I Would not Resign

If I were in their place, I would not resign. Why would I? That’s my job. That’s supposed to be what I do for a living, how I get paid, how I get money so I could pay bills, buy what I need and want, provide for my family and many other things. Why would I resign? Some people make it look like it’s a noble and patriotic act to submit a courtesy resignation. Calling for resignation is stripping a person of employment, of trade, of the dignity of a person’s part in society. It is stripping a man of his function, rendering him useless. Setting aside employment for a while, what does that do to someone’s mental health and emotional well-being? Is not employment and underemployment a big problem of the nation’s economy? Now, these men are being asked to surrender their employment while so many Filipinos struggle to scrape off with some sort of job that could even be considered as “employment”?

This request for PNP senior officers to submit courtesy resignation, which is supported by the President, supposedly intended to cleanse the ranks of connections to illicit drug trade, is a very loud confirmation that corrupt intrenchment in the traffic of illegal drugs that corrupt the minds of its users is highly prominent among senior officers of the Philippine National Police. The Secretary of the Department of Interior and Local Government said it. The President of the Republic agrees with him. They’re not just saying some police generals are involved in the proliferation of coke or meth. They’re saying the situation is so horrible that the Secretary is desperately pleading for the generals to renounce their ranks. He’s saying that we have had this problem; it’s been stinking so bad that we have to eliminate all the contents so we could tell which part is actually causing that stench. They’re confirming that the problem is so big, and so bad.

If we look at it with just the “here and now”, all this call for acquiescence may seem so principled. But let’s widen our horizons. Having a horrible drug problem among our police would simply prove that the government has not been successful in solving police involvement with illegal substances. Wait a minute. It seemed like so long ago, but is not war on drugs the flagship program of the previous administration which just ended its term just six months ago? Have not the President and his people with the PNP itself at the forefront been at it since day one of July 2016? Didn’t that “war” go on through the entire six years? Even in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic when Filipinos were getting sick and dying, and businesses were having a hard time surviving, the former President would still claim that along with terrorism, illegal drugs was still the nation’s biggest problem. (Maybe, he meant the nation’s biggest problem was the need for a drug for Covid. Maybe I misunderstood.) Even when the incumbent President became President elect, I think the outgoing President’s primary appeal was for the new administration to continue the war on drugs. That is how he was single-minded on that cause to defeat drugs. The six years of his administration was passionately dedicated to this devotion. Are the DILG Secretary and the President telling us that the drug war has been a failure all along? Are they telling us that the very people who should have been fighting to win the war are the same people who have been infesting from the inside that the war is actually lost? Wait, the war can’t be lost. A senator who used to be chief of the PNP adamantly claims that the war on drugs has been a big success. I remember that he would repeat that in his campaign when he ran for senator.

It would be interesting if the present DILG Secretary with the President, and the former President and his former PNP Chief turned senator could sit on a table to talk about this matter. It would be nice to listen to how distant the poles of arguments would be. It would be exciting how each of them would defend their presumed positions with rough and reckless on one side and diplomatic demeanor on the other.

Since we have drifted to the direction of the previous administration, did not the previous president raise the pay of police officers, presumably so that they would be financially satisfied and not be tempted to involve in illegal activity? (Well, that operates in the premise that people do crime because they need money. But what if people do crime because they simply want to, regardless of the digits that appear monthly on their ATM accounts.) Was that all for nothing?

Again, if I were in their place, I still would not resign.

“folly is set in many exalted places while rich men sit in humble places.” Ecclesiastes 10:6