A volatile mix

Be careful what you wish for – surely this thought must have fleeted across the minds of the Makati mutineers, who decided yesterday that they no longer wanted to testify about their misadventure.

For the nation, something positive came out of the simultaneous investigations conducted by the Senate and the Feliciano Commission. The mutineers got what they wanted: not just one but two forums for airing their endless litany of complaints, dutifully covered by the mass media. The public also got what it wanted – the mutiny leaders up close and personal – and came out unimpressed.

The superintendent of the Philippine Military Academy, which now suffers from a major image problem as a result of the July 27 putsch, was right: the mutineers, or at least their leaders, need to have their heads examined.

The soldiers, obviously worried about the maximum penalty for launching a coup, have been trying to persuade an incredulous nation that merely on a spur of the moment, hundreds of soldiers from different parts of the country went by plane or ship to converge on a particular day, at a particular hour, in a plush apartment complex where their leader had been holed up for several days. They brought with them special arm bands and flags – all surely obtained spontaneously from some flag-maker in the wee hours of a Sunday morning – plus booby traps. They released a pre-taped video to introduce themselves; where it was taped, they refused to tell the Senate. The soldiers obviously knew about conspiracy, and they weren’t going to rat on their backers or weaken their legal defense.

To support some of their allegations, the mutineers presented documents whose contents are so explosive you wonder what administration would be idiotic enough to affix letterheads and signatures to such papers. The documents contain orders that a commander-in-chief will give only in a whisper to whoever is supposed to carry it out, and even then an intelligent commander-in-chief will make sure the order will have an element of deniability. The documents look like the ones that dirty tricks operators have been trying to peddle for several months.

Throughout their testimony the mutineers seemed perpetually ready to bite someone’s head off. Listen to us, they all but demanded, or we’ll blow the house down. Their appearance at the two hearings showed the nation that guns, arrogance and stupidity make for a volatile mix. If these are the elite of the Philippine military, we must be scraping the bottom of the barrel.