Trillanes and Honasan: the rebel yell

Raul Pangalangan has an interesting article on support for the coup plotters, Trillanes and Honasan. It is hard to argue with this statement:

By manipulating the various arms of government to harass its enemies and protect its own, the Arroyo government has weakened the rule of law. It has conditioned the people to look to end-results -- stop corruption, improve education, expand health care, make housing more accessible -- and be indifferent to the means, constitutional or not. It has lowered the bar, so to speak, that the law has placed to guard against extra-constitutional power grabs.

Still, deplorable though the administration’s record on law and order has been, it can’t be the whole answer. Voters have been supporting Gringo for many years now, to the mystification of foreign observers. Shortly after I arrived in the Philippines in 1997 I remember asking a friend “whatever happened to that guy Gringo Honasan?” and almost falling off my barstool when I discovered he was a senator.

In a society where access to power and wealth is denied to all but a tiny minority, is it any surprise that mutineers and insurrectionists exert a deep pull on the public imagination? What are Trillanes and Honasan doing but acting out the fantasies of the typical Pinoy movie? The very movies in fact that are so closely identified with the careers of the main opposition candidates in the last two presidential elections.

That said, I would draw a distinction between Trillanes and Honasan. Honasan seems to me the classic loose canon, firing off at will and in all directions. Trillanes, on the hand, is a much more targeted character and, importantly, he hasn’t killed anyone. Whereas over 100 people died in Honasan’s 1987 amd 1989 putsches (oh, sad and pointless deaths), Oakwood was a purely symbolic event. Its main raison d’être, to expose corruption in the military, was proved to be 100% correct shortly afterwards when Major General Carlos Garcia was found to have accumulated a fortune worth over $1 million, despite having a salary of about $600 a month. The fact that Trillanes and his posse were proved to be so spectacularly right is surely an important reason for his support.

Incidentally, whatever happened to the Garcia case — is it still languishing in the Sandiganbayan?

See also: Gringo Honasan: the eternal oppositionist is still on his wheel.

Comments

[Pulubi]

Blame Cory. Had she not pardoned Gringo he would have been in jail (and should have executed). How can one vote for a dead soldier?
But no, the soft as goose pillow Cory let him loose. And Filipino voters, especially Pinay sisters who find Gringo's mestizo charms disarming, are easily beguiled.
Gringo is aware of the power of his charisma. He convinced hard-boiled soldiers to risk their life for him. Surely he must have known convincing showbiz-voting Pinoys to vote him to office as nothing more than a second rate challenge. Certainly easier than toppling a government.

[Leon]

Raul Pangalanga, Mike Defensor, Gringo Honasan = Alpha Sigma frat brothers. Is what it is.

[Shawn]

High bar stools are quite dangerous when you're falling from it, yet it almost did affect me when I realized Trillanes is also a senator.

[Bar stools]

I suppose bar stools can be dangerous, But finding out trillanes became senator didnt affect me, its to be expected.