‘Gringo insulting peers by hiding’

Fugitive Sen. Gregorio Honasan’s refusal to come out of hiding is tantamount to an insult to his peers, President Arroyo said yesterday as she urged him anew to answer the rebellion charges against him.

She pointed out it "was a supreme irony for a duly elected senator to refuse to face the bar of justice." "Senator Honasan must not insult his peers by hiding from them," Mrs. Arroyo said in a statement released by Malacañang. "This is a violation of his electoral mandate and his oath."

Honasan went into hiding after authorities linked him to the July 27 failed mutiny. He said he would surface if Mrs. Arroyo lifted the state of rebellion. But he stayed in hiding even after the declaration was lifted last week, saying his life was in danger.

Honasan — a former Army colonel who was linked to three failed coup attempts in the late 1980s against Corazon Aquino — has denied any link to the mutiny by over 300 officers and soldiers. He denies going into hiding, saying he is merely "inaccessible."

The Department of Justice gave Honasan until yesterday to answer the charges against him.

No warrant for his arrest has yet been sought from the court and authorities are still not yet looking for Honasan, National Bureau of Investigation Director Reynaldo Wycoco said.

"He must consider it a matter of honor to face his own peers in the Senate who are at a loss on how to explain his behavior. To say that his personal safety is at stake is a flimsy excuse for one who holds such a high electoral post," Mrs. Arroyo said.

"A true statesman, if he is indeed one, must never use his personal welfare as an excuse to escape his responsibility to the pursuit of truth and justice," the President added.

Shortly after receiving amnesty for coup attempts against Aquino, Honasan was elected senator in 1995 after leaving the military. He still wields influence among young military officers.

Honasan plans to run for president in the elections next May, he told The STAR in an exclusive interview last week. He would use a program calling for reforms that he had drafted as his platform "should I decide to push through with my plan to cast my hat into the ring under the banner of the united opposition, either as a presidential or vice presidential candidate."

The political opposition has not decided a candidate for the May 2004 presidential elections, but Honasan is only one among several aspirants, one of them Sen. Panfilo Lacson, a former national police chief and a classmate of Honasan in the Philippine Military Academy Class of 1971.

Mrs. Arroyo warned Congress against attempts to block the prosecution of Honasan. Opposition legislators have alleged that their colleague was being tried by publicity.

Interior Secretary Jose Lina Jr. earlier told a Senate public hearing on the mutiny that police have "other independent and even direct evidence" linking Honasan to the coup.