Fat Philippines' Police Generals

By MORTZ C. ORTIGOZA

It was pathetic to see the sight of four Police District Directors who were all star ranked in Metro Manila sacked by Secretary  Mar Roxas of the Department of Interior & Local Government and Police Director Alan Purisima.

Just like their chief at the Philippine National Police, they look like a toad with their beer belly.

What happens to the 35-inch waistline limits’ PNP Physical Fitness Program vigorously implemented during the time of then national police chief Panfilo Lacson ?

I am green with envy every time I see physically trimmed police officials like Lacson, Police Regional Office Director Chief Supt. Roman Felix, and Pangasinan Police Provincial Office Director S/Supt. Rey Biay. These officers and gentlemen probably maintain a strict physical or diet regimen.
Look at General Felix,with all those well toned body like PC General Job Mayo I met in Mindanao, you would mistake him to be in his mid-40s.

Iyan ang dapat hindi lang sa mga generals kundi sa mga colonels, Lt. Colonels, and majors whose "handsome dividends" in their post as chief of police could really make them stout.

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Talking about good physique and athleticism one can cite former Urdaneta City's Chief of Police Supt. Pat Pinol, a British trained Royal Marine Commando and former trainor of the elite Special Action Force. Sannamagan, he can still jog 21 kilometers with regularity in my Province Cotabato. I could cite also former president Fidel V. Ramos (USMA 1950) who challenges any captain or major for 100 push up or abdomen flexing contest.

He once challenged me, although I was only a lowly tanod (watch man) of our barangay then, for 100 pushed up and abs flexing on the river cruise at the pristine Dawel River of Dagupan City.

I stopped at 95 in both the two contests in deference to the man who fought along side with my father against Mao-Tse Tung’s Chinese and North Korean Communist troops in the Korean War in the 1950s.

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But a good example of athleticism, I told police colonels and majors who treated me with booze, was Army Four Stars General David Petraeus (USMA 1974).When the jogging buff Petraeus, whose body looks like a 35 years old man according to Bob Woodward’s book Obama’s War, was the commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A), every colonels who wants to confer with him could find themselves running and discussing with him in a 5 miles (8 kilometers) speed jog that the general has been doing regularly. Petraeus, however, was, disgraced as  CIA Director because of a tryst with a pretty West Point alumna who was a writing her dissertation for her Harvard studies about him.

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As what Chris McDougal of The Daily Beast (successor of Newsweek Magazine) described the run-till-you-drop exercise regimens of Petraues in 2010:” At 57, the newly minted leader of the U.S. efforts in Afghanistan still likes to start his day at sun-up with a five-mile run, blazing out each of those miles in under six minutes. Then it’s straight to the weight room, where he ignores all those cushy-seated machines and heads for his torture device of choice: a single iron bar, lag-bolted eight feet overhead. A Petraeus pull-up is nothing as simple as hoisting your own body weight up and down a few dozen times. Instead, he slowly jack-knifes from the hips until his shoelaces are level with his face. After 20 of those babies, he drops to the floor for crisp 100 or so pushups. And to recover from these self-imposed beatings, the general treats himself to a total of one meal per day and four hours of sleep. This was from a guy who a year ago was being treated for prostate cancer and survived getting shot in the chest when a soldier tripped during a live-fire drill”.