Bring in the ‘Hokage’ cops

AS the “ninja cops” issue hounds the entire Philippine National Police, a journo-friend’s talk show based in Manila carried an interesting subject yesterday.

In Melo Acuña’s Tapatan sa Aristocrat carried the talking point: “After a series of controversies, we’d like to find out appropriate measures to improve the general public’s perception of the Philippine National Police.”

Among the confirmed discussants invited were the former Interior Secretary Rafael Alunan III, Board of Criminology Professional Regulatory Board chair lawyer Ramil Gabao, Caloocan City Anti-Drug Abuse Council head Atty. Sikini Labastilla, and PNP Deputy Chief for Public Information Col. Eric Noble.

My knee-jerk reaction to my friend’s invitation to his talk show, which is also streamed live via Facebook, was to tell him that there is nothing wrong with the general public’s perception of our country’s finest. The rotten tomatoes, so to speak, have been eating the whole organization from the inside out is doing that spectacularly, I must say.

Let us define what perception is. In the field of psychology, perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory information. In Biology, perception is the mental interpretation of physical sensations produced by stimuli from the outside world.

In short, perception is a phenomenon borne out of the principle that the community, in general, is a social construct built on mutual trust and respect. Public perception, then, can be viewed as the gap that divides the absolute truth-based facts and a virtual version of it molded by popular opinion, mainstream media reportage, and by how you drum up your reputation. The last part, in press relations lingo, is called “re-branding.”

There are five main stages in forming public perception.

Stimulation. As the first stage, this is a delicate one because you have to focus on what is happening that you want people to catch attention to. Stimulation can happen via the humans’ five senses. However, in this age of social media platforms, it entails stimulating the visual and auditory senses of the people.

Organization. The human brain organizes sensory perception with events by familiar packets of events. By connecting familiar packets of past general public experiences help the person understand what is happening in his “outside world.” This is the way to disseminate large quantities of information in the fastest way possible.

Interpretation. When the key packets of information of experience are recognized, people apply their own biases to it through self-assessment or what is called simply as interpretation. By relating past common experiences, belief systems, and moral values, people could then decide what the event is and how to react accordingly, in a manner that they think they came up with by themselves.

Memory. For perception to take root, these organized familiar packets of events must be committed to memory, preferably the long-term memory. Humans use these prefabricated associations with their internal belief systems and experiences, along with the biases (read: personal evaluations) formed within them, to recall this planted perception at will.

Recall. By retrieving the planted perception much later will automatically bring about the most important details of it. Gaps in the recall of a particular planted perception are usually filled in by “planter” of the perception to rethink the situation again. Incessant recall also improves the supposed accuracy of this stage.

In its latest Perils of Perception survey, Ipsos MORI highlighted “how wrong the general public across 40 countries and districts are about key global issues and features of the population in their country.”

Among the key patterns Ipsos MORI found out were:

• All countries think their population is less happy than they actually say they are.

• Nearly all countries think wealth is more evenly distributed than it actually is.

Methinks, that to be able to pull this off, the national police should do more than “improving” the general public’s perception of them. It should seriously seek out and root out the decades-long corrupt practices, without fear or favor.

On the one hand, Filipinos have been witnesses to the rampant killing of the poor. On the other hand, Filipinos also witnessed how these public servants, who deemed the poor need not undergo a due process, cry justice and due process like they alone are entitled to it. After all, they are the state’s coercive instrument.

For the sake of argument, let’s use the organization’s number of those killed under this administration’s war on drugs. How can you sweep under the rug the 2,000 killings through improving the general public’s perception of your organization?

Don’t get me wrong. I know many police officers that I respect and I know personally that they want a substantial change within their ranks. These people who committed the most productive years of their lives to serve and protect.

So, what I’m suggesting is that for the PNP to hurdle this “ninja cops” issue and assuage the growing fear of people in its own police force is to bring in the “Hokage” police officers. Police officers who have upstanding credibility and command respect from their rank and file.

