MILITARY LEADERSHIP | Marcos appoints insurgency hero as military chief of staff

August 1, 2022 , 05:45 PM

By Manny Mogato, News 5 editor-at-large

(August 1, 2022) – President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Romualdez Marcos Jr has appointed a bemedalled army general as the next commander of the 110,000-strong Armed Forces of the Philippines, his press secretary said on Monday.

Trixie Cruz-Angeles said Army Lieutenant General Bartolome Vicente Bacarro will assume command on August 8 and will serve for three years based on a new law allowing senior generals to have a fixed term to provide stability in the military organization.

“This will give time for General Bacarro to wind down at the Southern Luzon Command (Solcom) and provide him with the transition to his new position in Camp Aguinaldo,” Cruz-Angeles said in a statement.

Bacarro is the classmate of acting defense secretary Jose Faustino and the chief of staff, General Andres Centino, whose tour-of-duty was cut short because he is supposed to retire in February when he reaches the mandatory retirement age of 56 year old.

Cruz-Angeles said Bacarro will be the first chief-of-staff to be given a fixed three-year term under Republic Act No. 11709 signed into law by former President Rodrigo Duterte before he stepped down on June 30.

The new law fixes a three-year tour of duty for the military’s chief of staff, vice chief of staff, the deputy chief of staff, the three major service commanders, six unified command commanders, and the inspector general “unless sooner terminated by the President.”

Bacarro, who was exonerated in a celebrated hazing incident at the Philippine Military Academy (PMA), was awarded the highest military medal for combat, the Medal of Valor, for repelling about 150 communist guerrillas who attacked a militia detachment in Isabela in 1991.

Bacarro is the fourth Medal of Valor awardee to serve as chief of staff after Generals Cirilito Sobejana, Paulino Santos and Mariano Castaneda. He had served as army and military spokesman and was an army’s division commander before rising as unified command chief.

Renato de Castro, a security expert from the Albert del Rosario Institute, said the new law provides stability in the armed forces, insulating the organization from partisan politics.

Muntinlupa lawmaker, Ruffy Biazon, son of a former chief of staff, said the new law is a “game changer” because it “closes the revolving door that has long put the Armed Forces on a constant short-term reset and making it prone to politicization due to the constant jostling for positions.”

Former president Gloria Macapaagal Arroyo began the practice during her term with 11 chiefs of staff in nine years. Some of the generals served only for 69 days as chief of staff. Rodrigo Duterte also had 11 chiefs of staff in six years.

Before Bacarro, only two generals had served for three years. Renato de Villa from 1988 to 1991 and Lisandro Abadia from 1991 to 1994. In between de Villa and Abadia, Rodolfo Biazon served for three months, a reward for his loyalty to Cory Aquino, defending her from coup attempts from 1986 to 1990.

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