Wenceslao: Trillanes’s ‘arrest’

AS A fiction writer, I have written a sad story or two in the past. But truth, to paraphrase an old saying, is sadder than fiction. And I say one of the saddest stories was churned out by the recent landslide in Barangay Tina-an in the City of Naga. Landslides bury people underneath and kill them, sometimes slowly. Or they allow others to survive but only after a test of wills.

Many of those who were buried in the landslide, which hit very early in the morning the villages of Tagaytay and Sindulan, were still in their houses. That made it possible for people to initially survive the destructive ways of the rolling soil and rocks simply because some of the houses didn’t totally buckle down to their weight. That must have been what happened to Jella Aguanta, 18.

It turned out Jella was able to text her school teacher the following: “Ma’am please help us. Naa pa mi dinhi sulod sa among balay. Natabunan mi.” Then this line: “Ma’am dili na kaya. Wala nay hangin, lisod na iginhawa.” When I read that and realized the implication, I got teary eyed. Tragedy is when you couldn’t do anything but to wait for certain death. Or you couldn’t do anything to help.

Reminds me of that time when two burly men seized me on the steps of a moviehouse, pushed me inside a private jeepney then blindfolded me. The scene from the film “War and Peace” about death visited me: a huge door opens and one could only see the darkness beyond. What could the young Jella had felt as life left her?

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While I was writing this, the Makati Regional Trial Court had ordered the arrest of Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV and issued a hold departure order against him based on President Rodrigo Duterte’s proclamation voiding the amnesty granted to the senator by former president Benigno Aquino III for being void ab initio.

There are legal implications in this recent ruling by the Makati RTC judge, but discussion on that should better be left to lawyers. Rather, I would tackle the political implications of the Duterte government’s move, which is obviously an attempt to silence its critics. Trillanes earlier said he wouldn’t contest whatever the court ruling would be, which means that he wouldn’t resist arrest.

When President Duterte visited Israel and Jordan weeks ago, one of the things he complained about was the categorization by some foreign groups and the foreign media of Sen. Leila de Lima as a prisoner of conscience. Of course, nobody believed in the claim that De Lima is in jail for her supposed illegal drugs trade links. She is, after all, among the president’s staunch critics.

I therefore doubt if objective observers would believe that Trillanes would be jailed merely for his supposed failure to follow the amnesty requirements. The Duterte administration is going after him because, like De Lima, he never flinches in his criticism of the president.

But I don’t think Trillanes would be deterred by this recent development. He studies history and knows that power, especially political power, is fleeting. Like, who would have thought that the rule of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos would end in 1986? By the way, as I wrote this, Trillanes had put up bail.