30 January 2008

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.


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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.]

15 January 2008

014 ~ Speaking In Tongues

Three out of the fourteen UN-deployed missions served by the PNP Contingent were launched as francophone campaigns: MINUHA (more recognized as UNMIH), la Mission des Nations Unies en Haïti; MINUSTAH, la Mission des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation en Haïti; and ONUCI, l’Opération des Nations Unies en Côte d’Ivoire. Oh la la! Les policiers philippins parlent-ils français?

No, the Filipino police do not speak French. Some do have a working knowledge, after diligently practise-conversing with instructors during their self-initiated thirty-hour leçons élémentaires, while most others are better off articulating their thoughts with las palabras en Español, from which a chockfull of Filipino expressions are formed.

Yet –et voilà!– in those predominantly French-speaking missions, the Filipino police still managed to perform as tasked: collocate with charges from la police locale, catch 'em zenglendos ou chimères, assist the Justice of the Peace in serving les mandats to arrest suspects, train droves of agents de sécurité électorale, and ensure the fair and free conduct du vote présidentiel, parlementaire, et ainsi de suite.

It was not easy at first.

Several years ago, Filipino peacekeepers who’d just arrived in the Haïtian countryside thought they were getting their first crack at street-level crime investigation, just like they did back home. Ambulant vendors were promoting their goods aloud, and if these locals only knew that shabu meant methamphetamine hydrochloride (or the illicitly smoked “ice” or “crystal meth”) in the Filipino vernacular, they would not have shouted, “Charbonne!” These peddlers should have tried pushing charcoal elsewhere instead, to avoid curious attention.

It would make a difference if the PNP Contingent urged national headquarters to revive the after-hours French language classes. This, if the Philippine police organization is really bent on substantially expanding its good-neighborliness efforts.

It must be noted that almost a third of the current UN peacekeeping operations around the world are set in French-speaking host areas, former colonies that could not hold down independence and territorial integrity. These missions thereby prefer UNPol who can communicate en la langue.

This year, as the Sixty-First General Assembly of the UN proclaimed through document A/61/L56, is the International Year of Languages. The idea was to raise the world’s consciousness on genuine multilingualism as a means “to promote unity in diversity and international understanding”.

The entire UN system recognizes six official languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish. English and French are the UN Secretariat’s two working languages.

One does not have to be a certified polyglot to efficiently carry out duties, that’s a gaping fact. But learning and appreciating other languages make the shot at “world peace” less cumbersome –more fun, actually.

If the Khmer Rouge could only be interviewed at this time, they might tell us how well they communicated their thoughts on the Paris Agreement with the Filipino UN CivPol –in Tagalog, the Philippine lingua franca.

Anecdotes of that sort appear in GLOBAL PULISYA. Additionally, the book’s PART TWO: THE HEART ends all its nine sub-chapters in mini-epilogues, set against the background image of the sun rising on the PNP Contingent’s mission area. The text is spiced with phrases in the local language* and/or basilect, such as: Arrun suo sdey, Oth mien panyaha, Lespwa pou Ayiti, Bom dia de novo, Mire mengjesi, Dobro jutro, Hope done come, Sob bakhair, Sabah il kheir, and l’Espoir pour la pays. [Please refer to the Work-in-Progress Edition shots in the main site.]

The small effort is to celebrate the languages, to further the regard for cultural diversity, and to melt the barriers usually hardened by ignorance and inflexibilities, this year and perpetually.


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* For the crash-courses in Albanian, Arabic, Creole, Dari, Khmer, Portuguese, Serbian, and Tetum, the authors thank gracious tutors, including the 2005-06 Board of Directors, PNP Peacekeeping Force to Cambodia Association, Incorporated; Mr Roger Darlington of the United Kingdom; Monsieur “Menzanmi” Ernst, Mesdemoiselles Anne St-Fable et Gabrielle de Clarence of Haïti, Senhora Luciana of Brazil, and Captain Shuaib I Chaudry of Pakistan.


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PASS THE WORD. Members of the PNP Contingent employ interpreters or language assistants to perform their tasks on police administration, operation, investigation, and community relations.
[Photo by courtesy, Police Senior Superintendent Lester O Camba and Police Inspector Godofredo C Ergo.]

01 January 2008

013 ~ New Year, New Adventure

The Global Pulisya bangs away at the forthcoming deployment of its first contingent-team to that enormous Hybrid mission in the Sudan’s western frontier.

A few weeks from now, about four dozen Filipino police officers will fly into another crisis in the Sudan. They will be among the 3,772-strong UN Police component of UNAMID, the UN-African Union Mission in Darfur, mandated by UN Security Council resolution 1769 to "support early and effective implementation of the Darfur Peace Agreement", reached on 5 May 2006.

The Filipino police are to assist in shaping a sustainable peacescape on the blood-bathed swath of the Sahara.

After undergoing what is expected to be a week-long induction process, they will pick their choice for lodgings at the UNAMID campus: a tiny or a tinier tent space, well-appointed or otherwise; half- or full-board accommodations, or none at all.

After the orientation, they will be charged by mission police headquarters to assist in ending impunity, promoting the rule of law, and rebuilding the lives shamelessly broken by the self-serving. Amid the blistering heat, and minimal use of arms, they will do advisory and executory work to set up the local police structure.

As ever, the operative word is hope.

Hope that no mosquito betrays the potency of the prophylactic pills. Hope that no form of harm will be inflicted on anybody around. Hope that the belligerent forces do not get in the way of plans to propagate the peace.

Hope that there will be justice for the senseless slaughter of innocent civilians, two hundred thousand in all…and probably counting. Hope that there will be safe roads through which humanitarian convoys can reach the six million ill and starving. Hope that the refugee camps can be delivered from the attacking militiamen. Hope that the top-ranking leaders of Sudanese politics will fully cooperate with international benefactors in finally cementing order on the brush.

Then there is hope that within the Year 2008 expansion of the PNP Contingent’s good-neighborliness operations, there comes a better grasp of how liberating it is to share with the world the blessings from a police organization with a stark-determined attitude.


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CRISP AND CLEAR. These are but very few of the countless moments in the PNP Contingent’s long, illustrious history of contributing to international peace and regional security.
[Slide photos by courtesy, Retired Police Chief Superintendent Jose O Dalumpines; Police Superintendents Celso L Bael, Daniel B Fabia III, Roberto B Fajardo, and Robert F Rodriguez; Police Chief Inspector Albert G Magno; Police Senior Inspector Sancho O Celedio; SPO4 Renato D Magbalon Jr; Police Officer 3 Arnel M Go; and the PNP Public Information Office.]