TRILLANES’ TRIPLE TREACHERY

He failed two violent attempts to take power, not so much because he was stupid and would not resort to inflicting the kind of murderous violence he understood but more because those he employed to backstop his colossal ambitions at the end of the day simply refused. Literally no one from the public he claimed to represent came to his aid and gullibly fell for his hollow cause. Unfortunately Antonio Trillanes IV would repeat his criminality and insidious betrayal twice.

He repeated his seditious fiasco down to the choice of venue, his second a mere stroll from his first and basically founded on the same reason his first had failed. Here is a person with a fatal inability to learn.

Failing the first two, his treachery then extended to a third try. In the quickly unravelling narrative involving failed promises of payments, more betrayal and backstabbing and attempts at sedition now involving the International Criminal Court (ICC) as an external arena of war, we are again seeing how Trillanes’ treachery has for a third time reared its ugly head. This time it was not just the economy he would set back by employing his sociopathic recklessness, but he would now risk damaging our collective stature as a sovereign republic under a duly elected and popular president who truly cares and a justice system that truly works.

His plan was to belittle our sovereignty and independence by manipulating gullible and misinformed foreign powers, whether governments, their legislators or their agencies, in order to threaten us and our leaders, so that, in the end, our government thus cowered and weakened, might collapse and his triple treachery would finally come to fruition.

To his misfortune, he was no longer up against an unpopular presidency, or subsequently, an intellectually challenged and bungling dispensation enamored with his false machismo. This time he was up against Rodrigo Duterte.

Referring to the recently withdrawn complaint filed by Jude Sabio with the ICC on “crimes against humanity,” Malacañang says, “The professional tie between the two (Sabio and Trillanes) has since turned sour owing to Trillanes’ alleged failure to pay Sabio’s professional fees leading to the latter’s withdrawal of his complaint before the ICC. Trillanes must be squirming in his disgraced retirement by Sabio’s turnabout.”

Apparently, behind the move was nothing but money. Leila de Lima whose name repeatedly appears in this sordid narrative as a co-conspirator stands accused of drug trafficking. That too was all about money.

These characters think justice can be bought. The De Lima question, the charges of securities and tax fraud against an online news site and the ICC controversy, similar to the campaign to thwart our justice system by foreign legislators many suspect are bankrolled by insidious specters in time for the 2020 elections, each involve money.

It is for this reason and for many more that the United States has declined membership among the gradually decreasing number that form the collective of the ICC where, to be actionable and relevant, a complaint must be properly filed, a state must a member and thus be within the ICC’s jurisdiction, and finally that state must not have a credible and working justice system.

That is not the case with the United States, and to Trillanes, De Lima and Sabio’s misfortune, that is also not the case with the Philippines. Either they were stupidly remiss or were treacherously seditious. Or both.

Other than the three requisites needed to make the ICC relevant and a potent avenue for injustices, one very good reason that cannot be denied is the national self-actualization and pride that the citizens of a country might have for itself and might bear upon its government and leadership.

This is critical. A nation’s self-view, how it regards itself, the government that it allows to rule and the leaders it freely chooses and approves of, are critical, albeit unwritten aspects that impact not only on the relevance and existence of the ICC with regard to sovereign states but more importantly, for the people who comprise those individual states.

There is no doubt that America sees itself as a superior arbiter of justice. It does not need the ICC. Now look at our numbers. We have a leader we love and who cares for us. We are proud of the independence and credibility of our justice system. We do not need the ICC. That is something De Lima, Sabio and Trillanes fail to understand.

“That is not the case with the United States, and to Trillanes, De Lima and Sabio’s misfortune, that is also not the case with the Philippines. Either they were stupidly remiss or were treacherously seditious. Or both.

“This

time it was not just the economy he would set back by employing his sociopathic recklessness, but he would now risk damaging our collective stature as a sovereign republic.