Illustration by Jimbo Albano

THIS time around, former Navy officer and neophyte Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV left no room for ambiguity.

In his 2003 debut at the Oakwood mutiny, then-Lt. Senior Grade Trillanes hemmed and hawed about his intentions. His Magdalo group of more than a hundred rebel officers demanded the resignation of then-Armed Forces intelligence chief Victor Corpuz and then-defense secretary Angelo Reyes. The basis: mismanagement and misplaced priorities that had caused needless deaths of soldiers, and for allegedly ordering covert bombing operations to fan fear of terrorism and bring in more funds for a corrupt military.

Trillanes later demanded the resignation of his commander in chief, President Arroyo, claiming she had willfully dismissed the young officers’ plaints. But he stopped short of calling for the takeover of the government, insisting his Gloria-resign call was just the desperate plea of a cornered hero.

At last week’s siege of the Peninsula Hotel in Makati City, Trillanes and cashiered Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim made their intentions clear. Even before they walked out of the Makati Regional Trial Court, Trillanes told reporters: “Pursuant to our constitutional mandate as protector of the people, we are making the step of removing Gloria Arroyo from the presidency.”

A coup by any other name

A Magdalo manifesto read by Lim in the first hour of the hotel takeover repeated the word “removing,” saying “patriotic forces” were undertaking a “constitutional rescue” to form a new government.

Lim refused to name the leaders of the planned new government, saying they would emerge in time. The Philippine National Police (PNP), citing seized documents, says Lim and Trillanes had made room for civilian allies but were clearly poised to assume leadership of what would, by all accounts, amount to a junta.

Political scientists, many of them critical of the scandal-prone Arroyo government, hesitate to use the word “coup” to describe Trillanes’s latest caper.

Jose Abueva calls it a “mutiny” because Lim and the senator come from the military. The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines mutiny as “forcible or passive resistance to lawful authority; especially concerted revolt [as of a naval crew] against discipline or a superior officer.”

In this light, the Peninsula incident cannot be called a mutiny. Most of its participants, at least the visible ones, had long declared themselves outside the pale of the chain of command, and were precisely facing military and civilian trials for such.

Even Malacañang was loath to call it a coup, but simply a “situation”—– albeit one that called for a huge military-police team and the deployment of several armored vehicles, including one that crashed through the five-star hotel’s main lobby door.

Lawyers JV Bautista and Argee Guevarra, whose wish to die as heroes came to naught, called it a “political act.”

A coup is a political act, a military-initiated action aimed at changing the government by force. Armed struggle with the same goal by groups outside of the government are revolts or revolutions.

Lim boasted they were waiting for reinforcements from Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) units across Luzon. As the standoff dragged, Trillanes taunted the government, saying the Magdalo group had enough willpower to oust Mrs. Arroyo.

Civilian supporters of the rogue soldiers had earlier published full-page ads in national dailies, calling for the establishment of a caretaker government.

Jimmy Regalario of the Kilusang Makabansang Ekonomiya, a signatory to the ad and among those present at the Peninsula, rejected the notion of following the line of succession if Mrs. Arroyo resigns. Instead, he nominated Chief Justice Reynato Puno—abroad during the siege—to head this caretaker government. The group had thought out its fantasy enough to have a timetable for the new regime—18 months, ostensibly to give time for the drafting of a new Constitution.

About the only element missing in this most recent episode of military adventurism was swift and decisive action. Only because the renegade soldiers failed to muster this are Filipinos lucky enough to call their action a coup attempt.

Kids’ gloves

Trillanes is not the only rebellious military officer to parlay derring-do into a political career. His former idol, the python-lugging Gregorio Honasan, led two failed coups before successfully campaigning for a Senate seat.

Honasan’s other cohorts went on to occupy lucrative government positions, including directorships of government corporations. Lim himself was a senior aide in the Department of the Interior and Local Government, which oversees the PNP. President Arroyo actually promoted Lim and assigned him the sensitive post of heading the elite Scout Rangers.

Lim, no stranger to sieges of Makati establishments, was a leader of the Young Officers’ Union (YOU) that almost brought down the government of former President Corazon Aquino in 1989. The rebels took over a Makati condominium to force a standoff with the Aquino administration. Only a show of support by the United States, which sent planes from Clark Air Base to buzz rebel positions, forced YOU to surrender—but not until the government allowed them the privilege of marching back to barracks while belting out military hymns. Previous teams of coup plotters were made to do push-ups by their AFP superiors.

