SENATOR Antonio Trillanes IV must be somersaulting head over heels with joy upon learning that President Rodrigo Duterte through Proclamation 572 has voided the amnesty previously granted to him by the former President Benigno Aquino III.
By that simple issuance, Trillanes is definitely back in the limelight and will surely exert all effort to pump maximum media mileage and public sympathy from the controversy to prop up his stagnating crusade against the president and his allies.
With this latest action by Malacañang, the idiom “let sleeping dogs lie,” which means to leave a situation alone to avoid worsening it, seems to have been apparently forgotten.
One wonders how the President could have been easily persuaded and convinced, allegedly by Solicitor General Jose Calida, to sign and issue Proclamation 572 which essentially revoked the resolution issued by the Ad Hoc Committee of the Department of National Defense dated January 31, 2011 insofar as it granted amnesty to former LTSG Antonio Trillanes IV.
Let us recall that in November of 2010 then President Benigno Aquino III issued Proclamation 75 that granted amnesty to the soldiers, policemen, civilians who participated in the Oakwood mutiny, the marines stand-off and the Manila Peninsula incident. In December of 2010, Congress concurred with the proclamation.
Section 3 of that proclamation provides that, “Applications for the grant of amnesty under this proclamation shall be filed under oath with the DND within a period of ninety (90) days following the date of the publication of this proclamation in two (2) newspapers of general circulation as concurred in by a majority of all members in Congress. The DND shall forthwith act on the same with dispatch.”
In January of 2011, Trillanes applied for amnesty with the DND which is obviously within the ninety day period provided in Proclamation 75.
The basis and ground for the revocation of the amnesty granted to Trillanes under Proclamation 75 is the allegation that the Senator did not file an Official Amnesty Application as per certification dated August 30, 2018 issued by Lt. Col. Thea Joan Andrade, Chief, Discipline, Law and Order Division of the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, and further stating that: “there is no available copy of his application for amnesty in the records.”
Another ground for the revocation is that allegedly Trillanes did not express his guilt for the crimes that were committee on occasion of the Oakwood Mutiny and the Peninsula Manila Hotel Siege. The application for amnesty and the admission of guilt are apparently the minimum requirements needed before one can be granted amnesty.
But even assuming that the President and his allies may have something on the Senator the timing of the issuance remains suspect given that the latter is scheduled to conduct a hearing on the controversy surrounding SolGen Calida and his alleged undisclosed business interests, and rumors that Malacanang is raring to get back at Trillanes for his being the fiercest critic of the president.
With the issuance of proclamation 572 there are now some quarters who opine that what is happening to Senator Trillanes is a clear case of political persecution and allegedly an act of revenge by President Duterte.
Now why should Malacanang and the President stoke the embers into a flame and allow Trillanes back into the spotlight? Is there perhaps a deeper strategy and subterfuge in the works, one that for the moment remains hidden and occluded from the prying eyes of the public? We can only guess.