SENATOR Antonio Trillanes IV should ready himself for the possibility of being jailed again when he bids farewell to the Senate, following his supposed role in the videos falsely accusing President Rodrigo Duterte’s family of being involved in illegal drugs, Malacañang said.
Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo issued the remark, after Peter Joemel Advincula, alias “Bikoy,” named Trillanes and opposition Liberal Party (LP) as the brains behind the “Ang Totong Narcolist” videos that linked the presidential family to rampant narcotics trade.
“While many will wish Mr. Trillanes good riddance as he is about to leave the hallowed halls of the Senate at the end of June of this year, we will instead wish him luck as he faces another prospect of being placed behind bars again as the self-confessed black propagandist turns against his master,” the Palace official said on Friday night, May 24.
“Even as his victims look forward to seeing the Senate, or better yet the Government, without the cantankerously obnoxious coup plotter,” he added.
Trillanes has since denied Advincula’s claim, dismissing it as just “another ploy of the administration to harass the opposition.”
Duterte, in a speech delivered Thursday, May 23, turned the tables on Trillanes, as he accused the opposition senator of using dummies in acquiring cars and several hidden properties.
Trillanes, however, merely brushed aside the President’s “invented” allegations using Advincula.
Panelo told the lawmaker to just refute Advincula’s claim instead of persistently “spew[ing] his poisonous invectives against the Chief Executive, who remains standing as the nation’s most beloved and trusted leader.”
“We recall that Mr. Trillanes was all praises for the videos which were intended to incite sedition against the duly-constituted and people-elected President, even arrogantly wishing that he was part of such a felony, and then suddenly after being ratted as the creator of the sinister plot pronounces that he knows nothing about the same,” he said.
“The outgoing Senator should first address the serious allegation pointing to him as the mastermind and in conspiracy with certain political leaders identified with the opposition of the unlawful plot to topple the Duterte Administration,” Panelo added.
On Trillanes’s case, “history keeps repeating itself,” the Palace official said.
Panelo said it was such a dismay that Trillanes became a “political attack dog,” as he continues to attack government when he had launched a “vicious black propaganda” against Duterte.
He recalled that Trillanes kept on unleashing a “slew of false, malicious, and seditious narratives” during Duterte’s last three years as the country’s president, including the accusation of a “fictitious bank account” amounting to P211 million allegedly owned by the then Davao City mayor.
“After having been set free from incarceration by the previous administration, one would expect him to learn his lessons and repay the nation that educated, fed and clothed him, with a record of selfless public service,” he said.
“He deviously released this black propaganda a week before the presidential elections, almost identical to the time frame of the release of the recent videos of Bikoy before the midterm national elections. The two black propagandas are eerily similar as to the timing of their release”
Panelo then said Trillanes’ “greater service” to the nation is “his mandatory exit from the Senate,” since the latter only established himself as a “destroyer of reputations of people.”
“His action is reminiscent of his act of staging a military rebellion and immediately surrendering without even firing a single shot after he saw the government forces were set to pulverise him and his fellow mutineers. How does one describe such a man?” Panelo said.
“In Mr. Trillanes’ case, first as a tragedy and second as a farce. This describes well the case of the outgoing Senator,” he added.