Failed 'coup' sends a strong message
By Roby Alampay
There was supposed to be a wedding reception at the Manila Peninsula Thursday
morning, the same date and setting for yet another bizarre episode of military
adventurism in the Philippines.
The bride and groom were understandably dismayed, but what's a couple to do
when a disgruntled senator and his former comrades in the military hold your
hotel hostage? While the Peninsula's guests were casually herded out by the
hotel staff, the newlyweds were graciously accommodated in another nearby
hotel.
Life elsewhere in Makati, Manila's financial center, similarly went
on. Even as 1,500 soldiers were ringing the hotel, work continued throughout
the central business district. Brokers at the Philippine Stock Exchange less
than a kilometer away heaved a sigh of relief that trades were winding down
just as news of yet another "coup" finally broke on television.
By mid-afternoon, at the height of all the tension, the country's business
process outsourcing (BPO) community was still humming and the national BPO
association saw it fit and proper to issue a mid-day statement saying that it
would be business-as-usual for their 24-hour operations and their clients
worldwide.
In the scale of what Filipinos have seen and experienced in the past two
decades, Thursday wouldn't rank very high. There have been about a dozen coups
and mutinies and uprisings and military adventurisms in the Philippines since
1986, the year People Power toppled the strongman Ferdinand Marcos. And by the
end of Thursday's events, nobody was quite sure what to call this latest
military spasm - a coup attempt, mutiny or rebellion?
Senator Antonio Trillanes was already under trial for sedition for having
pulled a similar stunt three years ago, when, on Thursday, he and his
co-defendants (plus reportedly the military soldiers assigned to guard him)
walked out of their hearing and marched to the five-star hotel a couple of
kilometers away.
By the time they commandeered a function room for an "impromptu" press
conference, there was a brand new website up and online to discuss a litany of
complaints and demands, and the whole country was tuned in via live radio and
television. Trillanes called Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo an
illegitimate president and a corrupt leader, and called on her to step down.
And yet for all that, the calm and casual demeanor in the rest of Manila was
quick to suggest that the publicity stunt was not going to get any bigger than
what it ultimately was: a half-day's worth of news. Or at least, if this was to
become anything more closely hewing to a political crisis, it would take a lot
more than Trillanes to make it happen.
Trillanes is not the charismatic personality that the international media may
have perceived. For someone who graduated near the top of his Philippine
Military Academy class, he's perceived by many Filipinos as reckless,
unthinking, and - worst yet for someone who holds hotels hostage just for the
moral victory of having a press conference - he's fairly inarticulate.
It takes everybody who appears around him - priests, actors, the media,
activists - to express the moral campaign that Trillanes offers himself up for,
but ultimately cannot lead. Given this assessment, the government made a quick
call based on the bet that, even in the worst case scenario, Trillanes, who may
have the sentiment of certain junior officers, has never been able to muster
crowds, was not going to be martyred.
The government bit the bullet with an overkill of an extraction: 1,500 soldiers
to get one guy and 30 of his followers. That said, Trillanes did get 11 million
votes in the last election, enough for him to win a seat in the senate. Yet he
remains peeved because he has never actually been allowed to attend any session
- because he's under trial for sedition on account of the first time he staged
a coup by holding another hotel hostage.
The fact that he's an elected senator leads some outside analysts to assume
that Trillanes must have a popular following. But in the last elections, people
weren't so much voting for him as making a statement against Arroyo. Trillanes
on the campaign trail represented pure unadulterated contempt for her
administration and everything that makes people exasperated with her
presidency: corruption, ambition, a thick hide to criticism.
To this day, that's what Trillanes stands for, and in the aftermath of
Thursday's events that's all he still represents. Regardless, however, of how
small a player Trillanes really is in the grand scheme of things - at best,
he's been seen as an unwitting pawn - what he does symbolize is nothing to
totally scoff at. Indeed what makes him dangerous is that he's the stubborn
voice for what people have frankly gotten tired of wailing about.
Trillanes' mantra is the same sentiment that Filipinos - hoarse and tired from
fighting in the streets - can now only curse under their breath. Most Filipinos
by now are in agreement that Arroyo is corrupt, devious, insincere, and
power-hungry. Her husband has been implicated in what has been exposed as a
rigged multi-billion dollar contract to build an Internet "backbone" for
government.
In the face of this, she pardoned her predecessor and nemesis, the former
president Joseph Estrada - the first Philippine president ever convicted of
plunder - even before he could spend a day in a proper jail. Filipinos smelled
a rotten deal: Estrada's freedom in exchange for less heat on the First Husband
Arroyo and an end of calls for a new round of impeachment complaints against
the president. And they've never forgotten - as if people like Trillanes would
ever allow it - that Arroyo had admitted to improper communications with
election officials while they were busy counting votes for the last
presidential elections.
And yet most Filipinos are now simply resigned to riding out her term until the
next elections are held 2010. Two impeachment attempts against her have failed
thanks to the corrupted politics and politicians she's co-opted - some say
threatened - in Congress. Last week former president Fidel Ramos, formerly an
Arroyo supporter said for all to hear: "Nobody likes Gloria, but what choice do
we have?"
Many Filipinos grudgingly take that as a valid point. There are indicators that
Arroyo has the economy - or at least the business community - on her side. The
Philippine peso is the second strongest performing Asian currency this year,
next only to the Indian rupee. The day after Trillanes was arrested, the
government announced that Philippine gross domestic product growth for the
whole of 2007 would likely hit 7%, overshooting all predictions at the start of
the year.
What festers, however, is the feeling that democracy-crazy Filipinos are
selling their souls for long-missed stability. Trillanes will never be the
center or leader of any new People Power movement. But whenever he's on the
news, Filipinos are reminded that as inconvenient and unsophisticated as this
soldier is, the people's bigger moral issue will still be with Arroyo: the
president who they believe was caught red-handed rigging her own election;
whose husband they believe was caught red-handed rigging his own
multi-billion-peso government contracts; whose government has shown contempt
for free expression, human rights and, yes, democracy.
After Thursday's events, few people have put Trillanes' complaint on the top of
their agendas. Yet for two more years, they will be asking themselves how much
more of these political shenanigans they are willing to endure. Whenever they
see Trillanes, they will shake their heads but also clutch at their chests,
because he will be there to say again what he said after seizing the Peninsula
Hotel: "The only loser here is the Filipino people, because Gloria is still
there."
And whatever Filipinos think of Trillanes, wherever he goes that they do not
care to follow, they are at least in agreement with the only complete sentence
he managed to utter without stuttering on Thursday.
Roby Alampay is a Filipino journalist based in Bangkok where he serves as
executive director of the Southeast Asian Press Alliance. The following
reflects his personal views.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road,
Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
