By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
superiors.”
Back then, even a high school graduate could become a policeman or policewoman. Those with such kind of low formal education, however, would have no chance of becoming high ranking officers. Even if they were geniuses.
Similar was the situation of those in the army.
Many in the uniformed service had such kind of education when Martial Law was declared in 1972. A good number of them even thought they were dictators or the local bosses. They committed so many abuses.
I just entered college then. Student activists were all over the campus and they could paralyze academic activities with the cooperation of their friends, the leftist professors. When they said “boycott classes” to protest against some policies or rules whether in campus or in the national levels of government, almost all the students were happy. Demos would be conducted with placards and streamers galore, and the student leaders and leftist professors delivered fiery speeches against the concerned policies or rules. Some of the slogans the crowd would shout were: “IBAGSAK ANG PASISTANG MARCOS AT IMPERYALISTANG AMERICANO”, “DOWN WITH US IMPERIALISM,” “MARCOS TUTA NG KANO,” etcetera, etcetera. The very few students who wanted to have classes were ostracized, or even negatively marked by the leftist professors.
Suddenly all the student leaders and the leftist professors disappeared. The radios in the dorm became silent. (There was no communal TV in the dorm yet, it came two years after.) Then came the voice of Francisco Tatad on the radio announcing that Martial Law was declared, followed by Marcos’ voice… “by virtue of the power vested in me by the constitution….” That was the only broadcast you could hear for days and days.
I think that was September 23, 1972 when the official announcement was made. As it turned out, the signing of the declaration of Martial Law was two days earlier but was made public after the main opponents of then President Marcos and well-known activists and leftists were arrested and sent to jail under the direction of then Col Fidel Valdez Ramos (FVR). And after all mass media outfits were closed or confiscated. These were accomplished with lighting speed.
The campus (UP Los Banos) then became a ghost town. We did not know what would happen next.
After about a week, all the rooms in the dorm were raided by the campus police. They confiscated everything they deemed revolutionary. Even term papers dealing on subject matters like the reformation of the Catholic Church led by Martin Luther were considered subversive and unceremoniously taken. The policemen were crude, uneducated. For months we tried to avoid them due to fear. They were roughly carrying their weight around.
But the situation became a bit relaxed after a few months so we were not treated so badly even if we violated curfew rules by staying too long outside the campus engaged in drinking sprees. They would just make us stay in the police station playing chess overnight.
Now, entry level policemen have to be college graduates. It is best though if they graduated from the Philippine National Police Academy. The higher education of police officers now is reflected in their more refined ways of dealing with people, particularly in lockdown checkpoints.
However, according to a client police officer, it is difficult now to send police officers who have PhDs on menial tasks even by their superiors.
**
