In the same way that a sinner finds there is a pattern to his sins, ex-coup plotters or former mutinous soldiers end up repeating old battle plans, even those that failed to work the first time. On Thursday, Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, the leader of the Magdalo mutineers who took over the Oakwood apartment building in 2003, was once again at the forefront of a mutiny of sorts. He led a small group of soldiers and civilians -- initially estimated at around 30 or so -- in a forced takeover of a luxury hotel in the middle of the Makati Central Business District. His objective was to force President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to resign.He was joined by Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim, a respected soldier who has taken part in previous coup attempts and was implicated in the Fort Bonifacio “standoff” that led to the declaration of a state of emergency in February 2006. In that standoff, mutinous military leaders called on the Catholic bishops to come to their aid. Only two of the country’s hundred or so bishops responded favorably to this latest act of adventurism, with one of them saying he just happened to be at the hotel when Trillanes and company arrived in force. In other words, this armed undertaking had failure written all over it. It had the DNA of the ineptly executed Oakwood mutiny and the inadequately prepared-for standoff. The idea that a commander-in-chief can be forced out of office by taking over a secluded building in Makati was ridiculous in 2003; it is only pathetic now. The idea that a mass of supporters, the possible nucleus of a People Power uprising, will throng to an inaccessible camp was preposterous in 2003; it remains risible today. Let us be clear. The Arroyo administration, and especially the heavy-handed leadership of Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Hermogenes Esperon, is responsible for deepening the frustration of the officers and soldiers facing various charges related to the mutiny and the standoff. They have not received the kind of respectful treatment they may have expected from their brother-soldiers; they have reason to feel sorely aggrieved, even deliberately humiliated. At the same time, there is no excuse for what Trillanes and company have done. The intellectual dishonesty of lawyer JV Bautista, calling the armed entry into the Manila Peninsula hotel a “political act” and not an action contemptuous of the very court Trillanes and Lim had walked out of, is self-evident. The arrest warrants newly issued against Trillanes and Lim were signed by the same judge they had disrespected. But worse than Bautista’s attempt at spin was Trillanes’ own political arrogance or rank ignorance (it is hard to tell which), where he all but offered himself, a newly elected senator, as an alternative to an “illegitimate” president. Any hope of the young radical reaching out to the millions of Filipinos who are deeply unhappy over President Arroyo’s performance died the moment he said that: It was incredible hubris -- and the very opposite of the issue-oriented politics he says he advocates. Before surrendering, Trillanes explained Thursday’s bizarre caper as a logical outcome of his “moral obligation” as a public official and ex-soldier. This is, we are afraid, a deeply misguided reading of his duties. He cynically put people in harm’s way, exploited the reporters and cameramen who covered him as his own protective shield, deliberately harmed the country’s image -- and for what? To prove to the nation that his alternative to the “ruthlessness” of the Arroyo presidency was his own brand of incompetence. It seems Trillanes’ victory in the May 2007 polls made him forget the lasting lessons of the July 2003 mutiny: As the public opinion polls showed soon afterwards, the people sympathized with them and their cause, but vigorously condemned the violent path they had chosen. “Dissent without action is consent,” Lim told the nation. He could be right, but even if we were to take him at his word, we still need to ask: Is “action” necessarily defined in terms of violence? That way lies mass suicide. | 
