It is just proper that Mamasapano be revisited. The story is not yet complete. If the President recruits people of proven integrity and competence to form the Commission, there is really no reason why it cannot get to the bottom of that ill-fated operation.
The primordial issue in this new inquiry will be to find out the exact participation of former President Benigno Aquino III before, during and after the operation. We already have a good idea of this based on the two reports from the Philippine National Police Board of Inquiry and the Senate Committee report of Senator Grace Poe. Although both reports took pains to minimize the culpability of the former President, it was clear that Mr. Aquino had a direct hand in the operation. The tremendous power of the Aquino administration, however, was mobilized to deflect blame from Mr. Aquino.
This effort proved successful. No charges were filed against him. The blame fell on the one person who from the beginning of this sordid episode was honest, truthful and was the only one prepared to own up to his own responsibility. Now that Mr. Aquino is no longer president with no more immunity, it is time to dig up his role in the operation. He has always claimed that he was deceived and lied to by Police Director Getulio Napeñas and that if Napeñas followed instructions, the operation would have been successful. It is therefore an issue of who is telling the truth. One of them is lying and I do not think it is Napeñas.
Closing this sad chapter in our history is not only necessary to bring closure to the families, but also to define once and for all the issue of chain of command and whether purely civilian agencies can second-guess decisions made by ground commanders in the heat of a battle. Whether the military and police likes it or not, the Mamasapano operation will affect future military and police operations. Future field commanders will think twice in conducting operations for fear that people with no experience and training in combat will be second guessing their combat decisions.
Such issues must only be investigated within the military and police chain of command and not by other agencies for the purpose protecting a guilty party. I know from a good source that there was an attempt to destroy all the records of the Mamasapano operation. Fortunately, all files were not destroyed. Some records do exist and these must be ferreted out by the Commission.
One memo that I saw was written sometime January 2015 by Mr. Aquino to Ochoa to call a meeting sometime on the third week of that month with specific instructions to exclude Mar Roxas, the DILG secretary and Leonardo Espina, the PNP OIC in a meeting to discuss the operation. This shows that Mr. Aquino was running the show. There are other documents out there and the commission must be diligent so that we will find out the exact nature of the participation of former President Aquino. This is the only missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle.
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The Philippine National Police and the President seem to have arrived at the same conclusion that have been obvious to the public for some time—that abuses are being committed by rogue policemen in the war on illegal drugs. It is time to pause and take a hard look at what has been happening. It took the brutal murder of a South Korean business executive for the President to realize that abuses are being committed.
The war on illegal drugs should be pursued vigorously but it was wrong to have given the police the almost unheard of carte blanche to wage the war. With about 7,000 deaths for varying reasons, abuses were bound to be committed. The more because of the leadership style of President Duterte. To him, loyalty is a two-way proposition. If you want your subordinates to be loyal and to die for you, you must also be willing to die for them. He has shown this is in the case of Supt. Marvin Marcos.
In addition, he has made it a point to visit the wake of soldiers or policemen who have died in the line of duty. We could say that his leadership style is to a fault. Contrast this with the leadership style of his predecessor who would rather attend the inauguration of a car plant than meet the remains of his policemen whom he sent to fight his war.
What is important now is that the President and his principal henchman Bato dela Rosa realize that there is a serious problem in the PNP. More important, however, is how the problem would be tackled. It is a problem that cannot be solved overnight. It will take years.
Forming a counter intelligence unit to go after scalawags is not enough. Sometimes, it is hard to analyze the problem by people within the organization. My unsolicited advice is for the PNP to bring in outsiders to help in identifying the major focus of any reform program. Corruption has been in the bureaucracy for many years. It will be a herculean effort to erase or lessen it to a degree that the people will again have complete trust in their police.
I do not know where the President got his figure that a good 40 percent of the whole police force is corrupt. The figure seem generous because the perception is that it is bigger than 40 percent. Whatever the number, the important thing is that there must now be a serious effort to reform the PNP.