No laughing matter

“I hope my death makes more cents than my life.” – Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), Joker, 2019

I HAVE finally watched what is fast becoming the highest-grossing movie of the year — Joker. First things first, I have to issue an apology to my writer-friends. I gave them grief over what appeared to me as “over-analyzing” the movie. I gave the comments even before I watched the movie. I admit I was obviously wrong. I am sorry.

The movie itself is more of a socio-political commentary than an origin story of a fictional villain. Joaquin Phoenix made Arthur Fleck a readily available character. The Joker character is so relatable that you don’t even have to analyze it. You just watch the unfolding events in the character’s life in the movie and you’ll almost automatically understand where he is coming from.

Even the campaign promise of Gotham City mayoral candidate Thomas Wayne — yes, the daddy of Batman — that he will be the man of the masses resounds loudly to our present predicament. Tell me if you cannot relate to a candidate who said he will eradicate poverty and helplessness but in the same breath called the masses a bunch of jokers. We have got a lot of that in the last three years.

At least, that’s what my family and I got after watching the movie over the weekend. A thing I highly doubt the other moviegoers grasped as they were laughing at the wrong critical plot points of the story.

I will not go into dissecting the movie from top to bottom. Let me just share a critical plot point in the movie that struck me the most. Still, a spoiler alert is in order.

Gotham City had cut the budget of the social welfare department. This meant that the mental health services program which Fleck depended on for his medication was shut down.

The social worker succinctly explained to Fleck — “They don’t give a s*** about people like you. They don’t give a s*** about people like me either.”

Cutting the budgets of departments that render basic public social and medical services will always redound to disastrous effects on people who the people in power have sworn to serve.

It is so much like this administration cutting the Human Resource for Health Deployment Program budget from P8.5 billion to P2.45 billion in 2020.

Sen. Ralph Recto has warned that the budget cut will mean the unprecedented and biggest “endo” incident in government. The budget cut will mean 7,107 public health nurses will lose their jobs next year.

For clarification, this issue is dear to me. You see, my late mom served as a public nurse for the most part of her life. To me, this is an outrage.

This budget of the health department next year will only cover 3,854 nurses of the currently deployed 17,293 nurses this year. All 202 public dentists and 597 medical technologists of the health department will also lose their jobs next year.

All in all, Recto warned, at least 10,921 public health personnel employed under the Human Resource for Health Deployment Program will be jobless next year. This means a job attrition rate of four in 10 or a 40 percent casualty rate, Recto added.

To be able to appreciate the breadth and width of the effect this massive retrenchment of public health personnel to the country, we need to know the ideal ratio of nurse to a patient in the Philippines.

According to the Department of Health, the ideal nurse to patient ratio is one nurse for every 12 patients. The sad part is that this is hardly true to many public hospitals in the country. Now, that ratio will exacerbate the already bare public health services of the government.

The reality is that for every 25 to 35 patients, there are only two nurses on duty to serve them. So with simple arithmetic, 7,107 nurses who stand to be fired mean at least 177, 675 patients will be deprived of public health services next year.

So, I ask you this then, what good will the “malasakit centers” be if most of your “boots on the ground” have been booted out of public health service? The clerks employed in this additional bureaucracy will not chart the health status of the patients. Nurses do that. Pfft.

Defying Digong

FOR once, I fully agree with the President’s order to clear all public roads of illegal structures. It is, after all, for the good of the many. The President issued the directive during his State of the Nation this year.

Subsequently, the interior department issued Memorandum Circular 2019-121 in consonance to the President’s order. Based on this circular, local chief executives, from the barangay to the provincial levels, are enjoined to “exercise their powers essential to reclaim public roads which are being used for private ends and in the process, rid them of illegal structures and constructions.”

I do get that. It is not the usual verbal orders of the President that we have heard in the past three years. Now, we have an actual order put on black and white. What I don’t get is capitol’s contention.

