EDITORIAL

One look into the eyes of Oakwood mutineer Antonio Trillanes and you begin to suspect he is being eaten alive by a pernicious Messiahnic Complex. No problem. It is no skin off our backs if the virus of self-righteousness consumes every thought and sinew of his person.

The problem lies in the possibility of his infecting the rest of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, whose lack of real professionalism in the ranks and corruption at the top makes it a veritable minefield open for exploitation by every wacko with a glib tongue that comes around.

Not only that, there is also the danger that misguided elements like Trillanes can get to infect the larger civilian population, great segments of which have, admittedly, been suffering long enough from a myriad of social ills.

For it is not that Trillanes and other adventurers are even half-believable. It is that the widespread despair sweeping the population is making people half-gullible, primed by their hopelessness to cling even to the blade Trillanes and his war freak pals are offering.

Can you imagine the kind of thinking this guy has? In a recent television interview, this sorry example of a Philippine military officer and gentleman wants to divide the whole nation into those who want to take action and those who don't.

Again, nothing wrong with that. It is always a better option to act than not. But to prove Trillanes is nothing but a limp bag of subtlety and guile, he refused to qualify what he meant by taking action.

But of course, given his group's misadventures at Oakwood, we know precisely what taking action means in his vocabulary, and it is an option that will plunge this country into a bloody revolution where every Godforsaken Filipino man, woman and child emerges the loser.

And that is not all. In his attempt to divide the nation into just two sides, with no room in between, Trillanes said those who refuse to take action will lose their moral ascendancy to complain later.

Does Trillanes mean to say that his option is the only course of action? Does he mean to say that those who refuse to take action because they do not like his option stand to lose their rights when the dust clears in the aftermath of the trouble he is brewing?

The government should throw the book at Trillanes and his band of military mutineers, throw them all in prison, and throw away the key. The government, for all its imperfections, is still the better institutional authority than those who prefer unconstitutional shortcuts.