If the Filipino people were asked how they regarded the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) and the PC/INP (Police Constabulary/Integrated National Police) during and at the end of the martial-law period, their answer would have been that they detested the AFP and elevated the PC-INP. Those judgments didn’t just happen; they were the result of a combination of factors, some institutional, some personal.
The most important of the institutional factors was the decision of President Ferdinand E. Marcos to let the AFP be the implementing mechanism for the martial law that he imposed on this country on Sept. 21, 1972. There were three reasons for this choice. The first was that, having been a soldier, Mr. Marcos was more knowledgeable about and more comfortable with the soldiery than with the police. The second was that anything of a martial nature was properly the domain of people trained for warfare. The third reason was that the 10th President trusted the military less than he did the police, which he considered a tool of the local politicians, who by 1972 were anxious to see him leave Malacañang.
Mr. Marcos and his trusted ally, Secretary of National Defense Juan Ponce Enrile, used the AFP to implement martial law, enforce the martial-law regulations, run the business establishments that had been confiscated from their private owners, incarcerate Mr. Marcos’s opponents and, at the onset of the Edsa Revolution, threaten to annihilate.
A second institutional factor underlying the popular judgments on the comparative martial-law performances of the military and the police was the decision taken by the Marcos regime to rein in the police forces all over the Philippines by integrating them into the INP (Integrated National Police). This prevented the police, elements of which were treated as private armies by local politicians, from becoming disruptive and complicating the implementation of martial law. Throughout the martial-law period the police played a role that was clearly subordinate to the role played by the military. This, notwithstanding that under the Constitution the responsibility for maintaining internal order belongs to the police.
At the non-institutional plane, two individuals—more specifically, the personalities of the two individuals —accounted for the judgments of the Filipino people on the AFP and the PC/INP during and after martial law. Those individuals were the Chief of Staff of the AFP and the Chief of the PC/INP (and Deputy AFP Chief of Staff).
Lieut. Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, a product of the Philippine Military Academy and the US Military Academy, should have been named Chief of Staff of the AFP, but President Marcos chose to give the top position in this country’s military establishment to Lieut. Gen. Fabian Ver, who went up through the ranks of the ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps). Ramos was named PC/INP Chief instead. Marcos’s choice of Gen. Ver, and not Ramos, as the military establishment’s top man was expected by most knowledgeable observers because the two men—Ver and Ramos —could not have been more different from one another.
Ver was not the best-trained military officer. His greatest assets were his being, like his boss, a native of Ilocos Norte and his absolute loyalty to him. Indeed, a story that was widely told at the time was that if Mr. Marcos were to ask Fabian Ver to jump out of the window, Ver’s reply, after saluting, would be “Yes, sir. Which floor?”
In contrast, Fidel Ramos, a cousin of Mr. Marcos—they both had Valdez blood running through their veins—a well-brought-up and highly principled man. He was taught, in childhood and in the military academics, to place God and country above all else. He was a professional in every sense of the word.
Though Gen. Ramos was related to him by blood, Marcos knew that Ramos would never do his bidding if it was all illegal or anti-social. He knew that Ramos did not follow orders blindly, unlike Gen. Ver. Ramos could not be counted upon to implement martial law the way that Marcos wanted it implemented.
As its Chief, Fidel V. Ramos ran the PC/INP in as professional a way and as closely to the PC handbook, as he could. This is not to say that no violations of the Bill of Rights were committed during his watch as head of the police establishment; but there was no ‘tokhang’ and no unbelievably numerous incidence of ‘nanlaban.’ PC/INP Chief Ramos was a ‘bato’ of the decent, principled kind.
With Gen. Ramos as its head, President Marcos could not misuse the police establishment Ramos would have resigned rather than permit that. Which is why the PC/INP by and large retained the trust of the people right through the martial-law period.
But Mr. Marcos knew that, with his henchman Fabian Ver sitting in Camp Aguinaldo, he could abuse the military. And he did. All he had to do was bark his orders, and Gen. Ver would follow them unquestionably. Which is why, in contrast, the AFP was regarded with opprobrium by the Filipino people. The use of Philippine Marines and tanks to try and crush the Edsa Revolution crowd was the Marcos/Ver AFP’s final affront to the Filipino people—and the final nail in the coffin of its reputation.
At the end of the Edsa Revolution, the police establishment’s reputation was largely intact, whereas the AFP’s was in tatters. The Filipino people regarded the AFP much like a prostitute whom Mr. Marcos had used. It took a decade for the AFP to regain the trust of the Filipino people.
To his credit, Secretary of National Defense Delfin Lorenzana has shielded the AFP from misuse by the Duterte administration. The opposite is true of the PNP (Philippine National Police), which has been so grievously misused by the AFP of Marcos/Ver, the Duterte administration’s PNP will have to wait a long time before it regains the Filipino people’s trust and respect.