015 ~ Service, Honor, Justice

Seventeen years ago this month, Republic Act 6975 –“An Act Establishing the Philippine National Police Under A Re-Organized Department of the Interior and Local Government, and For Other Purposes”– was formally, pomp-and-ceremoniously put into force.

It melded the Philippine Constabulary and the Integrated National Police into what the 1987 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines prescribed as, “national in scope and civilian in character…”

The product, through more than one-and-a-half decades of innovating and improving policing approaches, already constitutes one of the world’s leading contributors to international peace and regional stability.

Apparently, the international-in-scope status was not part of the vision held by the Eighth Philippine Congress that passed the PNP Bill. At the time, the Philippines (her armed forces, in particular) was zeroed in on internal security rather than on global peace support.

No regrets there.

When the nation decided to return to the global neighborhood, the local peace and order environment had impressively ameliorated and was back to a more manageable level. And when she returned to help propagate the peace on benighted foreign shores, she packaged in the PNP Contingent as a bonus, to integrate with the highly essential civilian police component of overseas peacekeeping missions.

In these endeavors, the PNP Contingent has been fairly consistent in meaning the words inscribed on its institution’s seal: SERVICE. HONOR. JUSTICE.

Beyond national boundaries, it serves with its trademark enthusiasm even in the midst of scratch from where they set up shop. They survey patches of idle land, fence the premises in, build and modestly furnish makeshift offices, fortify and beautify the grounds, and blaze trails leading to the base so there is ease in providing assistance to the citizenry.

Among the PNP Contingent's everyday affairs is to respond to emergencies and untoward incidents, including arbitration in petty squabbles among neighbors or volatile confrontations between armed factions, until the time that it is ordered to properly turn administration over to local stakeholders.

The short-term goal is restoring the rule of law shattered by ideologies gone mad, usually through an electoral process that, on several occasions, the Filipino police help orchestrate. The end is always the revival of the peace sapped during a tumultuous period of history, when governance had come to its weakest point.

More than anything, the PNP Contingent judiciously consolidates the local police forces, equipping these with core values and skills. It had done so in Cambodia, Haïti, Timor-Leste, Kosovo, Iraq, Liberia, Afghanistan, and Côte d’Ivoire. It had done so in the Sudan’s south, now it’s doing it in the west. Then there’s the work in Nepal.

The kind and amount of service delivered is the PNP Contingent’s way of bringing honor to its country, and justice to its people’s sacrifice in the name of good-neighborliness and humanitarianism.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

NO LIMITS. The PNP Contingent, more than a token force in the restoration of global security, currently serves in seven mission areas across four continents.
[Slide photos and seal by courtesy, Police Superintendents Honorio R Agnila and Roberto P Alanas; and the PNP Public Information Office.]