Amnesia, not amnesty
It had the familiar sweeping quality of Speaker Jose de Venecia’s pronouncements: an “all-encompassing” amnesty for, as one news report put it, “all enemies of the state,” filed “soon,” in order to “unify the nation.” No halfway measures for this five-term leader of the House of Representatives; it’s all or nothing.But in this case, it’s nothing. The proposed amnesty is so ambitious it is bound to fail. It includes all insurgents, as well as (possibly, De Venecia hinted) deposed President Joseph Estrada. The reaction from Sen. Jose “Jinggoy” Estrada, the ex-president’s co-accused son who is now, in one of history’s ironies, Senate president pro tempore, is one index of the difficulty the bill will face. His father is not an enemy of the state, he said.
To be sure, De Venecia is conscious about the limits of the proposed amnesty. “This is a wide-ranging, all-encompassing amnesty to cover all insurgents and all those who have committed political crimes against the state,” he said over the weekend. The protective mantle, in other words, reaches only those charged with or convicted of political crimes.
But De Venecia has more, much more, in mind. “This will create the beginnings of real national unity. The next president will have [fewer] tasks [on] his or her hands and at the same time it will complete a legacy for all of us.” All this legacy-speak makes sense, however, only if Estrada is included in the amnesty’s scope.
The plunder charge Estrada is facing cannot be considered a political crime (although we will, yet again, hear the case described as politically motivated, regardless of the finding, when the Sandiganbayan issues its decision in the next several weeks). But the status of Estrada’s alleged crime does not faze the ever-practical De Venecia. The former president can be included in the amnesty, he said. “Let it come normally. Let it be a consensus of all.”
It is less difficult to include Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, who is facing coup charges before a regional trial court.
Far be it from us to argue against a policy proposal merely because it is difficult to implement or because it is certain to meet determined resistance.
De Venecia, in fact, argues from the relative successes of recent history. He pointed, for instance, to the example of Sen. Gregorio Honasan, one of a legion of coup plotters who were granted amnesty in 1995. Honasan himself the other day acknowledged the advantage of “six years of uninterrupted political stability” -- referring to the term of President Fidel V. Ramos, the ex-general who promoted amnesty as a policy and forged the peace agreement with the Moro National Liberation Front.
But that was then, and today’s circumstances are radically different.
In the first place, the 1995 amnesty was supposed to prevent future military adventurism. But the 2003 Oakwood mutiny, which the government initially alleged was masterminded by Honasan himself, shows us that success on the amnesty front has been relative indeed.
Secondly, unlike in the early 1990s, the Armed Forces of the Philippines is in the middle of a major offensive against Abu Sayyaf terrorists, in Sulu and Basilan -- an offensive that necessitates taking action against “lost commands” or rogue units of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Moro National Liberation Front. Any appeal for amnesty at this time is not only in poor taste; it is demoralizing for government troops who are in the thick of the fight.
Not least, those who availed themselves of the amnesty in 1995 showed remorse for their actions, or at least acknowledged their wrongdoing. Even if, by some legal or legislative sleight of hand, plunder is redefined as a political crime, we still have to hear Estrada acknowledge that he did wrong.
If it becomes “the consensus of all” to include Estrada in the general amnesty, then this proposed policy is nothing more -- and nothing less -- than a prescription for amnesia.
In other words, De Venecia’s “wide-ranging” formula as it stands is the legislative equivalent of saying, “Let’s forget everything.” That way lies continued political immaturity.
