Espina: Purisima is back but not as PNP chief

Director Gen. Alan Purisima will soon report back to work but he will not have the power to give orders until he gets a new assignment at the Philippine National Police.

The suspended PNP chief, who resigned at the height of the deadly Mamasapano operation, will be on active duty status starting June 10. While he has no designation yet, he will be required to report to the Personnel Holding and Accounting Unit (PHAU), where officers without assignments or on “floating” status usually report.

But Deputy Director Gen. Leonardo Espina clarified that orders would still come from him as he was the officer in charge of the 150,000-strong police force despite Purisima having the highest four-star rank in the PNP.

Philippine National Police officer in charge Deputy Director Gen. Leonardo Espina says suspended Director Gen. Alan Purisima may be back in the police force but it does not mean he is also reinstated as its chief. INQUIRER PHOTO

“He has (no power). For instance, say, an officer with a senior superintendent rank without a position, he has no power while he’s waiting for his official designation,” said Espina in an ambush interview after the promotion of 25 police officers in Camp Crame.

“Like any other officer like me, he is back to regular duty but not necessarily as the chief of the PNP,” he added.

While under PHAU, Espina explained that “strictly speaking,” Purisima would have to report to the PHAU chief daily “for purposes of accounting.”

“Our authority, responsibility and accountability are by virtue of our position. That’s only the time we have the accountability and command responsibility. It is not the rank but the position,” he said.

On Dec. 4 last year, the Office of the Ombudsman suspended Purisima and eight other police officers over their alleged involvement in a shady deal in 2011 with Werfast Documentation Agency for the delivery of gun licenses.

Few months after his preventive suspension, Purisima resigned as the PNP chief after he was implicated in the Jan. 25 operation in Mamasapano, Maguindanao, where 44 elite police commandos were killed.

Aside from Purisima, Chief Supt. Raul Petrasanta, who was believed to be the “PNP chief-in-waiting” for his close ties with President Benigno Aquino III’s family, would also report back to work on June 10.

However, Espina said the Senior Officers’ Placement and Promotions Board, which he would lead, had yet to study the case of Petrasanta and other 10 officials if they would be reinstated to their former posts.

Petrasanta was preventively suspended by the Ombudsman after he was tagged in the disappearance of 1,004 AK-47 assault rifles allegedly sold to New People’s Army. RC