"The revolving-door policy must change."
"The revolving-door policy must change."
PNP Officer in Charge Archie Gamboa has now been appointed as the permanent PNP Chief. He can now devote his remaining months in the service to implement his programs. Whether he will have enough time to implement even a part of it is of course another question. This is because the time spent by most chiefs of the PNP and the Armed Forces at the top is so short which basically just gives them time to warm their chairs before they retire.
It is about time to amend the PNP and AFP retirement law to stop the revolving-door policy that is currently happening and give whoever are appointed to head the two services longer terms to be able to at least leave some kind of legacy before they are pastured off into the sunset.
The worse of the two is the AFP. The last four or five Chiefs of Staff did not last more than a year. A couple of them did not even last longer than four months. At least with the PNP, the last three or four lasted almost two years with a couple of them lasting for more than two years.
Amending the retirement law would benefit the government in the sense that extending the retirement age beyond 56 years old will save the government money by not paying retirement benefits so early.
There are other benefits as well. If the law is amended, a more strict attrition system could be put in place to weed out excess personnel and those who cannot come up to par but extend the services of personnel who are able to reach star rank.
Currently, everyone in both services must retire upon reaching the age of 56 unless extended by the president. This is the principal reason for the revolving-door policy now in place which is not surprising since the field of selection are all bunched together by age. Officers reaching one star could, for instance, be extended for another year and another if that officer gets another star and so forth. If one is eventually selected as the chief PNP or Chief of Staff of the AFP, from this group, they would be retiring at about 60 or 61 years of age with at least two years as chief of his or her service. There would be no need for a fixed term which seems to make politicians a little uneasy. Compared with other countries in the region with the exception of Singapore, our country has the youngest mandatory retirement age in the uniformed services.
Another benefit of an amended retirement law is that a provision could be included to make it easier to get rid of scalawags especially in the case of the police. But there must be an easier way to discharge officers and enlisted personnel from the service who are classified as habitual offenders. Restoring the old system in the Constabulary wherein the enlisted ranks are guaranteed only three years of service before they have to face a reenlistment board to see if they could continue in the service. This way, everybody will have to be on their toes the whole time.
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I was in the metro area last week when I was pleasantly surprised to get an invitation to attend a big shindig at the residence of my former boss, former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. I have not seen her for some time and was glad to go to see what is keeping her busy since her declared retirement from politics. It turns out that she is quite busy writing her memoirs and doing some research in the area of micro finance.
The people in the party were mostly familiar faces because many of the guests were former officials in her administration. Some of them are also officials in the current administration. Former Executive Secretary Ed Ermita was there together with the current National Security Adviser Secretary Hermogenes Esperon and many others. The party was a belated celebration of the birthday of PAGCOR Chairperson Andrea Domingo who is turning out to be the most successful Chief Operating Officer of that government corporation. As I found out, she is also one hell of a dancer.
Also, there was the Chairperson of the Civil Service Commissioner Alicia de la Rosa Bala whom I wrote about in my column last week. I found out that she is a career government bureaucrat on her 43rd year of government service. She spent her first 39 years of that with the Department of Social Welfare and Development. Social work is therefore in her blood and that was one reason why her bosses depended on her so much. For one, her institutional memory of DSWD is unquestioned. Her stint in the CSC is her first away from social work. From the few things that she was able to tell me, the CSC continues to provide services to its constituency. She and one of the other commissioners who was promoted from within the ranks of CSC have in fact an excellent working relationship. She is the kind of person who would rather find a common ground to solve a problem instead of confronting it. This is why it was hard to not like her; she has a pleasant personality and I do sympathize with the current situation that the CSC is finding itself. I hope she will be able to find ways to resolve whatever it is that seems to be bugging the CSC to be able to deliver more to the many government personnel who go through the agency.