Tuesday, May 13, 2008 Cabaero: Haste in grant of pardon By Nini B. Cabaero Beyond 30
THEY didn’t have to wait long for their wish to be granted.
Just one month after their conviction and their subsequent apology to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the nine mutineers convicted of staging a coup d’etat were granted their request for presidential pardon.
The decision came when the public was engrossed with two other matters, namely, the nationwide transport strike yesterday, Monday, against the rising prices of fuel products and the joint congressional hearing on the allegedly overpriced power rates in the country. The pardon wasn’t expected to be handed down that day but the President did so during an event to honor retiring Armed Forces Chief Hermogenes Esperon, a loyal officer.
President Arroyo, as military commander-in-chief, announced her decision to grant the pardon during turnover ceremonies in Camp Aguinaldo for Esperon. It was Esperon who had recommended to Arroyo the approval of the mutineers’ wishes.
Those who stand to enjoy the forgiveness of their crime and the elimination of the penalty the court had imposed on them are Army captains Milo Maestrecampo and Gerardo Gambala and seven junior officers. Maestrecampo and Gambala had been sentenced to life imprisonment; the others to jail for 12 years. Their pardon would allow them to return to their families.
It was only last month when the Makati Regional Trial Court ruled that the junior officers committed coup d’etat when they led at least 300 soldiers in seizing the Oakwood Hotel Premiere in Makati on July 27, 2003. Two days later, the convicted soldiers read a joint statement before the press saying they regretted their act and they apologized to the people for their rebellion.
A similar time interval marked the grant of pardon to deposed president Joseph Estrada. In just a month or so from his conviction, Estrada became a free man. In about the same lapse of time from conviction to pardon, the mutineers had their wish.
The manifest difference between the Estrada pardon and the case of the mutineers is that the latter admitted their guilt, showed remorse for the crime committed and expressed contrition. Estrada, on the other hand, continues to deny he had illegally amassed millions of dollars when he was president from 1998 to 2001.
The pardon to Estrada had the look and feel of a political decision to benefit the government. The grant of pardon to the mutineers is still steeped in politics, but history notwithstanding, their remorse may just prove it to be the right decision.
The expressions of remorse by the mutineers appear to be genuine. It wouldn’t be the first time if these former military rebels later turned responsible and productive in their return to freedom.
As rebels, they staged the coup to protest corruption in the military. Their conviction and subsequent pardon do not mean that their grievances against corrupt practices have become hypothetical.
The haste by which the mutineers’ request for pardon was granted reflects on the urgency of strengthening grievance processes within the military establishment so that extra-constitutional measures would not be resorted to for the airing of complaints.
