Antonio Trillanes, failed mutineer turned Senator of the Republic, has decided to play for all the marbles. After holing up in the Manila Peninsula with about 30 soldiers, he has asked the public to choose between him and the President.
I get the sense that this pseudo-mutiny or quasi-coup will not end peacefully.
A pity: After the Supreme Court allowed live (albeit limited) coverage of the promulgation of the Sandiganbayan rulings on the Estrada plunder and perjury cases, Estrada’s lawyers moved to dispense with the reading of the decisions in their entirety. Only the dispositive portions were read.
Live coverage would have been, like the impeachment trial itself, a civic education. But it would also have laid the case, as seen by the three Sandiganbayan justices, for Estrada’s conviction.
By making that motion, Estrada’s lawyers served only to further politicize an already politicized legal process.
I had already written my column for today when I got word—-through an unfailingly efficient member of the Senate—-that the Makati Regional Trial Court had thrown out Senator Antonio Trillanes’ petition for limited, “functional” freedom. It was about five pm, yesterday (Monday).
As it turned out, Judge Oscar Pimentel denied all of Trillanes’ petitions.
In a sweeping denial of all of Trillanes’ pleas, Judge Oscar Pimentel Monday rejected Trillanes’ motions to be allowed to attend all official Senate functions, to be given access to media and to set up an extension office inside the Marine detention center at Fort Bonifacio in Taguig City.
Pimentel upheld the prosecution claim that the Department of Justice, “as the prosecuting arm of the government, its shield and sword of law and order, represents not only the 11,138,067 voters who voted for him (Trillanes), but the people of the Philippines, with all its 85 million citizens and counting.”
In the column, I had argued that, despite the self-evident sincerity of Sen. Aquilino Pimentel (no relation, I think), Senate Resolution No. 22 (since renamed Resolution No. 3, after it was adopted on July 25) may be said to encroach on the judiciary’s admittedly limited territory.
