Police execs admit having a hard time disbanding CVOs

Police officials admitted during a Senate hearing on Tuesday that authorities were having a hard time breaking up the so-called civilian volunteer organizations (CVO), whose creation had no legal basis. “We are trying to disband them but there are some that are actually used by the government forces themselves," Director Andres Caro, head of the Philippine National Police (PNP) directorate for operations, said during a Senate hearing on the Maguindanao massacre. Authorities also agreed with the view of Sen. Rodolfo Biazon, chairman of the Senate committee on national defense, that the creation of CVOs had no legal basis because Executive Order No. 546 issued by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on July 14, 2006, only mandates the deputization of barangay tanods “as force multipliers in the implementation of peace and order." According to Caro, deputization does not mean that barangay tanods (literally, "village guards") or CVOs will be given firearms. “There is no rule or law that they should be armed," he said.

Director Raul Castañeda, head of the PNP Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, said the term CVO only surfaced during the investigation into the Maguindanao massacre. "The CVOs were mentioned during the conduct of investigation because those are the words stated and described by the witnesses," he said, adding that the PNP was looking into who were behind the arming of the CVOs in Maguindanao. Biazon, a former Armed Forces chief, was outraged after finding out from the PNP that it did not know who was controlling the CVOs. "Talagang malilintikan tayo, hindi natin alam and yet they are out there killing people. Hindi natin alam kung ano (itong organisasyon na ito), ni walang pangalan ng CVO on legal documents. Paano naman ito? Talagang magproproliferate ang mga private armies," the senator said. (We will really get in trouble for this, we don’t know and yet they are out there killing people. We don’t know what this organization really is, there’s even no name of the CVO on legal documents. How could this be? Private armies will really proliferate.) "You claim that you are responsible for the CVOs and it is turning out that you have a vague idea of what is the CVO," Biazon told police officials during the hearing. - AMITA O. LEGASPI, GMANews.TV