Degenerating into witch-hunt

By duty, government must unravel the extent of the Left-Right ouster plot and punish the guilty. At the same time it must secure any citizen from false charges and warrantless arrest or seizure. The deft balance obviously is in painstaking gathering of evidence. If untempered by careful sleuthing, the situation would degenerate into witch-hunt.

A witch-hunt can lead to unpredictable results. Already the Arroyo administration is reaping the whirlwind from raiding the Tribune without court order during the weeklong state of emergency. If its aim was to cow newsmen, it failed. The press united and fought back with biting editorials and open skepticism of official pronouncements. A journalists union was among those that sued the administration before the Supreme Court for abuses. Maybe the raid did send chills down the spine of some. But with unrepentant Malacañang aides snorting about a secret dossier of newsmen, jittery media outlets publicize impending raids – making the Palace look all the more ghoulish. The Tribune tiff has had an unintended consequence of rocking Malacañang. Alfredo Benipayo resigned as solicitor general after admitting to the High Tribunal that the raid was indefensible.

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel has found personal cause to lambaste the administration even more. A Malacañang video CD on the coup plot portrays him as one of the conspirators. Yet the annotators, AFP chief Gen. Generoso Senga and Army chief Lt. Gen. Hermogenes Esperon, give no detail about his supposed role. Pimentel decries his inclusion as a virtual shoot-to-kill order to soldiers. If anything happens to him, only Malacañang will be blamed. More than that, the haphazard insertion of his picture renders the entire video questionable. Viewers will doubt the other portions. For instance, the ones where Senga tells of how Scout Rangers commander Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim and Marine Col. Ariel Querubin talked to him about withdrawing support from the Commander-in-Chief, and where Esperon assures that the rest of the military remains loyal.

Another explanatory clip on the coup included a photo of retired Lt. Gen. Romeo Dominguez among the plotters. When he complained, Senga and National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales promised to correct the material. But the damage is done. The rest of the clip is now unreliable as well for harassing an officer who, during his active duty, never joined any coup plot, much more now that he is out of uniform.

Sen. Rodolfo Biazon has cautioned the administration on its ongoing investigation of other coup plotters in the AFP and PNP. Malacañang aides hooted him down on knee-jerk. Yet Biazon was on the ball. In both armed organizations, ambitious officers are churning out lists of "suspects" with no proof other than culprits being former members of the Reform-AFP-Movement or the Young Officers Union. The arbitrarily accused naturally are retaliating to defend their jobs and careers. The unintended effect of the witch-hunt is rancor within the officers’ corps.

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Ironically, plain reporting on the coup makes it clear and credible. By declassifying a document called "Minutes Re Final Talk, Feb. 20, 2006", the AFP had newsmen crosschecking with confidential but reliable contacts before baring the civilians whom the plotters had intended to sit in a junta. One by one, former executive secretary Renato de Villa, Sen. Panfilo Lacson and Reborn-Christian leader Eddie Villanueva admitted attempts to recruit them.

Explanations on why they turned down the plotters expose the latter for what they truly are: power-hungry but with no legal leg to stand on. Villanueva confirmed AFP reports that the putschists were trying to recruit as early as Oct. 2005. He said he feared that if their coup d’état succeeded, they would be "intoxicated with power and set up a junta like in Burma."

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Moderates are pondering the meaning of "O-Plan Hackle", codename of the uncovered Left-Right conspiracy to topple the government by force. Could it be a play on the "hammer and sickle" communist symbol, they ask?

Intelligence analysts believe that "Hackle" was coined by any of the Philippine Military Academy grads in the conspiracy. Among these, they say, are Lt. Lawrence San Juan, and former colonels Greg Honasan, Felix Turingan, Rafael Galvez and Jake Malajacan. Plumes, or hackles, adorn PMA cadet caps. Part of the takeover plot was to bomb the PMA parade grounds during the alumni homecoming, had President Gloria Arroyo attended. The codename thus must have come from the militarist side.

If so, the speculators insist all the more, "O-Plan Hackle" is an apt sobriquet, given the communist and the militarist standpoint.

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Reader Erick San Juan pointed out an error of fact in Gotcha, 13 Mar. 2006. It was US Vice President Dan Quayle, not George Bush Sr., who ordered the Air Force "persuasion flights" against coup forces in Dec. 1989.

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World-renowned Filipina pianist Cecile Licad will give a special performance in the awaited Great Performance Concert Series, at the Philamlife Theater, on Apr. 27, Thursday, 8 p.m. Billed by the Chicago Sun-Times as "one of the great flaming talents that comes along once or twice in every generation," Licad has just wrapped up a European concert tour – to critical acclaim.

Romanian violin sensation Alexandru Tomescu will also play in the series, with pianist Mary Anne Espina, same venue but on Mar. 26, Sunday, 8 p.m.; and at the Pasig Museum on Mar. 28, Tuesday, 5 p.m.

For ticket inquiries on the Tomescu and Licad events, please call tel. nos. (02) 9007023 or (0910) 8851136.

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E-mail: [email protected]