Did President Duterte inadvertently give people the idea of “President Trillanes”? Posted by The Society of Honor on September 10, 2018 · 295 Comments

By JoeAm

By any measure, Senator Trillanes’ amnesty case has further eroded President Duterte’s reputation of total, complete authority. The beating the President and his men have been taking is worse than that by the Arroyo coup of the House leadership which sat the President aside in the waiting room for an hour, like a helpless old man, whilst former President Arroyo took over the House.

The President’s men failed to get the Senator arrested last week. And Senator Trillanes for three days had full control of the press as President Duterte gadded about the Middle East. Trillanes remained in the Senate and charged into the headlines and television news standing calm, unshaken, and committed to uprooting corruption and bad governance. He’s now been there six days straight.

The list of names the Senator has used toward President Duterte is expanding. It started on Day 1 with “coward”, and we knew then that the gloves were off. On Saturday (Day 5), it expanded to “corrupt, liar, murderer and stupid”, although the Senator did apologize to reporters for not being able to find a better choice of words than “stupid”. He was trying to explain how wrong things have become in the Philippines under President Duterte.

But that is Senator Trillanes, isn’t it? Blunt to the point of working against his own best interest sometimes. But also showing flashes of humility.

He is so principled that I think it sometimes takes a while for others to catch up to the integrity of the platform from which he speaks.

A lot of people don’t like Senator Trillanes, I hear. They think he is arrogant, and he broke the law when he went mutineer because he just could not stand the corrupt shenanigans of President Arroyo. Cocky, headstrong. They thought his trip to Hacienda Binay was a Roxas style photo-op. So he has his detractors, even among the “yellows”. But there are fewer today, I suspect, than there were a week ago.

During one of his early press conferences from his position of sanctuary (which the Senate calls detainment, I believe), a reporter asked if he planned or encouraged anything like that coup business he once engage in. He smiled that wry smile of his that looks a bit smirkish and said, no, he didn’t have to. He was pursuing the same goals from his position in the Senate.

They also asked him if he encouraged protests and he said those things were out of his control. So he would not comment.

Well, the Senator is older and wiser now and, like a seasoned oak wine keg, has developed a more sophisticated aura than a few years ago, more composed, more confident, more personable (the reporters laughed often at his natural, low-key camaraderie) . . . but the Senator is just as determined as ever.

I find it interesting, having come off a series of articles focused on the Philippine cultural tradition that “good people are seen as weak and bad people are seen as strong”, that Senator Trillanes has a bit of the “bad boy” edge about him. That likely makes him less vulnerable to attack than, say, Vice President Robredo. He demonstrated his character when a reporter asked him about Robin Padilla parading around in front of the Senate building taunting the Senator to come out. Trillanes basically said to Padilla “We aren’t in high school any more. So grow up. If you want to come in and talk, let’s talk.”

It’s the kind of adult wisdom you’d find with the Godfather, eh? Tough love, even for the flaming fame-seeker Padilla.

The Senator is not a pretender like Presidential Spokesman Roque and Foreign Affairs Secretary Cayetano. You can understand through their made-up stories that they are the “pantywaists” in this enduring drama. That’s an old junior high school term used to describe sissies and weaklings before gay rights came along and rightfully suppressed such colorful language. But I need to draw a picture here.

Contrarily, Trillanes is the real deal.

I suppose now is a good time to report, for the record, I had the opportunity to meet the Senator a few months ago. The Society of Honor author Will Villanueva was kind enough to arrange the meeting and he also attended. The Senator asked for the get-together to thank me for the blog, which he reads now and then, and to set my knowledge straight on his back door work with China on Scarborough Shoal (which I had written about a couple of years ago, getting a few things wrong). As a courtesy, he also updated us on this and that in the political arena.

It was fascinating to meet a man of no pretense who just tells you what he thinks. Diplomatic, always. Thoughtful, always. Straight, always. What you see on television is what you get in person. When you ask a question, you get an answer . . . or a reason why he cannot answer. No posturing or faking or talking around the issue.

And yet . . . and yet . . . you know that there are also calculations going on, and information being gathered via secret intelligence channels, and friends all over the nation who are in his network. He serves as both the front line trooper and the intelligence operation supporting the troops. That’s his method. He digs. He investigates. He networks. He knows about tattoos and bank accounts and Mayor Binay’s hacienda extravagance.

What you can’t see unless you meet him in person are the well-muscled arms. That surprised me. I had always thought of him as soft and bookish. I think he, like Magdalo partymate Congressman Alejano, must work out. Or his wife has him doing all the heavy lifting around the house.

But the Senator is a rock.

The one thing he does not have is riches. Principle and service have always meant more to him. It did not help that he spent seven prime years under Arroyo locked up and paying for his adventurism. He is the poorest senator by a long shot.

He is a rock in terms of character, in terms of work ethic, in terms of honor and honesty.

It is ironic that, in President Duterte’s eagerness to jail Senator Trillanes, he presented the Senator to a nation that may not really know him that well. Just as President Arroyo, by locking up an honest man, catapulted him into the Senate. He campaigned from jail.

Destiny creates presidents, I suppose.

We have little to do with it.

Citizens can try to help around the edges. And they can vote. We non-citizen observers can only opine, draw our conclusions, and share them.

My early look at 2022 presidential candidates who I think would preserve civility, democracy, and the Constitutional foundation of the Philippines can be summed up as follows:

“Senator Trillanes is a man who would serve the nation well as president. As would Vice President Robredo. As would Senator Hontiveros. As would others whom we have not yet had the opportunity to vet.”

The nation does not lack for promising leadership.

It lacks for smart voting.

But for sure, for sure, destiny unfolds quickly in the Philippines, in ways we cannot predict.