‘Let Trillanes Serve’ signature drive to be launched

By Ben Gines Jr.

08/17/2007

The supporters of detained Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV yesterday said they will stage a signature campaign, sticker distribution and massive information drive in the next few days to pressure the court and the government into allowing him to perform his duties as a legislator.

Sonny Rivera, Trillanes’ spokesman, said the detained senator-elect’s supporters will launch next week in Manila a new advocacy group that will be composed of members of various civil society groups, religious sector, the youth and the academe.

Dubbed the “Trillanes Paglingkurin (Let Trillanes Serve) Movement,” Rivera said the campaign is primarily intended to force the court to reverse its earlier ruling that threw away Trillanes’ petition to be allowed to attend Senate sessions and be allowed access to the media.

He said they will mount a massive information campaign starting next week aimed at making the public know Trillanes’ situation alongside a signature drive to push his bid to be allowed to assume his post in the Senate.

Rivera said the activities lined up in the campaign include so-called educational caravans and seminars so that the people who voted for Trillanes will learn of his predicament.

Part of the campaign is the distribution of stickers that bear the words “Let Trillanes Serve,” he added.

After attending yesterday’s hearing of the motion for reconsideration Trillanes filed before the Makati Regional Trial Court (RTC), which the court again turned down, Rivera said their group will seek to mobilize some 11 million people who voted for the former Navy junior officer to assert his constitutional right to serve his mandate.

“We will collect signatures to pressure the Arroyo administration into allowing Trillanes to serve his mandate,” he said, adding the collected signatures will be presented to the Makati court to show it how many people are supportive of allowing Trillanes to take office in the Senate.

The movement is being supported by Freedom from Debt Coalition, the Black and White Movement, the Partido ng Masang Pilipino, and leaders of various non-government and people’s organizations.

Linggoy Alcuaz, who has spearheaded anti-government sticker campaigns in the past, has committed to help manufacture the stickers for distribution.

Last July 25, Makati Regional Trial Court Judge Oscar Pimentel junked for “lack of merit” Trillanes’ filed motion for leave of court to be allowed to attend sessions, hearings and investigations in the Senate, to be allowed access to the media and to set up an office in his detention cell at the Marines Brig in Fort Bonifacio, Taguig City.

Trillanes’ lawyer, Reynaldo Robles, had said the 40-year-old senator was “disappointed” but was “hopeful” Pimentel would act favorably on the motion for reconsideration they filed immediately after the judge threw out the senator’s motion.

Robles also said they are also planning to file a petition for Trillanes to be allowed to post bail on his coup d’etat case. The move, he said, is gotten the support of 18 other senators.

Trillanes is facing charges of rebellion against the Arroyo government for leading with 30 other junior officers of the Armed Forces some 300 soldiers in a mutiny that they staged in Makati in July 2003.

The Makati court gave Trillanes five days starting yesterday to submit a reply to the DoJ’s opposition to his motion for reconsideration of the court’s ruling.

It also gave the prosecution five days to comment on Trillanes’ reply.

Meanwhile, former University of the Philippines president, Prof. Francisco Nemenzo said Trillanes’ case should not be treated as a simple criminal case as the Arroyo administration portrays it is, but rather as a “political offense.”

Nemenzo said this in reaction to the Department of Justice’s (DoJ) pronouncement that Trillanes’ case was no different from the case of former Zamboanga del Norte Rep. Romeo Jalosjos, whose motion to attend sessions of the House of Representatives was also denied by the Supreme Court (SC) in 2000.

In ruling against Trillanes’ requests, Judge Pimentel had also cited the SC decision on Jalosjos’ similar petition.

Jalosjos, 66, is in jail serving out a life sentence meted on him by a Makati City court which in 1997 convicted him on charges of having raped an 11-year-old girl in the city a year earlier.

Malacañang has recently raised the possibility of President Arroyo commuting his sentence.

In his omnibus motion, Trillanes urged the court to allow him to attend Senate sessions, among other requests, on grounds that “the people had already spoken” as shown by the 11,138,067 Filipinos who voted for him and thereby obtaining for him the 11th place in the Senate race last May. He argued that that constituted “an expression of the popular will and sovereign decree of the people.”

Aside from the coup d’etat charges, Trillanes is also facing, along with the 30 other junior officers, charges of violation of Articles of War 96 (Conduct Unbecoming of an Officer and Gentleman) before a military court martial.

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