In 2003, Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV led a military protest that found itself in what used to be the Oakwood hotel grounds. There was never any attack on a center of power nor any use of violence according to the defined legal hallmarks of a “coup d’etat.” Even the Yellow Jesuit legal luminary Joaquin Bernas had to admit this. The validity of the plaints raised by Trillanes and his fellow young officers, the Bagong Katipuneros, had been confirmed in the course of the Feliciano Commission’s fact-finding hearings and by history’s subsequent conviction of the Gloria Arroyo regime, through a succession of elections that condemned it to massive defeats. The corruption in the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), the flaws in its grievance mechanism, the lack of housing for soldiers, their obsolete equipage, the much-needed action on the National Recovery Program, and the removal of Angie Reyes, Vic Corpus and Jun Ebdane on suspicion of “false flag” operations in Mindanao, among others, were issues brought to the fore. Oakwood wasn’t Malacañang nor was it a military installation that could be the launching pad for a wider “swift attack.” The Claymore mines some of the young officers apparently installed around the hotel’s perimeter were more apparent that real. As one retired general I talked to, who was at the scene with others like Gen. Roy Cimatu to negotiate for a peaceful conclusion to the Oakwood situation, told me: “When I saw that the Claymore mines were not being connected to fuses and triggers, I knew the young officers were not really going to engage in a fight. It was more psy war.” This is an important point to be made as some yakking radio anchors are still hammering at the “explosives-being-installed” issue as evidence of the soldiers’ so-called “violent” intent. What transpired was a dramatic airing of issues that changed a nation’s view of the illegal, corrupt, and oppressive regime. One of the unspoken issues of the Oakwood protest was the seething disquiet among the ranks of the AFP over the illegal Edsa II power grab against a constitutionally, legally and democratically-elected president. Edsa II constituted a real violation of the Constitution; and despite the Davide-led Supreme Court (SC)’s imaginative figment of “constructive resignation,” this never settled well with the intelligent officers’ corps. The whole Edsa II defiled the very essence of the Rule of Law that every officer and soldier swear with his life to defend. That is also why the military protests did not end with the suppression of the Oakwood protest. Since Arroyo was able to get away with Edsa II, she proceeded to use the AFP in L’affaire “Hello Garci” as she did in the false flag terror ops in Mindanao. Thus, Oakwood was followed in 2006 by the aborted Gen. Danilo Lim protest march and the Fort Bonifacio stand-off starring Col. Ariel Querubin. It can be argued that with the massive electoral rejection of Arroyo’s candidates in May 2007, the stage would have been set for even more AFP protest moves in the years that followed. But since Arroyo had gradually been persuaded that it was for her own survival and long-term good to decompress and depressurize the situation, this led to the grant of clemency for Estrada. Then came the Manila Peninsula siege on Nov. 29, 2007 — the protest that arose due to the injustice of the continued detention of Trillanes and the refusal to allow him to attend Senate sessions. All the praises being heaped on the Makati judge sitting on the case are thus without merit, as this is an injustice that continues to this day where the justice system is complicit. Trillanes’ case highlights the farce that is our intertwined political and judicial system — a farce that persists from the SC down to the lower courts. If judged on merits, ethics, or morality alone, Trillanes and his comrades should have all been freed long ago. They didn’t steal, rob, corrupt or plunder the government. It is Gloria Arroyo, her FG Mike, Reyes, Corpus, Ebdane, Ben Abalos, Nani Perez, Chavit Singson, Hilario Davide, et al. who have been alleged to be demonstrably corrupt, anti-democratic and treasonous in their acts; yet they are scot free. Then there are the corporate and oligarchic plunderers enriching their coffers while impoverishing the nation. All the quibbling and all the legal hair-splitting, aired through the obfuscating media, that delay Trillanes’ release to fulfill his duty to his 11 million voters are all just farcical stunts to distract from the real issue of the corruption of the entire system. If our AFP were made of better stuff and prouder of their calling and oath to the nation, they would have long continued the Bagong Katipuneros’ quest for a better society, sprung Trillanes, and put the truly corrupt where they truly belong — in prison. (Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today, Tuesday, 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m. on Destiny Cable Channel 21; our new blog, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com) |
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(Reprinted with permission from Mr. Herman Tiu-Laurel)
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100723com5.html
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