Mrs. Arroyo has not been too easily assuaged. Trillanes has been behind bars since 2003. But she has also taken the expedient path once too often.

The government captured Honasan, wanted for both the Oakwood mutiny and an alleged coup plot in February 2006, in November last year. After all the threats of punishing the recalcitrant former officer, the Palace bent over backwards for Honasan in what was widely seen as a deal hatched by former opposition senator Vicente Sotto III, who ran under the administration ticket in the last elections. Honasan never did officially affiliate with the ruling coalition but turned around enough to earn some scathing words from Trillanes.

The PNP has validated Lim’s boast about military support, and there is little to negate claims that Trillanes and company aimed to establish a junta and initiate a whole-scale purge of government institutions.

Yet, while bemoaning the “rash” actions of Lim and Trillanes, too many leaders of civil society, the Church and opposition parties are once more bending backwards.

Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago has called for an ethics investigation of the young senator, leading to possible expulsion. Opposition members of the chamber said they would block Santiago. Senators who had focused lately on probe after probe of government anomalies—and rightly so—now claim they have better things to do.

Another Senate greenhorn, Francis Escudero, alluding to the administration’s penchant for using superiority of numbers in the House of Representatives, said he and his colleagues would give the government a taste of its own medicine. It was, at the least, a most cavalier response to what would have been a prelude to the sacrifice of the country’s fragile democracy.

Resistance and defense of rights are one thing; supporting or shrugging off the threat of a junta is an altogether different story.

The fact that Mrs. Arroyo’s government has consistently threatened this democracy with draconian measures, including the imposition of a state of emergency and the unabated killings of activists and journalists, does not excuse politicians, Church leaders and gadflies for playing down an act that would have driven the final nail into the coffin of Philippine democracy.

Elite intramurals

Surveys have consistently shown public disapproval of Mrs. Arroyo. Yet, the silent treatment displayed toward the Peninsula actors also sends a clear message: as much as Filipinos distrust this government, it is equally cynical toward those who plot to take power in their name.

The desire for a portion of the spoils of governance seems to be the main motivator of key political players. How else to explain the alliance forged with deposed president Joseph Estrada by the Black and White Movement, many of whose leaders and members were visible agitators during Edsa II?

Bautista and Guevarra of Sanlakas—and Teofisto Guingona of the famous “I Accuse” Senate speech—ignored how the Magdalo manifesto claimed Mrs. Arroyo had “stolen” the presidency from Mr. Estrada, never mind that they were all on Edsa urging his ouster with close to a million compatriots.

The same groups and those affiliated with the militant Bayan Muna had also played down Mr. Estrada’s plunder conviction by citing Mrs. Arroyo’s graver crimes. Many of these organizations actually lobbied for a pardon for Mr. Estrada; the Magdalo manifesto should likewise teach Mrs. Arroyo a harsh lesson on the perils of cynical political ploys.

Other political leaders—including former presidents Aquino and Estrada and Fidel V. Ramos—senators and congressmen were strangely silent as the PNP struggled to deal with the Peninsula siege. Or else, they lobbed the lame excuse of “we’re still monitoring.”

Notwithstanding the many legitimate issues we have against this government, what message did that screaming silence on the perils of tyrannical plots send to Filipinos? That political convictions have gone the way of the dodo, replaced by the politics of opportunism.

Perhaps if any future coup plot succeeds and dark veils of dictatorship blanket the archipelago—and there is much reason to believe recidivists will try again—our politicians will remember Lim’s line about the lack of action signifying consent.

IF former Navy officer and neophyte Senator Trillanes knew to distinguish between apples and oranges, he wouldn’t have even started the ill-fated siege of the Peninsula Hotel last week.

During the seven-hour standoff, Trillanes repeatedly alluded to the 11 million voters who gave him his Senate seat—one the courts have so far kept out of his physical reach. As he told national television, he was sure those 11 million souls shared his wish for President Arroyo to exit from the political stage.

Perhaps many of those 11 million did wish for her resignation. Survey after survey has shown her to be an unpopular Chief Executive. But Trillanes didn’t stop at calling for Mrs. Arroyo to step down.

