Red or yellow October?

Did the President and commander-in-chief issue an order but was ignored or disobeyed by the troops?

This is the 64-dollar question as the administration pursues its obsession to put Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV back in detention.

Professional soldiers who are true to their oath will not follow an unlawful order. This is according to former military chief and former senator Rodolfo Biazon, who as a Marine commander protected Corazon Aquino during the days leading up to the 1986 people power revolt. When she became president, Biazon helped crush coup attempts in 1987 and 1989, which were staged by soldiers led by Gregorio Honasan.

Biazon faced us on “The Chiefs” last Friday on Cignal TV’s One News channel; Honasan begged off. Trillanes’ Magdalo was represented by the group’s former party-list congressman, combat helicopter pilot Francisco Acedillo, who might also lose his amnesty and face arrest for participation in the Oakwood mutiny.

The articulate Acedillo, who is studying law at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, believes today’s Armed Forces of the Philippines has been cleared of the coup virus. Like Trillanes, who also talked to us last week from the Senate, Acedillo says he is flabbergasted by the accusation that Magdalo is plotting with the Reds and “yellows” to oust Duterte by next month.

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Both Trillanes and Acedillo stressed that there was no way they could sleep with the AFP’s enemy the communists.

“There is no such collusion and there will never be,” Acedillo told us. “It is antithetical for us to be in bed with these enemies of the state,” he said, because the rebels continue to kill the soldiers that Magdalo is representing in Congress.

If they lie in bed with the communists, he stressed, they would lose their military support “and we lose our very reason for being.”

Maintaining that support is probably giving the Magdalo second thoughts about filing a criminal case against AFP personnel who claim to have lost Trillanes’ application for amnesty.

Now talking like a lawyer, Acedillo cited Republic Act 9470, the National Archives Law of 2007, which he said requires government agencies to keep custody of official documents. Losing such documents may warrant punishment of five to 15 years in prison plus a fine of P500,000 to P1 million.

Acedillo commends the AFP’s handling of Trillanes’ case and for behaving “as if they are the adult in the room.”

He notes that the literal translation of coup d’etat is an attack on the state. Since the aggrieved party is the state, the grant of amnesty ultimately “is an act of grace by the state… the act comes from the sovereign will of the people” and not just from a particular individual.

Malacañang will likely dispute this. What is harder to dispute is the argument that under the Constitution, the grant of amnesty is a shared power between the president and the legislature.

Not even Ferdinand Marcos during his dictatorship ever voided or revoked any of the 12 amnesties he granted to communist rebels, Acedillo pointed out.

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The police in fact proceeded to the Senate after Duterte ordered Trillanes’ arrest, while the military prepared to receive the senator as a returning inmate. But senators, questioning the validity of the order, allowed Trillanes to seek refuge in the chamber.

I’m sure that even the Philippine National Police leadership knew arresting a senator at the Senate wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. Especially a senator who at the time was conducting a probe into possible corruption involving the solicitor general who, as Duterte later disclosed, was the one who cooked up the idea of declaring the amnesty for a single individual void from the start.

Since the cops showed up at the Senate, no one can say that the PMAyers in the PNP did not try to carry out the order of Duterte. Surely even the President did not expect PNP members to barge into the Senate and drag Trillanes to detention at Camp Aguinaldo.

Someone must have whispered to Duterte that the order was causing unease in the ranks, both in the PNP where many units are still under alumni of the Philippine Military Academy, and in the AFP, whose chief of staff Carlito Galvez Jr. and several key commanders were themselves former rebel soldiers who were granted amnesty.

What generated that 64-dollar question were the subsequent actions and pronouncements of Duterte. First he inexplicably cut short his trip to Jordan and returned to the Philippines. Then he challenged Trillanes and Magdalo to initiate a mutiny or coup, and see if anyone would follow them. Duterte then accused the Magdalo of colluding with the Liberal Party and communist rebels led by Jose Maria Sison to oust him by October.

As even pro-administration senators and political allies wondered aloud what people were smoking at Malacañang, Duterte identified Jose Calida as the “quite bright” solicitor general whose ideas, such as the voiding of Trillanes amnesty, the President couldn’t refuse.

With Galvez telling the military to stay out of politics, Duterte told the troops not to arrest Trillanes without a court order. This fueled the nagging question: did the AFP leave the commander-in-chief with no choice?

As the week dragged on and Trillanes remained holed out at the Senate, Teresita de Castro’s Supreme Court dropped the hot potato into the lap of the Makati Regional Trial Court, which in turn refused to be rushed into issuing an arrest warrant. Duterte then said petulantly that he was no longer interested in whether Trillanes would be arrested or not.

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Galvez was an Army lieutenant when he, together with his mistah in the PMA Class 1985, now Army chief Lt. Gen. Rolando Bautista, and members of the First Scout Ranger Regiment notably Danilo Lim followed Honasan in staging the bloodiest coup attempt against Cory Aquino in December 1989. Ninety-nine people were killed and 570 wounded.

Fidel Ramos, a former AFP and defense chief, granted amnesty to all rebel soldiers when he became president.

Honasan became a senator; Galvez is AFP chief; Danny Lim now heads the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority. Bautista is set to head the National Food Authority when he retires next month. Why single out Trillanes for voiding amnesty? Duterte cited presidential prerogative. But his pursuit of Trillanes is starting to border on the pathological.

In hindsight, Acedillo told us, “staging a coup was never good for any democracy. It is better that we uphold the rule of law.”

Such assurances may not be enough to dispel insecurity. Only the passage of October will quell Duterte’s suspicion of disloyalty (to him) in the ranks.