Why many police colonels failed Napolcom test

MANILA, Philippines – Questions involving emotions, morality, and politics proved to be the stumbling blocks for almost 400 ranking police officials who flunked the National Police Commission’s (Napolcom) Police Executive Service Eligibility (PESE) examination, a police official said yesterday.

Their inability to make the right decisions because of politics in the Philippine National Police (PNP) caused police colonels to fail the test for their promotions, claimed one examinee who passed the exam.

“Many seemed to have encountered problems in areas of emotional quotient inventory and moral development. There were questions that will really test you, very confusing questions if you are not used to making the right decisions,” the police official, who asked not to be named, told The STAR.

He explained that some of the questions asked were meant to measure a person’s ability to act against his or her own emotions, self-preservation, and politics.

The police official said one question was about what one would do against the illegal numbers game jueteng if he or she was the chief of police of a certain town.

The catch, he noted, was in the choices given to the examinee vis a vis attending circumstances, “like if his immediate superior does not want him to meddle with the gambling issue, if the provincial governor has issued orders to put a halt to the same, and if the chief of the PNP knows about jueteng activities in his area of jurisdiction and is doing nothing because the big boss appears to be on the take.”

The PESE was administered by the Napolcom to ranking members of the PNP holding superintendent ranks, equivalent to a colonel in the military, for them to be promoted to senior superintendent, chief superintendent, directors, deputy directors, or director generals.

Of the 542 police officials who took the test last May 25 in various testing centers nationwide, only 149 passed, for a 27 percent passing rate.

Of the number of examinees who passed, 117 were from Luzon, 18 were from the Visayas, and 14 from Mindanao.