This has to be bad news for all who wish to see a mature civic culture dawn on our country: the trial court dismissed rebellion charges against the civilians involved in that Trillanes caper at the Peninsula.
I suppose the court expected civilians to don military fatigues when they joined armed men who took a hotel as strong point for them to be qualified for rebellion charges. But we all saw this cabal of clowns providing the chorus for the armed renegades calling for the people to rise up against duly constituted authority.
True, they may have attitudinal problems, they may have failing memories and they may have exhibited clear symptoms of delusion. They may have hatched a really bad plan. The greater mass of our people may have immediately dismissed their stunt as a nuisance.
But they have put a lot of people in a lot of danger. Comical as their call to rebellion might have been, the situation created at the Peninsula November 29 could have resulted in bloodshed. Our anti-terrorist forces had to be called in. The hotel had to be shot up to knock some sense into this cabal of clowns.
All in all, millions of pesos in damages was caused. The whole nation looked patently laughable in the eyes of the world. Traffic was snarled. Tens of thousands were gravely inconvenienced. Many rounds of ammunition and canisters of teargas were consumed to shock these clowns into awe of the power of the Republic.
And despite all these, the cabal of clowns was set free. Just like that.
More, this cabal of clowns showed no remorse. They continued to mock the Republic. They pranced about the military camp, calling a press conference in the premises, choosing to stay one more night in detention to bond some more with their renegade idols.
In the good old days, people like these were put to the wall and shot.
They might have been, the day they pulled their dangerous stunt, had they not enjoyed an obscene human shield provided by adoring media people who claimed they were doing their divinely ordained job.
The police asked these media people to step outside in order to clear the way for a serious assault. The media people refused. The whole place had to be gassed to clear out the media men and open the way for a real fight, if the renegades had the honor and the courage to give one.
But the renegades did not have the honor and the courage to stand for their cause to the last man. Their stunt, with all the seeping machismo of combat gear, the mandatory Oakley eyeshades, and automatic rifles, was nothing more than an engineered media event.
Although they issued a call for the people to rise up and be martyred in the barricades, those that issued that call were not themselves ready to be martyred. These cowards do not even deserve to wear the uniform.
They should have all donned wigs, like that fashion disaster who stood behind the leaders of the ill-fated junta as they called on the people to rebel. Had they done so, they might have been more fondly remembered as the gang that rolled out a bizarre Broadway musical, bearing real guns.
Trillanes himself, when he meekly reappeared before the court, apologized to the judge for walking out. However, he failed to apologize to the nation for aggravating everyone.
“Walking out”? This gang had delivered firearms to the court. They passed around guns as they prepared to march. Those guns were essential to intimidate the police.
This was no “walkout”. This was an armed assault on our institutions.
And what did we hear from the senators of the Republic in the aftermath. We hear complaints about how Trillanes was “manhandled” during the cleanup. Did they wish the police to genuflect before the elected senator and beg his indulgence to perform the arrest?
For speaking out loud, the place was all gassed up. There were renegades with assault rifles who could shoot down policemen in the confusion.
And in that melee, shouldn’t everyone found on the premises of the hotel be bound and hauled off to camp for processing? Did the media people expect the police, in the heat of battle, to inspect the press cards of people who refused to heed police commands to vacate the premises?
And what do we hear from some sections of the media in the aftermath? Ranting about the freedom of the press being trampled upon. A Senate hearing was, of course, called for the purpose of magnifying this rant.
We have pushed, to the extreme, what is wrong with our civic culture. Everyone claims rights and entitlements loudly. No one speaks of the responsibilities of citizens, especially when the Republic was in some danger from a junta that was being proclaimed that day.
The cabal of clowns, in their own defense, claimed “freedom of expression” when they helped renegades seize a hotel and nearly precipitated an armed clash. That seems to be akin to the self-serving plea of outdoor advertising companies after their giant billboards were ordered torn down after a typhoon proved them to be a menace to life and limb.
Tearing down their monstrosities, they said, was a violation of “freedom of expression.” Never mind that they are hazards to common citizens and an assault on our common sense of proportion.