Analysis : Aquino blunders may embolden adventurists

By Amando DoronilaEditorial ConsultantPhilippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: October 25, 2010
NO FILIPINO leader since the 1986 People Power Revolution has entered office with a more resounding electoral mandate than President Benigno Aquino III, and yet, doubts have started to emerge over the loyalty of the military to his administration.
This uncertainty hangs precariously like the sword of Damocles over Mr. Aquino’s head, as his popularity erodes in the wake of the bungled Aug. 23 hostage-taking crisis.
In the effort to consolidate control over the chronically disgruntled military, the President has pursued a policy of appeasement by granting amnesty to Lt. Antonio Trillanes IV and the 300 soldiers he led in the July 2003 Oakwood mutiny, those involved in the February 2006 Marines standoff at Fort Bonifacio and in the seizure of the Peninsula Manila hotel in November 2007.
The amnesty grant to Trillanes and his cohorts has brought to the surface Mr. Aquino’s traumatic fear of military coups.
More than a week after Mr. Aquino signed Proclamation No. 50 on the amnesty grant, Trillanes pledged not to lead any coup in the future.
The pledge prompted presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda to say that “there’s no such condition” in the amnesty. This was followed by a chorus of the new Armed Forces chief of staff and major services commanders, all screened for their loyalty to the new Commander in Chief, that the AFP was solidly behind the President and that coups were a thing of the past.
Trillanes’ statement was more revealing. “We are going to support this administration since it has the mandate from the people,” he said.
He explained this support was not a condition for the Aquino administration. He said it did not guarantee that no other revolt would be staged against the government.
Unrepentant
Even if the pledge was written in stone, Trillanes said, it wouldn’t guarantee that no other sector would follow suit, not only in the military, who would rise up against the administration.
“So, its ultimate guarantee is good governance,” he said, the implication being that, as far as he was concerned, he was putting the government under probation for good behavior.
Trillanes appears unrepentant he had taken up arms against the government—an offense that in other political systems would have led to instant execution by a firing squad.
This attitude does not herald a smooth adjustment of Trillanes’ mindset to civilian ways of doing things in a democratic and consensual milieu once he is granted amnesty with concurrence of Congress, allowing him to take his seat in the Senate.
Like all the rest of the soldiers who staged coups against President Cory Aquino from 1987 to 1989, Trillanes and his Oakwood cohorts discovered that coups, as a method of political change, did not have a popular constituency in the Philippines.
None of the RAM coups led by Lt. Col. Gregorio “Gringo” Honasan, ever succeeded. When Honasan’s RAM boys attacked Malacañang, military installations, including the AFP headquarters in Fort Bonifacio, the GMA radio-TV station in Quezon City, and the Makati business district, the assaults on these strategic centers did not bring civilians to rush to the streets in support.
The civilians, in their instinctive wisdom, knew that the soldiers, no matter what grievances they claimed drove them to revolt, acted to seize power for their own sake. The civilians were wise enough to know that once the rebels succeeded in grabbing power, they would install a dictatorship, worse than the flawed democratic regimes they had toppled.
The crowd that the coups attracted to the streets were kibitzers and curiosity seekers who were not passionate lovers of democracy, or ardent fans of military juntas.
Public disapproval
When Trillanes and his mob seized the Oakwood apartments in Makati, they did not attack any seat of state power or strategic communications center. They had calculated that if they had held the business center long enough, they could muster mass support to leverage their demands.
The crowds never materialized. In the end, sensing that their coup did not have public support, they broke their siege and surrendered.
Opinion poll surveys have consistently shown that the public disapproved of coups as a means to change governments.
In dealing with putschists and in considering amnesty to rebels, evidence is available to the often politically naïve and inept Aquino administration that it does not have to appease recalcitrant and social groups to reintegrate them into democratic society.
The Ramon Magsaysay administration broke the back of the Huk insurgency in the 1950s with a tough military policy, side by side with reform of abuses of the military and social reform that resettled surrendered communist rebels to government farm projects.
When Cory Aquino took office after toppling the Marcos dictatorship, she rode a tidal wave of public euphoria and acclamation that armed her with broad legitimacy and enabled her to survive seven coup attempts.
Squandered mandate
The son entered the presidency with as much, or even more, legitimacy than his mother. His legitimacy is based on an overwhelming mandate of a widely accepted free and honest election, not on extra-constitutional means such as people power.
With that mandate, Mr. Aquino can do almost anything and initiate change without the revolutionary powers of his mother in 1987. He has squandered it by doing nothing.
Mr. Aquino does not face a military rebellion, in contrast to his mother who was immediately assailed by a series of coups. He has fewer reasons to worry about the loyalty of the military which has recognized the legitimacy of his electoral mandate.
The Honasan-RAM cabal not only rejected Cory Aquino’s legitimacy, but also actively attacked it before she could warm her seat. There is no reason for Mr. Aquino to cut a deal with Trillanes and his mob for amnesty to prevent them from making trouble in the future.
Mr. Aquino has the gift of tying his own hands. During his first 100 days, he has not launched any initiative or program to move the nation forward beyond mouthing platitudes. His legitimacy is a wasted asset.
It has already been eroded by an incredible display of ineptitude and incompetence in responding to a national emergency.
Before long, his aptitude for blunders will provide reasons for coup plotters to hatch conspiracies.