide something, then the former secretary has some explaining to do. To be fair, it might really be much ado about nothing but why destroy these documents in the office? Why did he not wait until he got home in order to do it? What this action did was to give his critics and he has many, ammunition to go after him. He should have known better. What the new DoJ Secretary said that he wants to restore the dignity of the department and usher in a new era of respectability is loaded and could only mean that what he found in the DoJ upon assuming office is an organization adrift with no direction and a rank and file with very low morale. He has a tough job ahead of him.
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When Oscar Albayalde assumes command of the Philippine National Police today, he will be following the footsteps of many distinguished and illustrious officers who have headed the Police organization beginning with the first Philippine Constabulary Chief Henry T. Allen, Rafael Crame, Fidel V. Ramos, Renato de Villa and many others whose shoes are indeed hard to fill.
Albayalde, whether he realizes it or not, will be presiding over a police organization which is growing larger every year with old and new challenges especially in the area of transnational crime and terrorism. These will need a thoroughly professional force. Anything less will be a recipe for failure.
No doubt, there will always be the inevitable reshuffling of positions which will always be attributed to reform. But more than that, let us hope that Albayalde and his new team can look closely at the current weaknesses of the PNP and try to solve them one at a time instead of attempting to solve them all at once. He will be retiring in the last quarter of 2019 which means that he does not have a lot of time left. So, he has to manage his remaining time well and not squander it with grandiose plans that cannot be accomplished due to time constraints.
I do not know him personally but judging from his demeanor during his TV interviews, he seem able and capable. We congratulate him and wish him success in his new job.
