Senators Francis Escudero and Panfilo Lacson on Wednesday called on the Supreme Court to act swiftly on the petition of Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, who has asked the tribunal to throw out President Rodrigo Duterte’s Proclamation No. 572, which revoked his amnesty for rebellion and coup d’etat cases.
“While rebellion is bailable, the crime of coup d’etat is not. Bail, therefore, will not be a matter of right on the part or Senator Trillanes and he can be detained once an order of arrest is issued by the RTC [regional trial court],” Escudero said on his Twitter account Tuesday night.
“I, therefore, urge the SC to act on the petition of Senator Trillanes, one way or the other or, in the alternative, to issue a TRO [temporary restraining order] while the case is pending before them.”
“The right of a person to liberty cannot be made to depend on the Court’s… lack of action on an issue,” he added.
Escudero issued the call after Makati Regional Trial Court Judge Elmo Alameda of Branch 150 ordered the arrest of Trillanes for rebellion in connection with the 2007 Manila Peninsula siege. Trillanes has posted bail of P200,000 for his temporary liberty, but has a coup d’etat case before Branch 148 for his role in the 2003 Oakwood Mutiny.
On Sept. 6, Trillanes asked the Supreme Court to issue an injunction against his impending arrest, after Duterte revoked the amnesty granted to him by President Benigno Aquino III in 2011.
He failed to get immediate relief from the Court, however, which paved the way for the issuance of arrest order against by Makati RTC Branch 150.
Lacson, meanwhile, said only the Supreme Court can decide whether Trillanes IV should face a military court even as a civilian.
“How could a sitting senator who has resigned in the Armed Forces of the Philippines be considered a member of the AFP and face the court martial proceedings? It’s quite confusing,” Lacson said in a mix of English and Filipino.
“And it’s only the Supreme Court eventually or finally [that] can interpret if it’s right or wrong,” he added.
He said he does not believe efforts to put Trillanes in jail have any connection to the alleged destabilization plot against the Duterte administration.
“As it is, the Trillanes episode came ahead of the oust plot issue. I don’t see any connection,” he said.
Detained Senator Leila de Lima said that under ordinary times, the decision of the Makati RTC resurrecting the rebellion case of Trillanes would be extremely unusual. But these, she said, are not ordinary times.
“Although we were still hoping that the judicial system would stand up to Malacañang even just for once, this time in the case of Trillanes, it just wasn’t going to happen. The power of intimidation and persuasion of this President is not leaving any institution standing to check its abuses,” De Lima said.
In ordinary times, she said bringing back to life dead cases would be unheard of.
She said the legal principles of finality of judgments, res judicata, and–in the case of criminal cases– double jeopardy, are supposed to make sure of that. No judge can change a judgment once it becomes final. As a general principle, old cases are never resurrected and brought back to life, she said.
But she said, this is what the Makati RTC just did in ordering the arrest of Trillanes based on a dead case. Settled legal principles that lawyers learn early in law school are fast becoming useless and irrelevant, she said.
“Amnesties, once granted, can no longer be nullified. This is the very essence of a grant of amnesty. This is the very reason behind the legal concept of amnesty. The nullification of a grant of amnesty does not revoke that one grant alone; it obliterates the whole concept of amnesty itself,” said De Lima, who was Justice secretary under the previous administration.
Senator Paolo Benigno Aquino IV said rather than focus on persecuting the opposition and its critics, the government should address the high prices of food and other goods that burden poor Filipinos.
“Stop harassing the opposition. The high prices is the real enemy,” he said.
Former Armed Forces chief and senator Rodolfo Biazon said the arrest of Trillanes despite his amnesty was a constitutional problem.
“Based on what I know, if you’re granted an amnesty, all your criminal offenses are obliterated,” Biazon told radio dzMM.
Biazon also questioned the revocation of Trillanes’ amnesty, saying its granting was an exercise of shared power between the President and Congress.
He also said Trillanes cannot be tried by a military court because he is already a civilian.
Former solicitor general Florin Hilbay said the revival of the rebellion and coup d’etat cases against Trillanes violated his right to due process and equal protection under the law.
Hilbay is among the lawyers representing Trillanes before the Supreme Court over his petition seeking to nullify President Duterte’s Proclamation 572, which voided the lawmaker’s amnesty.
Hilbay said reviving the rebellion case will subject Trillanes under double jeopardy, which is prohibited under Section 7, Rule 117 of the Revised Rules of Criminal Procedure.
Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who was the target of Trillanes’ attempted power grabs when she was still president, declined to comment on the case.
Earlier, Arroyo said the revocation of amnesty against Trillanes was “a legal issue.”
“He has gone to court. Let us see what the court have to say,” she said.
Arroyo was the sitting president when Trillanes staged the Oakwood Mutiny in 2003, as well the 2007 Manila Peninsula siege.
Magdalo Party-list Rep.Gary Alejano, meanwhile, said the Makati Regional Trial Court Branch 150 made the mistake when it ordered Trillanes’s arrest based on his failure to produce the application form for his amnesty.
Alejano said that applicants for amnesty, like applicants for government identification cards, are not furnished copies of their application forms once they submit them to the agency concerned.
“Even in the ordinary processes of issuing government IDs or certificates, the applicants are not given copies of their application form,” Alejano said.
He added that he believed the court yielded to pressure from the Palace to order Trillanes’ arrest.
But the Office of the Solicitor General welcomed the court’s decision, saying Trillanes should be held accountable for his crimes against the republic.
Trillanes, on the other hand, accused Solicitor General Jose Calida of deliberately concealing the official copy of his application for amnesty, which was one of the bases cited by a Makati court in issuing him a warrant of arrest for his rebellion case.
He said the application went missing after Calida got it from Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, and may have already been destroyed.
He cited Lorenzana’s statement that Calida called him up on Aug. 16 and got a copy of Trillanes’ amnesty application.
In sustaining President Duterte’s cancellation of Trillanes’ amnesty and eventually issuing the arrest warrant, Makati RTC Judge Elmo Alameda of Branch 150 ruled that the senator actually did not apply for amnesty.
Alameda noted that Trillanes failed to present in court a copy of his formal application for amnesty or even a photocopy of the document.
His ruling was based on the certification of Lt. Gen. Thea Joan Andrade of the AFP- Division and Law Order Division that Trillanes did not apply for amensty.
Trillanes said they were surprised that Alameda trashed all the evidence they presented, including the affidavit of the person who administered his oath.
Meanwhile, Judge Andres Bartolome Soriano of Branch 148 is expected to issue a warrant of arrest anytime today. The case of coup d’etat is a non-bailable offense.
“I am prepared for the worst. have accepted what God’s will for me. I will not resist them. But my question to our people, will you accept that we no longer have a process?”
“I believe this cause is worth fighting for. I have to fight it and cannot just accept it, or one day we will wake up to a banana republic,” he added.
Also on Wednesday, Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said the other amnesty grants are also being reviewed following the revocation of Trillanes’ amnesty.
Guevarra disclosed that amnesties granted to the other rebel soldiers belonging to Magdalo group are being reviewed.
“We cannot take away that risk that they’re found to be deficient or non-compliant with the requirements for amnesty. Then any other person who might have not complied may suffer the same situation as Senator Trillanes,” Guevarra said.