High-level coordination needed to avoid ‘misencounter’: Palace

Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said the preliminary finding of the Board of Inquiry (BOI) showed that the coordination between the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) was “held at such low levels.” (PCOO Photo)

MANILA – Malacañang said Thursday that a high-level coordination should be done to prevent a “misencounter”, similar to what happened between the military and the police that killed six policemen and wounded nine others in Sta. Rita, Samar last June 26.

Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said the preliminary finding of the Board of Inquiry (BOI) showed that the coordination between the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) was “held at such low levels.”

“Perhaps next time, the coordination should not be left to low-ranking officials and should actually be conducted at the highest level,” Roque said during a Palace press briefing.

He said the “misencounter” was tackled during Wednesday’s Command Conference in Malacañang, during which, President Rodrigo Duterte encouraged both the AFP and the PNP to “move on.”

“The President is really encouraging both the PNP and the AFP to move on from this incident, to learn from this experience,” Roque said.

Although the PNP has no control over the decision of the families of the victims, Roque said the President has emphasized that no one should be blamed for the incident.

“But the President said — this is Murphy’s Law: if things will go wrong, everything can go wrong. And this is exactly what happened in the Samar ‘misencounter’,” he said.

“It’s no one’s fault. It’s both their fault. We’ll learn from it. We will have better coordination henceforth, but we offer our condolences to the family of those who were slain,” he added.

Last week, Duterte went to the wake of the six slain policemen and visited the nine others who were wounded in the incident in Leyte.

The slain cops were Police Officers 1 Julie Escalo, Phil Jrey Mendigo, Rowel Reyes, Julius Suarez, Wyndell Noromor, and Edwin Ebrado.

Duterte also took full responsibility for the “misencounter”, promising that the investigation will continue to determine what really went wrong.

“The President has said that the investigation should continue to avoid these kinds of ‘misencounter’,” Roque said.