Making neighborhoods safe, peaceful and orderly with community residents' active participation

In January 2013, the Center for Man and Society proposed to government an integrated action plan specially designed to mold a culture of cooperation and positive morale between the residents in a community and their law enforcement officers. The action plan, suggested to the Philippine National Police derives information inputs from both the public and private sector through the building and utilization of unique social infrastructures. The significance of the action plan is that it includes handling of macro issues that are of monumental significance and relevance to the Philippine National Police.

Parameters

• The establishment at the regional level of community relations group units.
• Enhancing the PNP Image as a vital driving force to undertake this action plan.
• Establishing social mechanisms and software at grassroots level.
• Holding the Community Security, Safety, Peace and Order Summit at the end of the year in 2013. The holding of the special Summit on Community Security, Safety, Peace and Order is designed to bring together stakeholders in constructively critiquing and enhancing the running program to establish social mechanisms and install software to uphold peace and order, safety and stability at the grassroots level.

Targeted Outcomes

• Enlarged safe spaces in as many areas of the country
• Executed tripartite agreement between PNP, homeowners’ groups or local communities and the services sector for community crime reduction.
• Activated a full function network to provide force multipliers for effective civil relations during local and national crisis as well as fortuitous events like natural calamities and disasters
• Replicated these networking activities for the purpose of the electoral exercise as well as for other subnational and national significant events
• Assembled important stakeholders to critique and improve the plan to bring about community peace, order, safety and stability and allow the people themselves to take the lead in the process.

Time Frame. The duration and the time to implement the plan will be from 2013 to July 2016 -- at the end of the term of His Excellency Benigno Simeon Aquino III, President of the Republic of the Philippines.

Administration. Limited special activities to be undertaken:

Signing Tripartite Agreement. This distinctive covenant, while very specific and targeted in scope, will be the cornerstone of a cooperative venture between the PNP, a service provider, the homeowners’ groups and / or local communities and service provider.

The role of PNP is to provide the spearhead for the action plan. This entails building social infrastructures and embed applicable software (techniques/tactics) to reduce crime, potential terror attacks, political violence, and acts of anarchy, among other similar occurrences. The key players on one side in this undertaking are homeowners’ groups all over the country or their counterpart local villages not covered by organized homeowners’ organizations. On the other side, the service provider is tasked with the social infrastructure building and putting in place needed software.

The PNP’s positioning in the resulting social infrastructure, will be its current post as keeper of the peace and order in the community and in Philippine society. On the other hand, the homeowners’ groups and local communities will be the key information sources of the PNP, while the service provider component will be the constructor or builder of the infrastructures.

Special research-communication audit. The value of the PNP HOTLINE 117 is in the database that it will be able to generate. Together with the database from other units, special audit of selected target individuals / units for evaluation of current communications by selected parties as well as the involvement of members of the service therein, in relation to selective high profile issues.

Evaluating the action plan. The following method for measuring results will take the form of:

• monthly report on work in progress;
• formalized reports for presentation at staff meetings;
• periodic briefings of the higher authorities
• year-end summary for the annual report; and,
• a national assessment Summit on Community Security, Safety Peace and Order at the end of the year 2013.

A Paradigm for Grassroots Based Peace

In January 2013, Center for Man and Society (Centre di Humanes et Societas, Inc. - CHS) proposed an action plan for community-based security, safety, peace and orderto the government. From February to April 2013, painstaking efforts were undertaken to foster the adoption of the action plan.

The present model conceived and being propagated in advanced societies centers on "increasing safe spaces."

On the other hand, a project undertaken during the early 70s that was backed by the United States of America's National Security Council undertook a social program to promote peace in the neighborhoods through the concept of full community involvement and participation.

This program by the US government was a resounding success and was achieved through the training of residents in a community by a composite of trainors on law enforcement and highly capable sociologists-community organizers.

In the Philippines, a parallel of this community organizing design was originally espoused by the group of Ms. Corazon J. Soliman, Atty. Hector Soliman, Mr. Rolando B. Modina, Ms. Charo Modina, Ms. Karina David, Solomon P. Botictic through the social development (NGO) community in the late 1980s. European AidNGOs were the target donors for this design.

This parallel design of the Ms. Soliman of the NGO community centered on conflict-endangered zones (barangays, cluster of barangays, components of towns and cities) where there is war or extreme politically-rooted hostilities. The US model focused more on the neighborhood not afflicted by war but threatened every day by minor conflicts and imperiled by the visiting of newbie or hardened offenders ready to commit crime, or succumb to killing fellow humans during the act.

In the present paradigm, it was envisaged that a combined effort designed for both war-torn communities as well as villages unaffected by warfare while threatened by injurious intent and malfeasance or high crime. As an assessment and year-end culmination of activities, it was suggested to hold a community safety, peace and order summit around the end of each year.

At the same summit, for incentives to all to continue working for community-based peace and order, it is envisioned the recognition of individuals who have contributed their precious time, talent and resources for the promotion of peace and order in our Philippine communities and our simple neighborhoods. For this purpose, we resolve to acknowledge with immense Filipino pride and honor, the Golden Olive Branch Peace Award for promoting peace at the grassroots, in the community.

