LOCAL Government Secretary Juanito Victor Remulla has ordered the Philippine National Police (PNP) to disband private armed groups (PAGs) by March next year to ensure the elections in May are peaceful and orderly.

Private armed groups — also known as private armies — have long been a concern for the government, especially during election season. Men with guns are always a "persuasive" force in influencing the ballot. Political dynasties know this all too well and do not hesitate to use private armies to perpetuate themselves in power.

Private armies have existed in the country since the end of World War II. Paramilitary forces — remnants of guerrilla units that fought the Japanese army — found a new calling as hired guns for local potentates. It was a time when the military and police were stretched thin, and local officials were left to defend themselves from bandit bands and their political enemies.

As the potentates' power grew, so did their need to maintain an armed force. Soon, private armies were a key ingredient in the "guns, goons and gold" formula embraced by local warlords and dynastic families in winning elections.

Private armies thrived because the government initially did not see them as a national threat. In the 1970s, it even co-opted private armies as "force multipliers" in fighting communist and Muslim insurgents.

In Mindanao, fiercely anti-communist vigilante groups like the Alsa Masa in Davao City and the Kuratong Baleleng in Ozamis City were conducting their own operations against the communist New People's Army. By 1987, there were 47 such groups with an estimated combined membership of two million, or 16 percent of Mindanao's population at the time.

Political clans were known to have engaged the services of vigilantes to "neutralize" opponents with known or perceived communist leanings.

Because of their experience, low-ranking military and police personnel are choice recruits for a private army. "A consistent demand for violence coupled with poverty and the padrino (patronage) found no shortage of men willing to work as hired guns for monetary gain. After all, these were men already licensed to kill — only this time, restrictions were looser, and the pay proved better," according to an article in the online "East Asia Forum" last year.

There have been attempts in the past to dismantle private armies. In 1993, the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) ordered governors, mayors, barangay captains and police commanders to disband "all private armies in local government units."

Nothing came of it. Explained the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue in a 2011 report, "Armed Violence in Mindanao: Militia and Private Armies": "The influence of clans in Filipino politics is such that law enforcement agencies are loath to confront them, and leaders and politicians maintaining private armies are rarely, if ever, prosecuted."

In 2009, government tolerance for private armies came to the fore in big, bold headlines. In Maguindanao, 58 people on their way to the filing of the certificate of candidacy of Esmael Mangudadato were massacred by gunmen working for the Ampatuan clan. Among those killed were 32 journalists, and the incident is considered the "deadliest event for the press in recent history."

Human Rights Watch reported that the Ampatuans' private army was made up mostly of members of civilian volunteer organizations (CVOs) and Citizen Armed Force Geographical Units (Cafgus).

The outrage triggered by the incident led to the issuance of a presidential circular in 2015 creating the National Task Force on the Disbandment of Private Armed Groups (NTF-DPAGs).

In 2021, the task force reported dismantling 15 armed groups in Mindanao, particularly in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).

Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr., the presidential peace adviser at the time, vowed: "We shall be relentless in carrying out a whole-of-a-government and whole-of-society approach in putting an end to the cycle of violence caused by these PAGs."

Twenty-six of the 48 PAGs in the country are in BARMM. Mohagher Iqbal of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) said cracking down on armed groups in a region where feuds between local clans continue will be a big challenge.

We hope the PNP will be up to the task.