It is public knowledge to motorists to avoid the capitol compound during rush hours. Why? It is because of the food stalls and the pay parking spaces that take up at least one lane of the roads surrounding the compound. It has become a virtual traffic bottleneck right smack dab in the middle of the city.

How did these to and fro between the city and capitol begin? Let’s dissect.

It started when Antonio Resma, spokesman of the city’s composite team tasked to carry out the department circular, said, “Pareho man kami [local government] nga gimando-an sa Presidente to reclaim the roads. So, ang ako lang unta niini nga sila na lang unta sa kapitolyo ang mo-demolish kon duna may mga illegal structure sa mga dalan o sidewalk diha sa provincial capitol.”

I understood this statement to be an extension of courtesy to the capitol. It’s like, please clean up your backyard so that we don’t have to. The statement acknowledges the fact that the governor is the foremost entity to carry out the President’s order.

However, the capitol, for some inexplicable reason, took this pronouncement as a threat. Through its information officer Florito Dugaduga, the capitol declared that it will protect its properties and facilities.

“Hugot ang baruganan ni Gobernador Bambi Emano nga iyang panalipdan ang mga kabtangan ug propedad nga gipanag ya sa mga katawhan sa lalawigan sa Misamis Oriental. Kini taliwala sa hulga sa mga opisyal sa syudad… nga ilang sudlon ang capitol compound aron gub-on ang mga ilegal nga struktura nga nakababag sa trapiko ug ipatuman ang Presidential Proclamation – Memorandum Circular 121-2019,” this paper quoted a capitol statement released by Dugaduga.

Right off the bat, the capitol responded to what it understood as a threat from city hall. Maybe the capitol spokesman was not listening to Resma properly. Resma did not categorically say that they will enter the compound and start demolishing the illegal structures. What Resma did was to enjoin the provincial government to clear the roads of the compound. If the latter cannot do its part in implementing the President’s order, then city hall will have no other resort but to do it for the capitol.

Remember that the city hosts the provincial compound. Ergo, all the traffic congestion it causes contributes to the traffic situation in the city.

Another thing, the fact that the capitol predicated its statement that the structures inside the capitol compound are illegal, boggles my mind. Is the capitol then saying that it will protect and defend all the illegal structures in its compound?

The capitol even upped the ante by saying: “Dili man na common road nga agianan gyud sa mga sakyanan. Kana nga mga dalan para ra man na agian sa mga empleyado sa kapitolyo.”

Curiously, I wasn’t able to see that category under the Department of Public Works and Highways’ classification of public roads. The DPWH classifies public roads as national primary, national secondary, national tertiary. provincial roads, municipal and city roads, barangay roads, expressways, and bypasses.

Under the provincial roads category, the public works further define this as local roads:

a. Connect cities and municipalities without traversing national roads

b. Connect national roads to barangays through rural areas

c. Connect to major provincial government infrastructure

On Sunday, I saw first-hand how difficult it was for an ambulance to snake its way through the food stalls to get to the Northern Mindanao Medical Center. I talked with one of its guards. He said the food stalls have been operating virtually 24/7. The operation is divided into two “shifts” of 12 hours daily.

What is it in these food stalls in the capitol compound that would push the governor to defy the President’s order? There is even a makeshift motorela terminal beside the row of food stalls in front of the regional hospital. These motorelas ply the city streets and do not go as far as Opol. My point being is that the terminal is operating in the city under what Dugaduga called as a road only for capitol employees. Are these motorelas owned by employees of the capitol?

Whatever the capitol’s answer to these queries, it is clear that the coming days will surely be interesting, to say the least.

Oh, I almost forgot. Didn’t the governor declare that he may run for city mayor come 2022? If he does get that seat, will he issue the same pronouncements Resma did?

It’s like what we say in chess parlance: It is neither a stalemate nor a draw. It is checkmate, Sir. Pfft.