Confusion at the War Front

Who is this man? He is known as Atty. Emmanuel Fontanilla. He calls himself the Official Spokesman of the Moro National Liberation Front. When Hon. Sec. Manuel Roxas III visited Zamboanga, he was interviewed by media together with the honorable secretary. What is his real role and standing in the MNLF? Does Chairman Misuari Nur owe his life to this man who lays claim to MNLF as if it was his own turf? Presumably, he must have been baptized into Islam; even if so, what real clout does he have with that mammoth organization of armed fighters that even with firearms they would not lift a finger to shut his mouth? (Photo credit: Borneo Insider)

Feed from Rebus 21

Despite the danger of escalating tensions towards full-scale war, certain shady individuals are goading both parties enmeshed in the hostilities and appear to be the ones who organized the hostage-taking as well as the burning of entire villages in Zamboanga.

Captured persons alleged to be members of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) confessed to interrogators that they were not ordered to participate in a war.

Before jumping off from Basilan into Zamboanga-bound bancas (small sea vessels commonly used by fishermen), they were told to support the prayer rally - educational assembly or teach-in against the pork barrel at the EDSA Shrine in Ortigas by holding a similar rally in Zamboanga City. Read more from here.

So much for the MNLF Spokesman saying that the rebels fighting government forces are fake MNLF fighters. After a few days, upon the arrival of Sec. Manuel Roxas and Sec. Voltaire Gazmin, the Spokesman's brain experienced a turn around and his mouth was shooting off statements to the effect that Chairman Nur Misuari owned up to the planning of the hostage-taking and now the burning of villages in Zamboanga City.

All is not fair in love and war.

Increasing safe spaces, aggressive law enforcement

This site is honored to publish a brief article from a cooperator in the quest for community-based peace, security and safety.

Guest article from security and safety experts of Rebus 21:

The goal of community-based peace, security and safety should be precluded by a more aggressive law enforcement system.

Force impetus should be able to interdict perpetrators of crime similar to the case of the brutal killing of Ms. Kristelle Davantes. Click here for a brief bio of Kristelle at linkedin.

This site fully sympathizes with and supports the family of the late Ms. Kristelle Davantes, together with friends and colleagues who put up the Justice for Kae campaign.

The closure of the case for the peace of mind of those who loved Kristelle, fondly called Kae by those close to her is called for.

This dovetails with the earlier assertion that law enforcement should be more aggressive, more responsive to society and the host community that law enforcers are bound to serve.

Ms. Davantes' victimology profile fairly relatively fits that of a particular group or groups that prey upon helpless owners of vehicles that the group desires to possess. In many cases, the perpetrators receive an order for a particular year make, model and possibly color of a motor vehicle. The criminal elements will themselves scout for such a vehicle and in a number of cases, will utilize their contacts as scouts for the type of vehicle in question.

Once the closest match is found, the criminals will undertake all means to obtain the vehicle by illegal means and as an unfortunate resort, as in the case of Ms. Kristelle Davantes, by use of excessive force. In this case, the excesses led to the demise of such a promising, young and vibrant person as Ms. Kristelle Davantes.

In special cases such as the modus operandi used in obtainig the vehicle of Ms. Kristelle Davantes, the criminals should have been heavily influenced by prohibited substances or were experiencing the withdrawal effects of said substances, where intense paranoia and fear visits upon the substance abuser and is likely to commit acts that he or she may eventually not even fully remember in the future.

The public sector will rue the scorn of the affected publics and reap exhorbitantly expensive endless negative consequences unless it will pay the steep price to capture or wipe out the elements perpetrating this kind of crime. Email: workers@rebus21.shop.ms.

Threat of Fourth Generation Warfare

With immense pleasure this site hosts the following guest article contributed by Rebus 21.

Guest commentary by Rebus 21:

Events in Western Mindanao at the present time all point towards escalating fourth generation war.

4G warfare is defined as amorphous (without shape and specific definition), stateless, borderless, non-conventional war. However, it is also timeless. For demonstration, the overly protracted conflict between Israel and selected Middle East neighbors have overblown into 4G warfare.

In its most meaningful manifestation as the burning of Islamic villages at the outset of the 1980s in Mindanao that led to the long-standing Muslim secessionist posture and the rise of highly non-conventional war in Western Mindanao that spilled over disproportionately to Central Mindanao after the late Salamat Hashim broke ties with Misuari Nur.

This is being repeated in a formerly Islamic trading capital town, Zamboanga City now populated also by a dominantly Christian population who learned to speak a language that is half Spanish and half vernacular dialect.

Failure in negotiations and lack of crisis scenario planning and management, futures modeling and war gaming exercise among many other significant and trivial factors, brought the present situation in Western Mindanao to what it is today. Read more from here.

Related articles:

Business Mirror: Increasing number of Zamboanga casualties

Bloomberg.com on spreading violence in Zamboanga

Xinhua.net warning about threat escalating

ANC: Analyst says government must listen to Misuari

Sunstar: Cebu raises alert level

Philippine Star: Government force augmentation - 500 Scout Rangers sent to Zamboanga

Blogger: Is Sabah and Sarawak going to be attacked

CNN early news on hostage taking in Zamboanga