EDITORIAL - New man at the PNP

President Arroyo waited until the last moment to announce the new chief of the Philippine National Police. The move allowed Director General Edgar Aglipay to lead the PNP until his retirement today without having to contend with two centers of command in his organization. Aglipay occupied the top PNP post for just seven months, six of which he served in an extended capacity after he reached the mandatory retirement age of 56 last September.

Through much of Aglipay’s tenure the PNP was preoccupied with speculation on his replacement. But PNP officers were also busy complying with his directives to clean up the image of the national police. Cops were sent to the equivalent of a boot camp for values and attitude reorientation. This also included a revived effort to encourage officers to get rid of potbellies, although without the previous stringent rules that gave some out-of-shape cops a fatal stroke or coronary. There was a high-profile effort to stop police extortion and shakedowns or hulidap operations.

Seven months is too short to effect long-term changes in an organization with as many rotten eggs as the PNP. From the start Aglipay’s reform initiatives suffered from perceptions that he was a lame duck. While some housecleaning was effected in the PNP during his tenure, Aglipay barely scratched the surface in his reform efforts. But if his initiatives are sustained by his successor, those reforms may take root.

That is the challenge facing Deputy Director General Arturo Lomibao, who takes over today as PNP chief. Lomibao, who has over a year left in his regular service, must deal with an organization that is widely perceived to be riddled with corruption. Worse, with so many cops being implicated in all types of crimes from extortion to summary executions, the PNP is suffering from an acute image problem that makes it difficult to get public cooperation in the campaign against criminality. Reforms, no matter how slow and tough to implement, must be pushed and sustained by the new PNP chief.