I was not there when it happened. It was only in the afternoon flash reports when I first heard of the news. Antonio Trillanes and members of the Magdalo soldiers have done it again. And that time when the Manila Peninsula Hotel drew more public attention than its usual business, the soldiers were not to be taken with ease.
Some call it a mutiny, or one which is proximal to a rebellion, if not one which is so. People in the government label it a coup d’etat, one which temptingly exudes the scent of fear for and of the overthrow of the Arroyo administration. Others, still, call it a standoff while the military men brand it a conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. When you have many names to bequeath the actions of a few brave souls, something in your sensibilities would tell you that therein dwells the confusion or perhaps an ignorance of the worst of sanity’s kind. Yet human law would state otherwise.
But more than the point of baptizing, what’s clear to me is that it was also an act of protest. Parts and parcels of that protest indeed coincide with the call for a government transition, but that is certainly just the icing of the cake. That boils down to the gullies of wanting to uproot a regime of lies, cheats and deceits. It was one which galvanized the innermost desire to topple the godheads of corruption with concrete action. It was one which took the jagged path less traveled by, although that path, too, is one which is forcibly sanctioned by the laws of men. After all, the preservation of the democracy requires strident measures to uphold the power of the people and not of the few.
Yet it grates the sensibilities of one to think that those few bereaved souls had the power to parse this nation into a million sentiments and stir them back to life. Those sentiments in siesta stirred by no less than a foiled attempt to stare the enemy straight in the eye and the courage to do something about it tell us that something can still be done. But by ‘done,’ it pins us back to the quintessential divide between what is within the bounds of the law and what is not. More to that, it purges us to think that a few bereaved souls wanting to sweep the enemy off its feet, in both literal and imaginative ways, can only exceed the limits of the law not by an armed protest but by principle, let alone the clamor for change.
True enough, the case of the Magdalo soldiers was an act of protest that gathered more condemnation and praise, both at the same time, after all the dust has settled down. It was aimed to maim down the pirates in the government and to sink Arroyo’s ship down to the abyss. It was clear even before the moment the Pen and Oakwood hotels were besieged that Gloria Arroyo and her cohorts were at the receiving end, the tirades of whom have grown with such malevolence to the democracy albeit with a fleeting force. For doing so much attrition against the pride of the government, the Magdalo soldiers have only done so little to catapult the sense of justice back unto the seats of authority.
With guns and those notable red armbands with the vintage Katipunan insignia gripping the limbs of the Magdalo soldiers, the voice of that protest echoed more voices than anyone can beg for. That was more than the diatribes of the prostitutes of the law for siphoning what is legal into what is just. But it was one which concretized defiance against the law, though it, too, was defiance against a morally bankrupt regime.
Defying the law calls for sanctions. That is, indeed, irrefutable. A coup d’etat being an abrupt blow against an established government is proscribed by the constitution down to its core. While seeking to replace the government, a coup is filtered by the sanctity of the constitution against all legal remedies. By and large, a coup goes against the law and the democracy or the people as a whole. That makes a coup d’etat vindicating and unconstitutional, quite apart from the sweeping forces that go with it which altogether mark it as punishable.
Yet there’s one thing that separates the real men of honor from the cabals of soldiers intoxicated by the stench of corruption: the courage to stand against the thickening citadel of lies, cheats and deceits somewhere near a river.
A coup d’etat, or the lack thereof, ought only to awaken the sleeping spirits in us. I was not there at Manila Pen, but the feeling of absence was indeed compelling.
Some call it a mutiny, or one which is proximal to a rebellion, if not one which is so. People in the government label it a coup d’etat, one which temptingly exudes the scent of fear for and of the overthrow of the Arroyo administration. Others, still, call it a standoff while the military men brand it a conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. When you have many names to bequeath the actions of a few brave souls, something in your sensibilities would tell you that therein dwells the confusion or perhaps an ignorance of the worst of sanity’s kind. Yet human law would state otherwise.
But more than the point of baptizing, what’s clear to me is that it was also an act of protest. Parts and parcels of that protest indeed coincide with the call for a government transition, but that is certainly just the icing of the cake. That boils down to the gullies of wanting to uproot a regime of lies, cheats and deceits. It was one which galvanized the innermost desire to topple the godheads of corruption with concrete action. It was one which took the jagged path less traveled by, although that path, too, is one which is forcibly sanctioned by the laws of men. After all, the preservation of the democracy requires strident measures to uphold the power of the people and not of the few.
Yet it grates the sensibilities of one to think that those few bereaved souls had the power to parse this nation into a million sentiments and stir them back to life. Those sentiments in siesta stirred by no less than a foiled attempt to stare the enemy straight in the eye and the courage to do something about it tell us that something can still be done. But by ‘done,’ it pins us back to the quintessential divide between what is within the bounds of the law and what is not. More to that, it purges us to think that a few bereaved souls wanting to sweep the enemy off its feet, in both literal and imaginative ways, can only exceed the limits of the law not by an armed protest but by principle, let alone the clamor for change.
True enough, the case of the Magdalo soldiers was an act of protest that gathered more condemnation and praise, both at the same time, after all the dust has settled down. It was aimed to maim down the pirates in the government and to sink Arroyo’s ship down to the abyss. It was clear even before the moment the Pen and Oakwood hotels were besieged that Gloria Arroyo and her cohorts were at the receiving end, the tirades of whom have grown with such malevolence to the democracy albeit with a fleeting force. For doing so much attrition against the pride of the government, the Magdalo soldiers have only done so little to catapult the sense of justice back unto the seats of authority.
With guns and those notable red armbands with the vintage Katipunan insignia gripping the limbs of the Magdalo soldiers, the voice of that protest echoed more voices than anyone can beg for. That was more than the diatribes of the prostitutes of the law for siphoning what is legal into what is just. But it was one which concretized defiance against the law, though it, too, was defiance against a morally bankrupt regime.
Defying the law calls for sanctions. That is, indeed, irrefutable. A coup d’etat being an abrupt blow against an established government is proscribed by the constitution down to its core. While seeking to replace the government, a coup is filtered by the sanctity of the constitution against all legal remedies. By and large, a coup goes against the law and the democracy or the people as a whole. That makes a coup d’etat vindicating and unconstitutional, quite apart from the sweeping forces that go with it which altogether mark it as punishable.
Yet there’s one thing that separates the real men of honor from the cabals of soldiers intoxicated by the stench of corruption: the courage to stand against the thickening citadel of lies, cheats and deceits somewhere near a river.
A coup d’etat, or the lack thereof, ought only to awaken the sleeping spirits in us. I was not there at Manila Pen, but the feeling of absence was indeed compelling.
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