Senator Antonio Trillanes is now probably in a dilemma. Contrary to his expectations, the testimony of retired police officer Arthur Lascanas has not created a snow-balling effect that could whip up a storm of public opinion that would eventually help pave the way for President Duterte to step down from his post.
Instead, Duterte remains firmly seated on the saddle, his hold to power undiminished a bit. It was a nice try by Trillanes but in the end the Senate as a body realized it did not want to be led by the nose nor be part of a script gone awry.
What may have pissed Trillanes no end was that the carefully knitted testimony by Lascanas that was designed to drop bombshell after bombshell, instead landed in the Senate floor like unexploded bombs that failed to whip up national condemnation against Duterte.
And if Duterte was himself bothered or had cause to worry as Lascanas took the floor to testify, he did not show it. Our guess is that it seemed the President was more amused than concerned by what was happening in one branch of government so let us leave it at that.
It was as if he was saying: “fire away Arthur, do your worst.”
On a personal note, the chance for the Sanidad brothers to exhibit their court skills did not present itself. In fact, Pablito the former Department of Labor undersecretary and the older of the two, seemed more bored than interested as he shared the spotlight behind Lascanas who advertised his calling card as a gun-killer by sending between 200 to 300 souls to Kingdom come.
With Pablito Sanidad there, I made a mental note to drop by his office along Session Road one of these days, to ask him what was going through his mind as he sat behind Lascanas.
You see, Sanidad, who writes a column at the Baguio Midland Courier, has been a friend of media since when I could remember. Twice, he bailed us out of adversity.
The first time was when a publisher from Iloilo sued 24 Baguio City media practitioners for libel in 1998 after they denounced him for harassing one of their members in Iloilo City.
With Sanidad and the FLAG taking our cause, the case finally reached the office of then Secretary Silvestre Bello III who promptly dismissed it.
The second time was in 2009 when the municipal council of La Trinidad whipped out a resolution that declared this corner ‘persona non grata’ for a series of articles that questioned its resolve to put up a mall on a municipal property sans public consultation.
Asked about his opinion, Sanidad said go ahead, publish the resolution. We did and for months I had to endure being the center of public attention for having been declared non grata in the town where I was born.
In the interest of fair play, The Midland printed the story when we filed a case for violation of the anti-graft law against the municipal council with Sanidad as our lawyer pro-bono.
It seemed that my case qualified as a graft case because in crafting and in publishing the resolution, the municipal council never bothered to get my side.
In no time, I was able to exact some revenge when the entire membership of the municipal council, from vice-mayor to majority of the councilors were suspended for three months each while the case was still being heard. It was also front page stuff but when I decided to run as councilor in the same municipal council in 2016, it was not enough capital to nail down a council seat with. I also realized that popularity was not enough if you do not have the funds to squander without batting an eyelash.
Back to Trillanes. My guess is that like police Gen. Bato, he is on the look-out for another idea to reload. Lascanas could have been his best card had he not appeared earlier in the Senate last year to dismiss the death squad as ‘pure media hype.’ Who would believe a perjured witness?
Besides, it is of no moment now because Duterte has since become the President by one of the largest mandates imaginable, and were Trillanes a shrewd judge of men and events, you cannot buck a stacked deck and still hope for success. Senator Leila de Lima must have realized that by now.
It is that mandate that holds this nation together and that gives Duterte unquestionable leadership and control of government to the end of his term.
If he has not lost sight of reality as suggested, it is high time for Trillanes to concentrate on crafting laws as a legislator would and stow in some corner his Messiahnic complex of saving this country from communists and serial killers in order “to live to fight another day.”
Perhaps, they will listen to him some day. Perhaps they will not. For now, he is not the big fish to reckon with in the pool but just one puppet
whose voice is deemed irrelevant and must stay that way.