Patriotic forces, he and General Lim advised the nation, were “removing” Mrs. Arroyo from the presidency and replacing her administration with a caretaker government.

Civilians allied with Trillanes had earlier published ads nominating Chief Justice Puno as head of this caretaker government.

They may have thought Puno an inspired choice. The middle class and critics of the Arroyo government see him as a beacon for civil liberties, openly criticizing the administration’s human-rights record and initiating reforms to stop legal shortcuts in the fight against dissidents, whether of the underground or legal varieties.

Puno had rebuffed the overtures, though. The Judiciary, he reminded political actors, had no business involving itself in executive matters.

But on the day of the siege, some of the ad signatories nixed any possibility of normal succession—which had made the 2000 ouster of President Joseph Estrada acceptable to the international community.

Lim was enigmatic about who would lead the caretaker government. Whether he or Trillanes had a fallback plan in the face of Puno’s rejection of power is not known. Police officers say documents detailing the conspiracy to overthrow Mrs. Arroyo show both men planned to play leading roles in a new government.

Despite exhortations, Filipinos snubbed the Peninsula party. Of the 11 million citizens—including a huge swathe of the Armed Forces—who had voted for Trillanes, just around 50 came to hoist him to power. Journalists actually outnumbered the junta backers at the Pen.

The months leading to the November 29 failed coup should have told Trillanes that Filipinos—so far—are in no mood for any extralegal change of government. The most any anti-Gloria rally could muster was a few thousand warm bodies; these were demonstrations of the militant Bayan Muna, which is hardly enamored of soldiers, not even of the rebellious kind.

Unpopular leader

If there is one clear lesson from the November 29 turmoil, however, it is that the public’s coolness to military messiahs does not translate into support for the beleaguered commander in chief. If anything, the sarcastic text jokes afterward targeted Mrs. Arroyo and her officials as much as the Magdalo rebels.

The distrust is deep-rooted.

Mrs. Arroyo pledged to forgo seeking a full term shortly after crushing the Magdalo’s Oakwood mutiny, saying she was sacrificing her political career for the sake of national unity. A few months later, she reneged on her promise, claiming the country needed her for economic growth and development.

She ran in the 2004 elections—ran very scared—against Fernando Poe Jr.   She lagged in preelection surveys. But when the final tallies came in, she had a lead of around one million —the same figure that a voice like hers had mentioned in a badgering tone to election commissioner Virgilio Garcillano in wiretapped conversations passed on by agents of the Armed Forces intelligence service to Poe’s supporters.  

The “Hello, Garci” scandal humiliated Mrs. Arroyo and led to the first impeachment challenge in the House of Representatives. The scandal also saw the mass departure of Cabinet members who had been at the forefront of the anti-Estrada protest movement.

The President survived that challenge—and two other impeach tries, including one in the aftermath of this year’s ZTE-NBN scandal. But the defection of the so-called “reformist” bloc in her government, the victory of the militant Left in congressional and local elections, big wins of opposition candidates in the Senate and terrorist attacks left her leaning heavily on a military establishment blamed for the murders and disappearances of over 800 activists and journalists.

The President has been at odds with many Filipinos on many issues. Her support for US President Bush’s invasion of Iraq led to the abduction of a Filipino worker in that war-torn Middle Eastern nation.

Sen. Panfilo Lacson exposed the Jose Pidal account, which he traced to First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo but which was claimed by the President’s brother in law, Ignacio. The episode raised hackles because it brought to mind the Jose Velarde account that led to Estrada’s ouster.

Allegations of crooked deals hatched by Arroyo administration officials and the perception that Mr. Arroyo wields undue influence in matters of state rankle because the current Malacañang occupant was swept to power by a citizenry grown weary of corruption.

Recent allegations her aides and allies distributed bundles of cash to local executives and congressmen moments after she met them to curry support in the wake of the ZTE scandal fueled perception of a government so inured to public opinion.

Mrs. Arroyo often reacts dismissively when aides are caught in a corruption scandal. She is quick to act against enemies, however, and in February last year declared a state of emergency, claiming a coup plot was hatched by Lim and other military officers.

The President has a pronounced defensive streak; amid scandals she signed executive orders tantamount to gagging an entire bureaucracy.

