AARON RECUENCO

Police are now preparing the security plan for the first State of the Nation Address (SONA) of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr. this month.

Police Maj. Gen. Valeriano De Leon, director for Operations of the Philippine National Police (PNP), said what they want to achieve is the success of the national and local elections and the two inaugurations which he attributed to early security preparations,

 “We want to prepare as early as possible so that we can have the best security measures for the SONA. We want to come up with a good template, a good security plan,” said De Leon.

Marcos is set to discuss his plan and legislative agenda when he delivers his speech for SONA at the Batasang Pambansa in Quezon City within this month,

De Leon said that security preparations for SONA are a yearly activity for the PNP and he said they will be banking on the successful SONAs in the past to ensure that there will be no security glitches.

“Year in, year out, we are preparing for SONA, so we are now reviewing all the security plans before, and we will adopt the best practices before and make the necessary adjustments based on the lessons we learned from the past,” said De Leon.

“For this year, I will personally supervise the preparations to come up with the best security plans that will be implemented for the first SONA of our President Bongbong Marcos,” he added.

Part of the planning, according to De Leon, is how the PNP would deal with the protesters, who, he said, are always present every year.

This early, De Leon said they are recommending the freedom parks for protesters where they could peacefully and orderly hold their programs.