Bright idea

His “quite bright” solicitor general did the research, but it’s “presidential prerogative” to void the amnesty granted to Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV. President Duterte said this Saturday amid speculation that he was feeding Jose Calida to the wolves for cooking up a reason to put their common nemesis back in detention.

With Duterte taking full responsibility for his own proclamation, it looks like Calida remains in the President’s good graces.

The voiding of Trillanes’ amnesty was looking like a disastrous miscalculation when Duterte casually identified the person who concocted the scheme. And as everyone suspected, it was Calida, the most powerful solicitor general since Estelito Mendoza.

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Duterte’s “outing” of his government’s chief lawyer came amid rumors that his security forces had refused to enforce his order to arrest Trillanes.

The outing came at the end of a bad week during which inflation hit a nine-year-high, the peso took a beating and the stock market fell together with Duterte’s trust rating (although still “very good) in the second quarter survey that was taken before all of the bad news emerged.

Duterte’s proclamation, dated Aug. 31, was published in a newspaper and became public knowledge only on Sept. 4 – the same day that Trillanes’ Senate committee was scheduled to conduct an inquiry into the multimillion-peso contracts in several government agencies that were bagged by a company owned by Calida, his wife and children.

The probe pushed through anyway. Trillanes then holed out in the Senate while Duterte enjoyed Israel and Jordan. Because of the circumstances, Calida was the only person whose name kept cropping up as the likely architect of Presidential Proclamation 572.

As Trillanes presented documents, video footage and photographs disputing the premises for the voiding of his amnesty, the military risked losing much of the public respect it has built up in recent years as its officials claimed they could not find the documents in their files.

To be fair, anyone who has visited a typical government office and seen the piles of documents scattered everywhere can actually believe that vital papers can be misplaced.

Perhaps the military’s record keepers thought Trillanes’ papers were no longer as vital after the president at the time, Noynoy Aquino, granted the amnesty to all those who participated in the Oakwood mutiny, the Manila Peninsula siege and the standoff at the Marine headquarters.

After all, who ever thought that an amnesty would be revoked?

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Calida did.

Let’s hear it from Duterte, who talked about it upon returning to the country early Saturday from his shortened visit to Jordan: “Look, I am here to enforce the law. It was Calida who did all the research on Trillanes’ amnesty, just like what he did to Sereno. You know, Calida is quite bright. If the solicitor general says there’s a mistake and it has to be corrected, I cannot refuse.”

Was Duterte praising his “quite bright” solicitor general, or preparing to make Calida take the heat for the backlash over the amnesty?

It will probably depend on the outcome of the petition Trillanes filed before the Supreme Court, challenging Proclamation 572, which declared the senator’s amnesty void from the start.

Can the president of the republic do this? The Constitution is clear on the president’s power to grant amnesty and pardon, but is silent on revocation.

Critics point out that an amnesty is absolute and irrevocable, and erases the offenses for which it was granted. Unlike pardon, which requires a conviction by the courts, amnesty can be granted even before conviction or even an indictment or court-martial. So that case against Trillanes before the Makati regional trial court should have been erased by the amnesty, and the RTC can no longer order his arrest. Neither can he be ordered arrested by a military court.

Duterte’s solicitor general, of course, is arguing that there is nothing to revoke since the amnesty was invalid from the start. So the cases against Trillanes remain and he can be arrested.

Calida used a similar argument in the quo warranto petition on the appointment of Maria Lourdes Sereno as chief justice. Eight of Sereno’s Supreme Court peers happily agreed, short-circuiting the impeachment process under the Constitution.

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Trillanes and his supporters have held back on their previous criticisms of the eight justices. Instead he and his supporters have publicly expressed optimism that Teresita de Castro’s Supreme Court would rule fairly in his case.

As of the weekend, however, it seemed like wishful thinking; the buzz in legal circles was that the SC would toss out Trillanes’ petition. The basis for the dismissal, according to the grapevine, would be the “missing” signed application for amnesty and admission of guilt, with the burden of producing the documents to be placed on Trillanes.

Duterte added yet another argument when he cited presidential prerogative in voiding an amnesty proclamation.

If Trillanes loses his amnesty, it should put other rebels, including members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and Communist Party of the Philippines, on notice that like any contract with the Philippine government, there is no security in an amnesty proclamation.

After the quo warranto case used to oust a chief justice in record time, the amnesty issue reinforces the anything-goes rule of the jungle in this country.

Joseph Estrada, during his aborted presidency, had the most accurate reading of the state of the nation: whether in politics or law, it’s “weather-weather lang.”