A BALANCING ACT
In truth, being a spiritual person on the one hand and being soldiers and policemen on the other can sometimes mean walking a perilous tightrope. But both Azul and Binag seem to have found a comfortable balance. Both deny being purists, but talk of reforming long-entrenched flaws in their organizations bit by bit, and mostly by infecting their respective “spheres of influence.”

	SHOOTING FOR THE MOON? Reformers believe it is possible to bring back honor and integrity to the military and the police.

Today Azul says he has a chance to effect some change by helping formulate planning and budgeting policies in the AFP. Budgets used to be drawn up by office-bound people who had no idea of the needs out in the field where conditions are fluid. The practice used to be that budgets were drawn up just to access the fund and didn’t reflect the realities in the field. As a result, money was set aside for uses not suited to war zones and had to be converted later into purchases of what the men in the trenches did need — that is, if abusive commanders weren’t pocketing the funds.

The present AFP is trying to implement a budgeting system that Azul described as “rationalizing resource allocation and ensuring it goes to the right uses” and a mechanism where planning and budgeting are “properly linked.” If it works well, conversion would be radically minimized, unless one happened to be really corrupt.

If Azul talks like a manager, it is also because he has had postgraduate management training, as did Binag and his friends in their Christian group called CORPS, an acronym for Christian Officers Reform the Police Service. Binag’s friends in CORPS have become his refuge and “accountability” group where they check on each other’s spiritual, moral, and professional difficulties.

It helps that officers like Azul and Binag took up management studies in institutions such as the University of the Philippines, the Asian Institute of Management, or even schools overseas, where they were exposed to better and more effective ways of doing things.

Binag, who has run the range of police duties from being police station commander to heading the PNP’s Traffic Management Group, likewise talks about having ordered time-and-motion studies to identify bottlenecks in the PNP units where he has been posted. He says leadership trainings are passing on effective management styles to potential young leaders in PNP offices where reforms are most needed. CORPS also has a mentoring program called “My Brother’s Keeper” and the “Bless Our Cops” campaign that invites the public to support policemen.

RESTORING HOPE, IMPLEMENTING REFORMS
But a major obstacle has been the attitude of despair the public and even some PNP members have toward reform. Binag’s only request to classmates, civic leaders, and fellow policemen is, “Don’t lose hope.” Because reforms are grounded on the hope and the desire that things will change, Binag says, the first step is to restore hope.

“Hope is not a method,” he says. “We’ve got to do something to operationalize hope. But it’s hard to say how if you don’t have hope.” Azul, though, said things are looking up in Camp Aguinaldo, adding that reforms were being instituted even before the Oakwood mutiny broke out, and even despite such cases as that of Gen. Garcia, himself a PMA alumnus.

“The military is far, far better off now than it was in 1983 when I was a 2nd lieutenant,” he said. In those days, there were no limits to drinking, and parties for officers even had Girard-Peter models in attendance. Today there are mechanisms to air grievances, among them the campaign “Text Mo Si Commander” where soldiers inform higher-ups of their problem. Higher ups are also listening to junior officers a lot more, a far cry from 20 years ago when “lieutenants were seen and not heard.” Top-down, bottom-up monitoring and reporting makes the organization more cohesive and a coup d’etat less probable, Azul said.

Binag, too, doesn’t think a revolt is in the offing. But that’s because he earned his spurs defending the government. After all, in the SAF, which he had joined right after graduating from the PMA in 1987, he and his co-recruits were almost immediately fighting off coups that rocked the Aquino administration during its early years. Being in the frontlines defending the government comes naturally to men like Binag. What comes naturally to other members of the PNP and the AFP, however, may not necessarily be the same.