A police chaplain blesses the hundreds of security personnel who will be deployed beginning today (Monday) for the weeklong Asean summit meetings in a send-off ceremony held at Mactan Benito Ebuen Airbase.
CDN PHOTO/TONEE DESPOJO
Police, military and other law enforcement units in Cebu have gone on full alert status and set in motion security measures as about 250 ranking delegates from member-countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) begin to arrive in Cebu today for a series of finance and defense meetings.
Because there are no active security threats to the peaceful conduct of the international meetings related to the Asean summit, plans to install signal jammers during the weeklong event, or from April 3 to 7, have been put at bay.
“Depende sa situation. Pero sa ngayon wala pa talagang (concrete plan) to implement signal jammers (It will depend on the situation. But as of now there is no concrete plan to implement signal jammers),” said Chief Supt. Noli Taliño, Police Regional Office in Central Visayas (PRO-7) director, during the final security briefing held on Sunday at the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Benito Ebuen Airbase on Mactan Island.
Taliño, however, said that Philippine authorities may resort to signal jamming in specific areas such as inside the venues of the meetings in the unlikely event of a specific or direct threat to Cebu in relation to the Asean meetings.
“There will be selective (signal jamming) inside some of the venues pero random siguro, hindi buong lugar. Depende sa situation, we will announce it kung mangyayari ba siya. Pero sa ngayon hindi pa. Wala pa,” said Taliño.
(There will be selective signal jamming inside some of the venues but maybe we will do this at random and not in the entire place. It would all depend on the situation and we will make the announcements if this would happen. But right now, there are no plans yet.)
An inter-agency security force composed of 5,400 men and women has been deployed to the different venues and in the streets of the cities of Cebu, Lapu-Lapu and Mandaue.
According to Taliño, the emergency response teams under Task Force Cebu come from 21 government agencies which include the Philippine National Police (PNP), Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP), Philippine Coast Guard (PSG), and the AFP.
The task force also prepared contingency measures in case militant groups stage protest rallies at the venues.
“We will implement maximum tolerance. Especially when it comes to rallies and similar situations,” Taliño said.
“Mahigpit yung security natin sa (venues). May mga securities din including the route na dadaanan ng mga delegates from airport (Mactan Cebu International Airport) to (their) hotels,” added Taliño.
(We are implementing tight security in the venues. We also have security personnel deployed covering the delegates’ route from the airport to their hotels.)
The delegates will be billeted at Shangri-La Mactan, Be Resorts, Crimson Resort, Waterfront Hotel and Casino Mactan, Movenpick Hotel and Jpark Island Resort — all on Mactan Island; and at Radisson Blu in Cebu City.
The finance and defense leaders’ meeting will be held in Shangri-La Mactan Island Resort and Spa and Radisson Blu Hotel from April 3 to 7.
Taliño is confident that the number of security forces will be enough to ensure the security of top officials from the different Asean-member countries who will be coming to Cebu for the meetings.
“We are confident that Cebu’s hosting of the Asean Summit 2017 will be a successful one,” Taliño said.
Just hours before the start of their deployment to their posts, a send-off ceremony of forces and resources was held at 8 a.m. at the Mactan Airbase.
Asean 2017 National Organizing Council (NOC) Director General Ambassador Marciano Paynor told the forces to do their best to achieve a successful Asean pre-summit conferences.
Of the 141 Asean meetings scheduled in the country, 39 had been finished.
“We have 102 more to go,” Paynor said.
“We have to do the best that we can in all of our tasks given to us and make sure that the success of the meetings is ensured,” Paynor said.
The Asean Summit, hosted this year by the Philippines, will culminate in November in a Leaders’ Meeting in Clark Freeport in Pampanga attended by the heads of state of the ten member-countries, namely, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Director Napoleon Taas, head of the Asean Security Task Force (STF), asked the forces to properly communicate with each other since this will help achieve their goals for a successful hosting of the Asean summit meetings.
A “redundant communication system” will be employed during the ongoing meetings, said Taas, which will involve the simultaneous use of handheld radios, personal contacts, cell phones and the courier system.
Taas also encouraged the security forces to report anything out of the ordinary.
“We have to report anything that is a deviation from the original plan just to ensure that all our actions will be coordinated, and we will not be caught by surprise,” he said.
Across the Philippines, some 40,000 men and women from various agencies had been tapped to secure all Asean-related events in the country, which cover the cities of Metro Manila and Davao, and the provinces of Cebu, Bohol and Pampanga.