You can’t fight city hall

You can’t fight city hall | Daily Tribune

For the men and women in uniform, especially the military and police, two words define their profession: discipline and chain of command. Break one or both, and the edifice of authority collapses — armies dissolve into mobs and the police deteriorate into gangs. That’s why recruits are drilled until they can march in unison.

Gen. Nicolas Torre III, who briefly headed the Philippine National Police, thought himself exempt. Handpicked over three more senior officers, he was rewarded for pulling off two assignments that mattered most to this administration: the airport arrest of former President Rodrigo Duterte and the high-profile capture of preacher Apollo Quiboloy in Davao.

Those headline-grabbing feats may have convinced Torre he was bigger than the system. That arrogance bled into his first serious test as PNP chief: a reshuffle of 13 senior officers.

Napolcom — the commission that, by law, has control over the PNP —told him to reverse the move. Torre shrugged, announced the revamp anyway, and in the process placed himself above Napolcom and even his direct boss, Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla.

For Torre, who disrespected Duterte in effecting his arrest and turnover to the International Criminal Court, it wasn’t just insubordination; it was contempt for the very structure that gave him his stars.

When Malacañang finally lowered the boom — his relief letter curt and immediate — few insiders were shocked. It was the culmination of weeks of tension, a circus of Torre’s own making. Remember the juvenile boxing stunt with Davao City’s Baste Duterte?

The chief of the national police, gloves on, prancing for a bout that never happened. He may have thought it clever. To the rank and file, it was embarrassing. To the institution, shameful. The police uniform is not a costume for antics, but Torre paraded it like a clown suit.

Contrast him with the man who replaced him, Lt. Gen. Jose Melencio Nartatez Jr. Nartatez was on Torre’s reshuffle hit list, switched out like a pawn.

When Nartatez was passed over as PNP chief, he didn’t sulk, posture, or challenge anyone to a boxing match. Like a good soldier, he kept his head down and did the job. That kind of discipline isn’t glamorous, but it’s what holds the institution together.

Now that he sits in the chair Torre barely warmed, Nartatez has done the opposite of his predecessor. His first acts were not to play kingmaker with appointments but to restore Napolcom’s authority. What followed was the commission affirming his appointment as PNP OIC, along with other senior officers whose positions were signed not in secrecy but with the imprimatur of Napolcom and the Interior secretary.

Torre, in his short reign, made the mistake of believing he was bigger than City Hall. Politicians do this all the time, but in the uniformed services, the rules are different. Authority is borrowed, not owned. The general’s bars aren’t a personal brand — they’re state property. One day they’re pinned on you with fanfare, the next they’re stripped with a two-paragraph memo.

The lesson is older than Napolcom and predates the Republic: you’ll almost always lose a fight with the state. You might win a round or two in the headlines, strut about with your conquests, even bask in presidential praise at an anniversary celebration. But sooner or later, the machinery of government reasserts itself. The hierarchy survives, even if the men who momentarily defy it do not.

Torre’s tragedy is that he could have been remembered for his boldness, his five-minute response strategy, even his headline arrests. Instead, he will be remembered for the circus, the defiance, and the unceremonious “effective immediately” stamped on his walking papers.

Discipline is what separates a soldier from a mercenary, a policeman from a thug. Nartatez understood that. Torre, for all his swagger, did not. In the end, the uniform always outlasts the man.