012 ~ Year-End Issues

Part One.
RETHINKING, REDEFINING THE MISSION

It is the PNP Directorate for Plans, specifically its Inter-Agency and International Affairs Division, which arranges Filipino police deployments to overseas peace support and humanitarian operations.

This office –being at once a repository of international-peacekeeper records, the chair and secretariat of the selection board, and the hub of mission-related communications to and from the police regional offices and abroad– is thus expected to analyze available data and make solid recommendations pertaining to the future of the PNP Contingent. Its existence is only a bit older than the Global Pulisya itself, but as much wanting to be apace with demands of the times.

There runs a list of personal views given by those who had had the privilege of coordinating and supervising the entire deployment process: on efficient, on-time, to-the-last-beat-patrol-officer-in-the-remotest-barangay transmittal of calls for applications; recruitment system, perhaps including the screening of selection-board members; pre-departure orientation and training; securing of administrative clearances and travel documents; handling of required baggage, particularly firepower in armed missions; objectivity in geographic- and gender-balancing, rotating and re-upping peacekeepers; management of contingent affairs, especially the imposition of periodic reports to PNP National Headquarters.

Homecoming assignments are another bristly matter.

As for a basic and crisp official statement, it’s an answer to the following questions:

Is the PNP Contingent a mere token force to make good on an intergovernmental commitment, putting in mind the large peace and order demands on the home front?

Or is it to be maintained as a substantive international deployment, given the multilateral benefits and the PNP’s take on globalization? If so, how many (wo)man-hours can the Philippines afford to share with the more needy nations at a time? And how many (wo)man-hours of honest-to-goodness, strictly enforced reentry immersion on the Philippine policingscape are deemed necessary?

Toward what vision and overall structure does the series of overseas-deployment initiatives lead?

What are the safeguards against callousness, inefficiency, and senseless delays in carrying out pre- and post-mission programs, considering that both the world and the Filipino people do not have the luxury of time awaiting the final (and executory) decision of a top-notch police-contributing country?

The PNP Contingent can always use some guidance on implementing the spanking, clear-cut policy that governs the institutional stand on this endeavor. It can always be made accountable for lapses in judgment.


Part Two.
REWORKING, REFINING THE MINDSET

The one personal opinion that lingers is for PNP National Headquarters, specifically the Directorate for Personnel and Records Management that processes contingent reentry, to encourage the local application of invaluable inputs from returning seconded personnel.

Two reasons:

First, the PNP Contingent, coming under the operational command of the UN (in thirteen, out of fifteen overseas assistance missions, within sixteen years), reflects universal standards on human rights norms and basic democratic values, as well as on responsive and responsible policing.

Almost everyone has heard about stock-discipline talk, but not so many have paid attention to the fact the PNP Contingent was never subjected to dishonorable repatriation due to street-level extortion or headquarters-level corruption. Out there, the Filipino police had no involvement whatsoever in illicit power structures, if any.

The UN’s rules are too stiff to be bent and too tightly packaged to even make room for quiet internal agreements that defeat the purpose of transparency.

Second, the PNP Contingent as flesh to several UN peacekeeping visions has mastered the transfer of elementary criminological techniques, all coherent and widely accepted –having vetted and certified, mentored and monitored, molded and seasoned, the law enforcement authorities of Cambodia, Haïti, Timor-Leste, Liberia, Afghanistan, the Sudan, Côte d’Ivoire, and Nepal. It even took part in the constitution and subsequent staffing of the Kosovar police service.

On a very typical day in Cambodia, circa 1992-93, a Filipino UN CivPol (Civilian Police, as the UN Police of long ago were called) would be seen training scores of Cambodian police. A less-than- ordinary occasion would witness two or three PNP officers training hundreds of locals on public safety and area security, and teaching women and children the English language afterward.

There was this extraordinary episode during the mission where a PNP officer gathered members and sympathizers of the four warring factions (yes, including the dreaded Khmer Rouge). By exercising patience, he was able to put these former archenemies together under one barracks-roof, and reorient their ideology toward the one embraced by the legitimate outfit.

The treasure-trove of stories speaks of the PNP Contingent’s rich experience in breathing life into plans and programs on establishing the rule of law, and on introducing necessary policing skills to the law enforcement agencies that had stagnated because of protracted internal conflicts.

Empowering the Global Pulisya’s men- and women-in-uniform, therefore, is a sensible way to welcome dynamism within the PNP –at not much cost. After all, these personnel were once the PNP’s eyes and ears out there in the world beyond the country’s borders.

All it takes is a little more post-mission assessment of performance and acquired capabilities. Additionally, it should be incumbent on all the offices involved to clearly state to members of the PNP Contingent that giving back to their own organization is not an excruciatingly painful obligation. Rather, it is a fine opportunity to redress systematic faults that arrest intra-institutional growth.