No pardon

Some of the convicted leaders of the so-called Magdalo soldiers who took over the ritzy Oakwood apartment complex in Makati City in 2003 and rigged it with explosives in a failed coup attempt have issued a public statement apologizing for the incident.

Wow. So it is as simple as that. A mere apology, and they would accept a presidential pardon if one is given. But did they ever hesitate for a moment that they were taking an entire nation hostage back when they were planting bombs with the intent to kill or maim?

Of course, because they chickened out at the last moment, any discussion on what could have happened would be nothing more than conjecture, the only unassailable fact being that no lives were lost in the stupid caper.

That does not automatically mean, however, that no harm was done. Harm, in the life of a nation, does not consist merely of a body count, an injury list, or the estimated costs in property damage.

More importantly, harm is inflicted on a nation when its collective right to be secure and its collective belief in institutions are shattered or shaken by actions that are illegal and unconscionable.

Soldiers are the protectors of the nation. When they rebel against their president, when they rebel against their commander-in-chief, they rebel against that nation. Rebels cannot be anything else but traitors.

It may be tempting to engage in the semantics of trying to separate the occupant of a position from the institution of that office, but that is nothing more than a self-serving argument fired by no other logic than the need for self-preservation by the guilty.

A president may be corrupt, a president may be unpopular, as this president undoubtedly is. But the only way to remove such a president is by the constitutional process of election, or by impeachment.

Any action outside those two avenues is treason, a crime that cannot be mitigated by a simple enumeration of the sins of the ousted person. That person may personally deserve his or her ouster, but the violation of the institutional office he or she held is unforgivable.

Some may further the argument that it is useless to impeach someone who controls the institutions vested with the power to set in motion and carry out the process of impeachment. That may be so. But the expediency of circumstances is still not enough to do wrong.

What the soldiers did was wrong, gravely wrong. It cannot go unpunished, not even for humanitarian reasons, and certainly not when we have been in the same situation over and over again in the last 20 years.

Atonement five years after the fact may weigh heavily on Filipino Christian values, making us soft in the belly just enough to be moved by public displays of contrition, even by people who had no qualms about using violence to achieve their ends.

On the other hand, it has become an uncomfortable proposition to rely on Christian values alone, especially in a country like the Philippines where Christian believers are increasingly being betrayed by their own Christian shepherds and stewards.

Believe it or not, but there are certain parallels between mutinous soldiers and rebellious bishops, priests and nuns that make Christian values stale below the level of a direct personal communication with God.

The mutinous Magdalo soldiers should not be pardoned, in the same way that rebellious bishops, priests and nuns no longer deserve any respect. Let us not forget that there can be no heaven unless there is a hell to compare it with. Good is good only because there is bad.