Tuesday, March 06, 2007 Echaves: Feeling royal By Lelani P. Echaves Thinking Aloud
CARRYING firearms or deadly weapons, even if licensed to do so, has been banned in public places, private vehicles or public conveyances since last Jan.
So is the use of security personnel or bodyguards by candidates. It doesn’t matter whether such bodyguards are regular members of the AFP or PNP, or other law enforcement agencies. So says the Comelec.
But Section 33 qualifies... “Provided, that when circumstances warrant, including but not limited to threats to life and security of a candidate, he may be assigned by the commission, upon due application, regular members of the Philippine National Police, the Armed Forces of the Philippines or other law enforcement agency who shall provide him security for the duration of the election period.”
And that, my friends, is how well intentioned moves turn meaningless.
To recall, then police chief Supt. Nicolas Pasinos had confirmed last year the unauthorized deployments of PNP security personnel to elected officials. “If we are going to grant all requests for deployment of bodyguards, PSPO shall need 30,000 policemen/bodyguards,” he added.
Seeing how candidates are already warning of their opponents’ historical penchant for guns and goons, and how the electoral system needs to be met with vigilance, it shouldn’t surprise us if all candidates will claim the need for Section 33.
Candidates and politicians aren’t alone with bloated concepts of self-importance. It’s true for some wives and children. The latter’s classmates hold them either in awe or fear, as they strut about like “special beings,” ever protected from guns a-blazin’ or comets shooting.
And I’m reminded of the First Lady of all seasons—the late Jacqueline “Jackie” Kennedy, widow of US president John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
As mandated, the US Secret Service continued the Kennedy Protective Detail long after her husband’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963.
But Jackie waged a long tug-of-war with the US Secret Service. The US Government was duty-bound to protect the well-loved widow and her children. Jackie wanted space so her daughter and son could enjoy freedom and have normal lives.
She objected to “too many” secret agents, and asked that only those whom the children saw inside the White House be assigned. Wherever they traveled, she insisted on having only one agent with them, but that he shouldn’t appear unless called.
As John Jr. grew older, she asked that the agents not walk, or get inside the car, with him. She stressed that he “must be allowed to experience life, not be oversheltered, and or he’ll be a vegetable at the age of 16.”
She didn’t always win. The exchange of letters within the Secret Service admitted the assignment as “very, very difficult.” True, the children should have a normal upbringing, but “nothing must happen to them; they were “the nearest thing to royalty we have in this country.”
They were royalty, but refused to be treated so. How so unlike many wannabe-royals around!
