Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Gen. Guillermo Lorenzo T. Eleazar. INQUIRER file photo / Niño Jesus Orbeta
MANILA, Philippines — Philippine National Police chief Gen. Guillermo Eleazar maintained on Tuesday that the police was not conducting a census in villages although he said that if the allegation of Sen. Panfilo Lacson was found to be true, the activity must be stopped.
In an interview on ANC, Eleazar again denied Lacson’s claim that the PNP had been going around different barangays, asking for the names, contact numbers and addresses of some residents, allegedly in preparation for the 2022 elections.
Lacson, a former PNP chief himself, named Police Maj. Gen. Rhodel Sermonia, the head of the Directorate for Police Community Relations (DPCR), as the one behind the census.
The DPCR is in charge of making the PNP a “community and service-oriented organization working in partnership with a cooperative community.”
According to Eleazar, the census-taking was being conducted by the convenors of certain groups.
“[The giving away of information of members] is voluntary. It is the different convenors of these groups that gather information, and not the police,” he added. “But should the allegations be true [that police are involved], it has to be stopped.”
Eleazar said he had already talked with Sermonia and cautioned him “if ever the privacy law [was] being violated for his actions.”
Last week, Lacson said he received reports that a police general had ordered the conduct of a census in barangays using the PNP’s P800-million share of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict’s budget.
Despite Eleazar’s denial, Lacson appeared unconvinced. “Being their former chief, I cannot allow the PNP to engage in partisan politics and be ‘bastardized,’ worse — using public funds,” he said on his Twitter account.
The chair of the Senate committee on national defense and security also maintained that the census-taking was ongoing, despite the PNP’s denial.
“The Chief PNP’s admission that such data-gathering activities are going on (and still going on, as per latest information received) is alarming,” Lacson said.
He earlier took to task Sermonia, saying he “had some explaining to do.”
“The same misguided PNP officer that [Foreign Secretary Teodoro] Locsin ‘lambasted’ for raising funds and campaigning in the 2019 midterm elections while using the resources of several of our country’s embassies around the globe. He has since been promoted to his present rank,” Lacson said.
But Eleazar said the DCPR unit headed by Sermonia was merely “encouraging” force multipliers for advocacy groups.