President Gloria Arroyo's government on Monday filed a criminal complaint against Gregorio Honasan, accusing the opposition senator of leading an alleged coup attempt against her. Interior Secretary Jose Lina lodged the complaint before the Justice Department against Honasan and six others belonging to a civilian group that had allegedly helped rogue soldiers carry out the July 27 mutiny at the Makati financial district.
| Can't say much for their tactics. If I was staging a coup, I wouldn't worry about the financial district first... |
``Definitely, he is one of the leaders. There are other politicians and some other financiers whom we are gathering evidence against,'' Lina said of Honasan, a former army colonel who led several coup attempts in the 1980s.
| Oh, it used to be a habit, did it? |
Honasan, who was pardoned in 1995, was the first senior political figure publicly implicated by the government in the coup attempt. He denies the allegation.
"Wudn't me."
If they shoot him this time, he won't be able to deny it next time, will he? |
The government last week also arrested Ramon Cardenas, a member of the cabinet of deposed Filipino leader Joseph Estrada, for his alleged role in the coup. The complaint included a deposition by a military intelligence officer, Major Perfecto Ragil, who alleged that he met with Honasan and the other plotters at a suburban Manila house on June 4 where the senator allegedly discussed the power grab. ``The discussion concluded that we must use force, violence and armed struggle™ to achieve the vision'' of Honasan's political platform, called the National Recovery Programme, the sworn statement said. Ragil alleged that Honasan vowed that ``colleagues who would be traitors'' to the cause would be killed. The senator also presided over a bizarre ceremony wherein he and the other conspirators cut themselves with a knife and then used their own blood to imprint their thumbmarks on documents and flags used by the group, Ragil said. In a telephone interview on Monday Honasan, who has not been seen in public for a week, told reporters: ``I was never in any secret meeting where there was a blood pact where the plot to launch the Makati incident took place. I categorically deny that.''
| All you need's a bloody thumbprint... |
Ragil also said that one of the detained mutiny leaders, Captain Gary Alejano, went to see him early last month and asked him to shut down the telephone system of Malacanang presidential palace ``when the D-Day arrives''. Lina asked the justice department to put the officer under its witness protection programme.
| Yeah. If the witnesses are dead, there's no case, is there? Funny how that works. And how often. |
At least 355 soldiers — 108 junior officers and 247 enlisted men — took part in the July 27 siege, nearly double the original estimate, military chief of staff General Narciso Abaya said. Arroyo said an official inquiry into the rebellion was ``now in an advanced stage and will soon account for all those involved. The evidence is mounting and is substantial and solid,'' she said without elaborating. At the height of the mutiny, the authorities had estimated the number of military participants to between 150 and 200. Abaya said 348 have been detained, while two officers and five enlisted men are at large. ``As early as 2001'', the cabal began recruiting elite units to carry it out, Abaya told reporters.
| The definition of "elite" appears to have some flexibility to it... |
The rebels wanted to ``institute totalitarian rule'' through a 15-member junta, Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes told the same forum.
| So the PI could be as successful a state at Burma... |
Abaya said he deployed a battalion of infantry, comprising about 500 men, in Manila last weekend ``just in case there are again some happenings as in the other weekend.'' |