By Lt. Gen. Filmore Escobal (Ret.)

The government is bleeding with taxpayers' money as the police operations to serve the warrant of arrest for Pastor Quiboloy et al. continue indefinitely.

The longer PNP PRO (Police Regional Office) 11 fails to achieve its mission, the more doubtful its objective becomes—whether to achieve peace and order and public safety objectives or otherwise. This implies that PRO 11 has become a private army of some political master or foreign power.

I hope that the social and economic benefits of the arrest of Pastor Quiboloy will outweigh the cost of this police operation, the objective of which, as articulated by PRO 11 spokesperson Catherine dela Rey to quote: "the presence of the PNP at KOJC (Kingdom of Jesus Christ) is to maintain peace and order" and  "to serve justice to the victims."

From a cost-benefit perspective, a patrolman’s salary in the PNP is P29,668, plus a long pay of P2,967 or a total of P32,635. This means a little over 1,000 pesos a day for each police personnel employed for this mission. For the 3,000 police officers, it’s around 3,000,000 pesos a day or 30M pesos for the past 10 days of operations for the salaries of patrolmen alone. Not yet included are the salaries of Brig. Gen., Colonel, Lt. Col., Major, Captain, Lieutenant, PEMS, Chief MSgt, MSgt, and Corporals.

PRO 11 allegedly also hired "abanteros" for the excavation, not to mention the transportation and additional subsistence allowance (ASA) of deployed personnel at P150 per day to which those deployed coming from outside PRO 11 are entitled.

Other costs involve excavation, rental of equipment, payment of information arising from intelligence activities or confidential expenses, and other support services such as aerial coverage of PNP helicopters.

The PNP PRO 11 has announced that "they will not leave until the wanted persons hiding inside the KOJC compound are found" and that they are "highly confident" that those wanted persons are still inside, as reported by "reliable sources" and the use of technical and signal intelligence. This means increasing government expenditures until wanted persons are physically arrested, as PRO 11 has given no definite time frame yet.

In addition, there are opportunity losses in deploying 3,000 PNP personnel.  For a 1:500 standard police-to-population ratio, around 1.5 million Filipinos were deprived of police services in the regions where these policemen were pulled out and supposed to be rendering duty; 3,000 families of policemen are suffering from the dislocation of their police parent or family member; and the effect to the physical and mental health to the policemen arising from the confusion whether they are still serving their purpose, that is,  "to serve and protect the people" or "otherwise" as stated in an open letter to the CPNP (Chief PNP) and RD (Regional Director) PRO 11.

Yes, the objective is noble – to serve justice, to arrest a "suspected" child trafficker or a "fugitive," which, of course,depends on whose side you are in the political tug of war.

The arrest seems to be a top priority of PRO 11, setting aside other priorities like anti-insurgency, anti-criminality, anti-drugs, and anti-terrorism operations, given the employment of huge human, financial, and logistical resources.

The responsibility and accountability for success or failure rests on the shoulders of the commanders, whose two-fold tasks are the accomplishment of the mission and ensuring the welfare of their men. Success in this police operation,therefore, is essential. Failure is not an option, considering continuing costs being incurred on a daily basis.

Maybe, just maybe, after the past 10 days of operations, PRO 11 may think of other ways or strategies to accomplish its mission. Otherwise, the cost of failure is incalculable - the embarrassment of this government and its leadership for having a "less efficient" if it's not to be called an "incompetent police force," which is a reflection of its commander, not the men under his command. The men and women of PRO 11 have demonstrated their commitment to duty in the past as they significantly contributed to making the Davao Region "Insurgency Free.”

If I  may borrow Albert Einstein’s quote, "INSANITY is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

To our dedicated and values-oriented PNP personnel, it's a difficult choice between "Doing the right thing" and "Doing things right."

(Retired Lt. Gen. Filmore Escobal, a member of the Philippine Military Academy Class of 1991, is a former commander of the PNP Eastern Mindanao Area Police Command and father of the Revitalized Pulis saBarangay.)