PMA graduates a vanishing breed in PNP, says Bacalzo

MANILA, Philippines—In 10 years, the Philippine National Police (PNP) shall have seen the last of the graduates of the Philippine Military Academy (PMA), concluding a storied chapter in the history of a civilian agency with deep military roots.

As a member of the “vanishing breed” of PMA alumni in the PNP ranks, Director General Raul M. Bacalzo has one advice to the PNP Academy (PNPA), whose own graduates are expected to take over the reins of power soon.

“Whenever I’m their guest, I tell them (PNPA graduates), ‘Look at what is good about us PMA graduates and replicate it. Everything else you see that is not so good, remember them so you won’t make the same mistakes,’” he said.

Eventually, he said, PNPA alumni would become the movers and shakers at the PNP, a role bestowed on PMA graduates in years past. “Every time I meet the PNPA and the lateral entrants, I tell them, we are leaving, we are vanishing.”

“We are endangered species. It is you who shall be left,” he recalled telling the PNPA graduates.

By the time the PNP split from the Armed Forces of the Philippines and was placed under the interior department in 1991, the police force had stopped accepting PMA graduates entirely and recruited only its own cadets trained at the PNPA, as well as lateral entrants.

At present, only “more than 200” PMA graduates remain in the PNP, including Bacalzo himself, a member of the Class of 1977. (Incidentally, the AFP chief of staff, Eduardo Oban Jr., is an underclassman of Bacalzo, belonging to the Class of 1979.)

By 2022 or so, all PMA graduates shall have left the 142,000-strong police force, according to Bacalzo in a recent chat with reporters.

The PNP chief acknowledged perceptions of mistrust and jealousy between PMA and PNPA graduates, especially those who would be competing for plum positions in the transition years involving each of their members from batch 1980 onward.

For instance, there are concerns that PMA graduates will be favored, especially when the appointing authorities are PMA alumni themselves.

But Bacalzo dismissed such notions as misguided. “The juniors now, they do compete among each other (but) it’s a healthy, friendly competition,” he said.

In fact, he said, a member of his directorial staff, Director Danilo Abarsoza, a two-star general, belonged to the pioneering PNPA Class of 1980. “But I have no directorial staff who’s from the PMA Class of 1980… In that sense, they (PNPA) are ahead, aren’t they?” he said.

“What I see is there’s good fusion,” Bacalzo said.

“If you notice there are now a lot of PMA and PNPA classes combined. In the PMA Class of 1991, their honorary members are PNPA Class of 1991. In the same manner, the members of the PMA class of 1991 are honorary members of PNPA 1991. [This fusion] is happening now,” Bacalzo said.

The PNPA was created in 1977 when the police force was still known as the Integrated National Police under the AFP. The school, now based at Camp General Mariano N. Castañeda in Silang, Cavite, was formally inaugurated on June 30, 1978, at Fort Bonifacio.

Two years later, the PNPA produced its pioneer graduating batch, the Class of 1980.

“When I was still not a general, I always said that eventually the PNPA will lead the PNP, including the lateral entries, because we (PMA graduates) are vanishing,” he said.

The top policeman said he saw the looming transition as an opportunity for the PNP to take on a fully civilian character and remove what he called “dysfunctions” that arose from the militaristic training of past and present PNP leaders.

“There were habits somehow that spilled down to the PNP,” Bacalzo said, speaking with startling candor.

Bacalzo told a forum recently that “birth pains” from the military past of the PNP might be a factor in the involvement of its members in human rights abuses, such as extra-legal killings and enforced disappearances.

He took note of the long PNP history when it started in 1901 under the American regime, became militarized in 1936 under the Philippine Constabulary, eventually separating from the AFP and reforming under the Department of the Interior and Local Government.

“So there are some, shall we say, birth pains, when PNP was formed in 1991,” Bacalzo said in answer to a question on why the PNP and the AFP were the usual suspects in human rights abuses.

“Under martial law, we were under the military. We knew the views of the military back in the day. Human rights were not the fad then. That was the prevailing paradigm,” he said in the interview.

“These are some of the things we need to eradicate. And I’m confident that in the long run, these will be removed,” Bacalzo said.

In the interview, Bacalzo said the new generation of police officers should chart a different path for themselves.

“We’re (PMA graduates) not perfect, you know. In the military, we’re covered by the Articles of War. We can immediately detain someone, it’s called a stockade. Now we can’t do that anymore in the PNP. We have due process now,” Bacalzo said.

But he admitted that some police officials continued to think that way.

“That’s the kind of thinking that I said I want to remove. Now let’s put it in black and white. File a case, (take into account their) human rights, (follow) due process,” Bacalzo said.

He cited the case of Marine colonel Generoso Mariano, who recently appeared in a video supposedly urging the overthrow of the Aquino government.

Immediately after the video surfaced, Mariano was confined to quarters and placed under an investigation by the Philippine Navy. “We (the PNP) can’t do something like that,” Bacalzo said. “We’re the police. If we were still military, we could do that.”

And then, of course, there are, as always, the spate of controversies involving PNP officials who are PMA graduates, from Panfilo Lacson (Class of 1971) to Jesus Verzosa and Eliseo Dela Paz (Class of 1976).

Over the years, high powers wielded by PMA alumni in the PNP – and the AFP – had engendered allegations that the Academy had turned into a breeding ground for corruption and abuse of authority that seemingly pervaded both institutions.

But Bacalzo said “management issues” among PMA alumni in the PNP arose not necessarily because they were from the PMA. He noted that the Academy, except for the military component, was first and foremost a university and most of its graduates also took Master’s, PhDs, and even law degrees.

Bacalzo said the remaining PMA alumni in the PNP preferred to think of themselves as mentors to guide to the new breed of police officials and officers.

“Definitely we’re their seniors because PNPA and lateral entries only started in 1991. We’re older than them; thus we can guide and mentor them,” Bacalzo said.