MANILA, Philippines — Soldiers who went to the Senate after President Rodrigo Duterte issued a proclamation nullifying the amnesty granted to Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV might have been in trouble if the president did not withdraw his order, former Sen. Rodolfo Biazon said.
Biazon, also a former Armed Forces of the Philippines Chief of Staff, said he was glad Duterte withdrew his order of "warrantless arrest" against Trillanes, a staunch critic of the president.
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"A soldier must follow only legal orders of his superiors, whether the superior is the chief of staff or maybe even the president," Biazon told ANC's Headstart.
The former senator added that the soldiers who initially went to the Senate were being ordered to arrest Trillanes without being able to show a written and signed arrest order.
Duterte, under Proclamation 572, initially ordered the police and the military to arrest Trillanes. The president later on ordered the military to comply with the judicial process and let the court decide on the case of the senator.
If he were in the position of the soldiers ordered to arrest the senator, Biazon said he would have to study first the nature of the grant of amnesty before following the order.
"If it is very apparent that the order being issued is illegal, we, in our oath of office, said that we must only follow legal orders," Biazon said.
Did the Congress commite a mistake?
Following Duterte's new argument that former President Benigno Aquino III did not follow procedures in granting amnesty, Biazon raised the issue that other government agencies might have committed a mistake too.
"If indeed President Aquino did not sign the proclamation, was it wrong for the House of Representatives and the Senate together, Senate President (Juan Ponce) Enrile and Speaker (Sonny) Belmonte to sign the joint concurrent resolution?" Biazon asked.
Biazon stressed that Duterte cannot unilaterally revoke the amnesty grant without Congress concurrence.
The grant is also considered "absolute" which means that amnesty means to forget or forgive "as if everything that have been charged... against those being granted amnesty have been obliterated, erased."
"Did the Congress of the Republic of the Philippines, which according to Article VII Section 19 (of the Constitution), the grant of amnesty, unlike the grant of pardon, is a shared power between the chief executive and the Congress," he said.
Meanwhile, law expert and former Solicitor General Florin Hilbay warned that the revocation of Trillanes' amnesty grant might have an impact on peace negotiations.
“The president has, for some reason, placed on the line the integrity of the entire amnesty system of the government and even the peace process,” Hilbay said in an interview with ANC's Early Edition.