I CAN still remember that night in Danao City, inside the compound where the warehouse of a soft drinks firm and the officers’ quarters were located. I sought shelter there while one of the stronger storms to hit Cebu province lashed (was it Nitang or Ruping, I couldn’t say now). We were in a structure with a low and flat roof, allowing us to escape the severe lashing of the wind circling above us.
I couldn’t sleep. I wrapped my body with the blanket but left my head uncovered while I listened to the howling of the wind. I once heard my elders tell me this: the winds lash one way during a storm, then things calm down before the wind lashes again with the same fury, this time in a reverse direction (“mobali”). Those and many other things visited my mind that night.
Storms will abate, no doubt about that, but it is in watching out for the damage they bring that makes you anxious while waiting for that moment. The anxiety consumes you. When I heard a particularly strong surge, I would wish the next one wouldn’t be stronger. I ended up saying a prayer or two.
The other day, minions of President Rodrigo Duterte succeeded in whispering in his ears a legal strategy that would give him a chance to finally lash back at his bitterest critic, Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV: revoke the amnesty former president Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III had given to him and the other Magdalo group mutineers when Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was the president.
Whoever concocted that strategy must have taken a page from the quo warranto case that Solicitor General Jose Calida filed with the Supreme Court against then Supreme Court chief justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno. The move was unprecedented and, for many legal minds, unconstitutional. It succeeded, anyway, in ousting Sereno because it exploited the rift between Sereno and some Supreme Court justices.
President Duterte issued Proclamation No. 572 claiming the amnesty issued was void ab initio because Trillanes did not comply with the “minimum requirements to qualify under the amnesty proclamation.” He then cited a certification from the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel that claimed that no available copy of Trillanes’ application for amnesty could be had. Another claim: he refused to admit his guilt. Those claims were proven false by a tweet and a video footage posted by former Aquino spokesperson Abigail Valte.
I would leave it to the legal minds to provide answers to the legal questions analysts raised (after all, I am not a lawyer). But this adds to the perception that the Duterte administration is increasingly becoming authoritarian. Going after his bitterest critic using a dubious legal strategy is bad; insisting in implementing it by threatening to arrest Trillanes is certainly Marcosian.
For many of us who went through the horrors of the Marcos dictatorship, Duterte’s presidency has become like another authoritarian storm ravaging the land. The winds are still howling and we lie awake in anticipation. But again, like all storms, this too will end. The Marcos dictatorship did, eventually.