The government seems to treat the media as the enemy, too; during the 2006 state of emergency cops raided the offices of a hard-hitting national daily and threatened to close down newspapers and broadcast stations suspected of aiding “destabilizers.”  Mrs. Arroyo has drafted policies to make it harder for journalists to dig up official wrongdoing. And, until the bodies became too numerous to ignore, she brushed off warnings that the Philippines had become one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists.

Her husband has shown a similar propensity to lash out at critics, filing criminal libel suits against more than 40 journalists, withdrawing these only after suffering a critical ailment. Mr. Arroyo and his son, Pampanga Rep. Juan Miguel Arroyo, filed a complaint with the House ethics committee, seeking the expulsion of Alan Peter Cayetano for claiming that the President’s husband had tried to hide ill-gotten wealth accounts in a German bank. Cayetano’s colleagues censured him but balked at expulsion; voters rewarded the opposition congressman with a Senate seat.

‘Rescuers’

Most business leaders categorically slammed the latest misadventure of the two repeat putschists. Even the Makati Business Club, long critical of Mrs. Arroyo, said Filipinos should reject any move to totalitarianism, whether by Malacañang or its enemies.

But no such equivocal denunciation came from politicians—not even from former President Aquino who suffered a series of coup attempts; nor from former President Ramos and Sen. Rodolfo Biazon, who fought off military rebels on Mrs. Aquino’s behalf and reaped electoral victories for their display of democratic credentials.

Opposition politicians and leaders of civil-society groups at odds with Mrs. Arroyo would lament the actions of Trillanes and company.

However, they played down the significance of the Peninsula siege, presenting this as just an overly dramatic press conference by maltreated soldiers.

Their prescription for normalcy: the resignation of the President—but silence on succession. From all angles, this would represent a victory for the coup plotters. It would be trading a government with autocratic tendencies for one that does not even try to hide its authoritarian intentions.

The Magdalo group manifesto should bring chills to those who equate their opposition—an opposition based on legitimate grounds—to a show of sympathy for coup plotters.

November 29 was the first time that putschists presented themselves as “protector of the people” of “a democratic and republican state.”

Claiming they were giving substance to their constitutional mandate, Messrs. Lim and Trillanes justified their move by citing authority emanating from “the masses of our people.”

That there is widespread public aversion to administration scandals is indisputable.

Yet, there is nothing in the actions of Trillanes and Lim to inspire confidence their caretaker government would grant Filipinos the right to exist “with decency, dignity and integrity.”

And granting they are indeed righteous souls, they are also burdened by a propensity to use the gun barrel in enforcing their vision of righteousness.

Neither does the Arroyo government’s well-documented use of “naked force” excuse purveyance of the same tactics by people who claim to have our best interests at heart.

Indeed, as the country faced the prospect of possible civil war or, at the least, bloodletting between the government and the military rebels, the Magdalo breezily quipped: “We take due indulgence and apologize for any untoward disruptions attendant to fighting this righteous cause.”

Theirs, after all, was “a constitutional rescue” initiated by “patriotic” troops—except for the small, inconvenient fact that they never sought our permission and, instead, presumed we would all bow to their will.

That planned rescue, by the way, covers a lot of ground, including “political and economic reforms that will be initiated by the new government regardless of the personal cause [they probably mean ‘cost’] it may impose on each one of us.”

Our rescuers assure us they only have no-nonsense reforms in mind—about which we have not been consulted. The last line of the manifesto proclaims: “We shall do whatever we can to prevent any backsliding to the corruption and abuse of power of the immediate past and advance the cause of truth, freedom and justice, peace and progress for all Filipinos.”

If you think there’s a place for us in decision-making on what backsliding entails, or on the definition of truth and freedom, not to mention peace and order, think again.

Lim, as if to twit the supportive masses that failed to appear at the Pen, lectured: “Dissent without action is consent.”

Well, those who purport to defend democracy but fall silent in the face of a naked—if failed—power grab are just as bad as an administration that claims to serve our best interests as it is poised to crush us with that mailed fist.  

Ms. Espina-Varona is editor in chief of Philippine Graphic magazine.

In the name of the people

THIS time around, former Navy officer and neophyte Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV left no room for ambiguity.

In his 2003 debut at the Oakwood mutiny, then-Lt. Senior Grade Trillanes hemmed and hawed about his intentions.

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