DAGUPAN CITY, Philippines—At least eight retired and retiring military and police generals will be turning their hometowns and districts in Pangasinan into election battlefields if they push through with plans to run in the 2010 elections.
Three of them have been doing "reconnaissance" missions in the past months in three of Pangasinan’s six districts in preparation for their congressional bids.
Former Armed Forces chief of staff Hermogenes Esperon Jr., now chief of the Presidential Management Staff, has been very visible in the sixth district; former Philippine National Police chief Arturo Lomibao, now Land Transportation Office head, has been frequenting the fourth district; and Director Leopoldo Bataoil, PNP police community relations chief, has been visiting various communities in the second district.
The rest will be aiming for mayoral seats in their respective hometowns. These are Director Silverio Alarcio, integrated police operations chief in Northern Luzon, in Laoac town; former Rear Admiral Virgilio Marcelo in San Manuel; former Director Joel Goltiao in San Nicolas; former Director Ismael Rafanan in Villasis; and former Chief Superintendent Dante Ferrer in Calasiao.
Bataoil will retire on October 22 and Alarcio on November 29, in time for the last day of the filing of certificates of candidacy on November 30.
Two former police generals — Sta. Barbara Mayor Reynaldo Velasco and Bani Mayor Marcelo Navarro — will seek reelection. Governor Amado Espino Jr., a retired police colonel, and Rosales Mayor Ricardo Revita, a former police major, have also been preparing for their reelection bids.
Dr. Perla Legaspi, former vice chancellor of the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City, and professor at the UP National College of Public Administration and Governance, said most of the former generals who will be seeking elective positions came from the police.
And as police officers, she said, their decision to seek public office may have been influenced by their functions.
"Most of them have been dealing with the public, with the community, so they are attuned to civil functions. And because of these backgrounds, they know and they feel the thinking of the community and how to be attuned with [its] needs," said Legaspi, now program chair at the Lyceum Northwestern University graduate school here.
"Maybe, they think that they are better off than others who do not have military or police background because to them, their mission would guide them towards the achievement of certain goals," she said.
Lomibao said retired military or police generals have as much right as any civilian has in seeking public office.
"Maybe, it’s their sense of service to the people, sense of service to the country that they imbibed when they were still in the military service. Maybe, they will miss talking to people when they retire," he said.
"Being in the service, you deal with people, you handle people. You talk to people, you solve their problems [and] their concerns [and] you attend to them. And suddenly, when you retire, you stay home. ‘Yong iba nga diyan e naaatake, kasi wala silang kausap (Some even get sick because they have no one to talk to)," Lomibao said.
He said he knew of a general who, after retirement, still wore his uniform every morning and went to his office and read the papers.
"It’s because he still had hang-ups. These are the things that retired people — not only in the military and police — but even those who spend the best years of their lives in government, do. So, maybe we should give it to them," Lomibao said.
A local political analyst, who asked not to be named because he holds a government position, said it was unusual for many retired generals to be seeking elective posts.
"In the past, when a general retires, he usually looked forward to tending a farm or engaging in business. Politics was never an option then," said the source, a member of a political family who has been involved in local politics as campaigner and organizer since 1987.
He said the trend indicated that the police and military had been highly politicized, an offshoot of the martial law rule in the country for more than a decade.
"This is why when a general retires, he now looks forward to being appointed to a government position or running in an elective post," he said.
But Legaspi said that during martial law, the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos did not appoint retired military and police generals to government positions, unlike now, under the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, where several former military and police generals serve as Cabinet members and undersecretaries.
"The military was politicized then only in the sense that the promotion system was not followed. Seniority was not being followed," Legaspi said.
She said there have been success stories involving former military or police generals entering the field of politics.
Lomibao said having several retired generals in different elective and appointive positions was not militarization of the bureaucracy.
"I don’t think so, because we are already retired. I think the term is not militarization. Of course, we [underwent] military or police training — we have our own system, we are mission-oriented, service-oriented. That’s our training. So, I will not say militarization. I’d rather say, civilianization of the retired military [men]," Lomibao said.
