Political crisis looms from Trillanes standoff

Multiple constitutional issues can be raised against the deployment of state might to arrest Sen. Antonio Trillanes. Already at the Supreme Court are three. First is if President Rodrigo Duterte by himself can rescind Trillanes’ 2011 amnesty by the then-President and Congress. That amnesty was for Trillanes’ mutinies as a Navy lieutenant in 2003 and 2007. Second, on due process, is if he was given a chance to defend the questioned amnesty at all. Duterte’s voiding of the amnesty, quickly followed by police-military posses to get Trillanes, was sprung in surprise while the former was on a foreign trip. Third, on equal protection of law, is Trillanes’ being singled out for harassment because of opposition to Duterte’s administration. For, dozens of fellow-mutineers then underwent the same amnesty process that Duterte now deems invalid. Yet they are not being hunted down. Duterte’s appointees among them have even been reposted despite recent criminal charges for unrelated offenses.

Other constitutional questions can be about supposed unfound defense department records as justification for Trillanes’ arrest. As well, the confirmation that it was the Solicitor General, whom he presently is investigating for graft, who researched the amnesty. And the flurry of cases now being filed against Trillanes by Duterte appointees and relatives just to have arrest warrants against him. Trillanes has not seen the end of it.

Those questions will try the mettle of the Supreme Court at a very critical time in its life. It is under a Chief Justice newly picked by Duterte. That high post had become vacant when, by 8-6 vote, the justices ousted the former CJ by quo warranto, or position void from the start. It came after an attempt to first impeach that CJ at the House of Representatives. There, five of the eight justices who later voted for ouster had even testified against the CJ. Then the quo warranto case was raised at the SC for the testifiers to themselves judge the CJ.

The Solicitor General who filed that quo warranto case is the same one who now prepared the case against Trillanes. Duterte himself reminded one and all of that fact, upon his return from abroad Saturday. As his spokesmen often remind, he does not make casual, only deliberate, statements. Duterte himself had wanted that past CJ out for opposing his bloody war on drugs. That the SC did remove the CJ, though for other reasons, had earned it jeers as an alleged enforcer of Duterte.

The test before the SC is like the one put before the new Ombudsman picked too by Duterte. Handed to him upon assumption into office was a Malacañang recommendation to fire the Overall Deputy Ombudsman. The reason for that desired sacking is the gall of the Deputy not only to talk about but actually investigate Duterte’s alleged multibillion-peso secret bank deposits. That matter had been brought to the Office of the Ombudsman by none other than the same pesky oppositionist Trillanes. The previous Ombudsman had refused to dismiss the Deputy on Malacañang’s same request. Only the independent constitutional office can discipline its Deputy, not the Executive. The Supreme Court had so ruled as far back as 2014. The new Ombudsman came from the present SC. He was among the eight justices who voted to oust the immediate past CJ. Malacañang wants from him action on a parallel matter that now confronts the SC.

The issues somehow have been joined. And the nature of the issues precariously is political. Thus there can be no full satisfactory resolution. The SC ruling on Trillanes can in fact lead to crisis.

Even Duterte is hinting of that somewhat. He says there is a conspiracy of “the ‘yellows’, the Trillanes forces, and the Politburo” to push him out by October. He refers to the immediate past ruling Liberal Party, with military loyalists of Trillanes, and Communist rebels. Such cabal may be perceived as unlikely: the communists hate the “yellow LP” leader, former President Noynoy Aquino. And Trillanes has been deriding Duterte for releasing from prison communist leaders whom the military took years and cost lives to track down.

Whatever, any prolonged political fighting can worsen the plight of ordinary Filipinos. Their concern is food, jobs, and peace – from which national leaders apparently are distracted.

*      *      *

Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., DWIZ (882-AM).

Gotcha archives on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jarius-Bondoc/1376602159218459, or The STAR website https://www.philstar.com/columns/134276/gotcha