EDITORIAL – Let us not glorify mutineers

Whatever those who posted those video clips of Nicanor Faeldon inside Camp Lapulapu may have sought to prove cannot be proved by merely posting video clips of Nicanor Faeldon inside Camp Lapulapu.

So what if Nicanor Faeldon, a captain in the Marines who mutineed against his country at Oakwood nearly three years ago and has since been allegedly plotting to topple duly constituted authority, was seen at the camp?

Does that mean he has supporters there? The video clips show not a single shadow of support for the misguided egocentric designs he shares with several other unfortunate souls. He could have shot the clip himself. That is not an impossibility, is it?

And granting, as what the video clips purportedly aim to show, that he was in the camp as a wanted man, having escaped from detention only a few days before, there is no real hindrance to his entering and leaving the camp with ease unnoticed. Hundreds of people do that everyday.

But let us grant that Faeldon not just entered the camp but was actually allowed in by soldiers sympathetic to his cause. What then? Is that something that any law-abiding citizen in this country should be scared of?

Law-abiding and God-fearing citizens should have nothing to fear from misguided soldiers roaming military camps trying to recruit warm bodies to fight their mistaken causes. We would like to believe there are enough truly professional soldiers in service to thwart their designs.

If the Filipino soldier had been as ambitious and greedy as these coup plotters, we would have long ago gone the way of those banana republics in Latin America. Thankfully, it is not true that one rotten apple spoils the rest, as we have always been made to believe.

That may only happen without intervention. On the other hand, man is naturally an interventionist by nature. There is nothing you can place before a person that he will not eventually tamper with.

Mutinous soldiers may rear their ugly heads once in a while, but the law and God have their own way of dealing with the wayward and the recalcitrant. Look at Faeldon. Does he have supporters? Maybe yes, maybe no. But he has since been recaptured, in poetic justice fashion.