THERE is a quiet but unmistakable shift in how Filipinos are beginning to talk about order.
Not order as law. Not order as stability. But order as experience, of how governance feels in everyday life.
And in that shift, a contrast has emerged between two styles of leadership at the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG): that of current Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla and his predecessor, Benhur Abalos. The difference is not simply administrative. It is philosophical.
Remulla governs as if order must be imposed. Abalos governed as if order must be cultivated.
That distinction matters more than any policy memo.
Under Remulla, the architecture of governance is increasingly defined by visibility: curfews, bans, intensified enforcement, and a heightened police presence that signals control. The message is clear: Order is something the State delivers through discipline, through restriction, through the capacity to regulate behavior in public space.
But this approach carries a cost. It produces what many now describe, rightly or wrongly, as a “police state” feel. Not because martial law has been declared, but because the logic of governance begins to resemble it: preemptive, intrusive and intolerant of ambiguity.
When a 10 p.m. curfew becomes the centerpiece of public safety, the question is no longer whether crime is reduced. The question becomes: What kind of society is being constructed in the process? A city that sleeps earlier is not necessarily a city that is safer. It may simply be a city that is more controlled. And when safety is measured primarily through restriction, it risks confusing compliance for security.
And control, when overextended, begins to erode legitimacy.
This is where the economic dimension quietly enters. Policies that restrict mobility and compress urban activity do not affect all sectors equally. They fall most heavily on those whose livelihoods depend on the night economy: BPO workers, delivery riders, small vendors and service employees whose productivity begins when others are winding down.
For them, enforcement does not feel like protection. It feels like constraint.
In effect, the burden of “order” is unevenly distributed, carried most by those least able to absorb its costs.
This is the paradox of coercive governance: It seeks to produce order, but risks generating resistance. Not always in the streets, but in perception, in discourse and in the slow withdrawal of trust.
Compare this with the approach of Abalos.
His tenure was not defined by the absence of enforcement, but by the manner in which it was exercised. There was a discernible effort to ground governance in local relationships, to work through local government units, and to present the State not as an enforcer looming above society, but as a partner embedded within it.
This is why his leadership is now being remembered, perhaps selectively but still meaningfully, as “servant leadership.” It is not nostalgia for personality. It is nostalgia for process.
Under Abalos, enforcement was tempered by engagement. Programs were framed not simply as directives to be followed, but as initiatives to be understood and co-owned. Even in sensitive areas such as anti-drug operations, there was a visible attempt to recalibrate the tone, from confrontation to community integration.
Was it perfect? Of course not. But it produced a different affect: governance that felt less imposed and more negotiated. It also signaled a State confident enough to govern without constantly performing its coercive power.
And that feeling matters. Because legitimacy in democratic governance is not secured by compliance alone. It is sustained by consent.
The current moment reveals a growing discomfort with governance that prioritizes control over connection. The public may accept discipline, but it resists domination. It may tolerate enforcement, but it recoils from overreach. This discomfort is subtle, but it accumulates, and once it hardens, it becomes politically consequential.
This is the leadership gap now confronting Remulla. It is not a gap in authority. He has that.
It is a gap in translation, or the ability to convert policy into public meaning that resonates beyond fear or obligation.
Strong enforcement can deliver short-term order. But without legitimacy, it struggles to sustain it.
Abalos, in contrast, benefited from a different equilibrium. His strength was not the projection of power, but the diffusion of it across local governments, communities and institutions that could carry the burden of governance collectively. That is a harder model to maintain. It is slower and messier. But it is also more durable.
What we are witnessing, then, is not simply a comparison between two officials. It is a contest between two logics of governance.
One believes that order emerges from discipline imposed from above. The other believes that order grows from relationships built from below. The danger lies in assuming that these are interchangeable. They are not.
A system built on control can deliver compliance, but it risks alienation. A system built on collaboration may struggle with speed, but it builds ownership.
The question for Remulla is not whether his policies are legal or even effective in the narrow sense. It is whether they are legible to the public as instruments of protection rather than imposition. Because once governance begins to feel like something done to people rather than with them, resistance is no longer a matter of ideology. It becomes a matter of lived experience.
And lived experience is the most powerful form of political feedback.
In the end, the issue is not whether the State should enforce order. It must. The issue is how.
If enforcement becomes the defining face of governance, then the State risks shrinking its own legitimacy to the narrow space of coercion. But if enforcement is embedded within a broader framework of engagement, then order becomes not just a condition imposed, but a reality shared.
That is the lesson buried beneath the contrast between Remulla and Abalos. One governs through power. The other governed through presence.
And in a democracy, presence almost always outlasts power. Power compels, but presence persuades, and only one of these endures. After all, the State can demand obedience, but it can never manufacture trust.
The author is a professor at the University of the Philippines Los Baños, and vice chairman of the board of the state-run PTVNI.
