EDITORIAL - Security for all

The controversy over the pullout of a senator’s security detail should lead to a review of policies on keeping VIPs safe at taxpayers’ expense. The Philippine National Police has only 170,000 members to keep about 100 million people safe all over the country. Not all of those 170,000 PNP members are assigned to patrol neighborhoods and provide police presence as a crime deterrent.

Many PNP members are focused on criminal investigation and do not conduct patrols. Others are assigned to manage vehicular traffic. A small number is assigned with the elite Special Action Force. So only a fraction of PNP personnel serve directly as security detail for the general population.

The people will not quibble over state-funded security details for the president and his or her family, the vice president and the officials in the constitutional line of succession: the House speaker, Senate president and chief justice. But thousands of other government officials – particularly politicians in elective posts – get their own police bodyguards who are on the payroll of taxpayers. A number of these officials have police bodyguards assigned to their spouses, children, mistresses and their children, and even private business cronies or political supporters.

The police bodyguards circumvent President Duterte’s directive – carried over from the previous administration – against the use of sirens or wang-wang and blinkers. Police motorcycle escorts use their blinkers and sirens to let the vehicles of these VIPs weave through traffic.

With their salaries and perks, politicians can surely afford to pay for their personal security and those of their loved ones and friends. Yet having police bodyguards has become a status symbol that many politicians can’t do without, even if it deprives the majority of the population of police presence. As many cases in the past have shown, the bodyguards can’t even guarantee their subjects’ safety from assassination.

Like economic growth, public safety services in this country are not inclusive, with only a tiny fraction of the population getting the lion’s share of police protection. President Duterte, who professes to have the interest of the masses at heart, may want to correct the situation. The mark of a safe country is when ordinary folks can be as assured of their safety as government officials, their relatives and cronies.