Duterte to wait for arrest warrant vs Trillanes

MANILA, Philippines (Updated 4:12 p.m.) — Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said on Friday that President Rodrigo Duterte will wait for the issuance of warrant of arrest of Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, a vocal critic whom he ordered arrested in a proclamation published this week.

Roque, in a press conference in Amman, Jordan, said that the “the president has decided that he will abide with rule of law.”

“He will wait for the decision of the regional trial court if they will issue a warrant of arrest,” he added in Filipino.

Roque says government cannot just impose price controls, says inflation high but not "ridiculously high." He also says inflation becoming a political issue because election are approaching. | @alexisbromero

— Philstar.com (@PhilstarNews) September 7, 2018

This stance is a departure from the language of Duterte’s Proclamation 572, which orders the Department of Justice and the court martial of the Armed Forces of the Philippines to pursue all criminal and administrative cases filed against Trillanes in connection with the Oakwood Mutiny in 2003 and the Manila Peninsula siege in 2007.

Part of the proclamation read: “The [AFP] and the Philippine National Police are ordered to employ all lawful means to apprehend former [Trillanes] so that he can be recommitted to the detention facility where he had been incarcerated for him to stand trial for the crimes he is charged with.”

The military had previously indicated that it would move to arrest Trillanes, whom they said is considered back on active duty despite resigning from the service in 2007 to run for senator while in detention.

Duterte claimed that the senator "did not comply with the minimum requirements to qualify under the Amnesty Proclamation."

Rule of law

Roque said that all Cabinet members who were with them for the foreign trip talked about the proclamation on Thursday night (Philippine time).

The spokesman stressed that the matter on Proclamation 572 was not “as high up in the priority list” of Duterte, but they had time to meet about it.

Roque said that he told the Cabinet members that it would be "fair that we should ask the military court to issue a warrant."

"But the president does not want it," he said, adding that Duterte wanted to wait for civilian court proceedings.

"The instruction is to abide by the rule of law. If no warrant is issued, we should wait for it," the spokesman quoted Duterte as saying.

Legal battles

State prosecutors have filed two motions for the issuance of an alias warrant before two different courts: Makati Regional Trial Court Branch 148 and 150.

The prosecutors, on the afternoon of the same day the proclamation was published, trooped to Makati Branch 148 to ask for a warrant and a hold-departure order against Trillanes.

They said that the court had only suspended the promulgation of the decision, in light the processing of the amnesty application, in a court ruling of 2010. They said the case could now continue since the amnesty has been voided.

READ: A duel of documents: DOJ, Trillanes cite different rulings

This was however contradicted by a 2011 ruling from the same court—penned by Acting Presiding Judge Ma. Rita Bascos Sarabia—that said that the case had been dismissed pursuant to the grant of amnesty.

A hearing on the prosecution’s motion is set on September 13.

READ: DOJ seeks arrest order vs Trillanes from another court, for another case