President Rodrigo Duterte’s spokesman and the top brass of the Armed Forces of the Philippines on Tuesday clashed over Senator Antonio Trillanes IV’s application for a general amnesty.
Testifying before the Senate finance committee, Armed Forces chief Gen. Carlito Galvez admitted that Trillanes applied for amnesty contrary to the Palace claim and that there were lapses in the transfer of documents that resulted in the supposedly missing application form of the former mutineer-turned-senator.
“Our suspicion, sir, [is that] the repository of all these documents did not bring the documents to us in GHQ (General Head Quarters),” Galvez said.
“Did I apply for amnesty?” Trillanes asked Galvez.
“According to Berbigal, sir, yes,” Galvez said, referring to Col. Josefa Berbigal, the former head of the amnesty committee secretariat.
Malacañang immediately disputed Galvez’s claim, with Roque belittling the position of the AFP chief of staff on the amnesty issue.
“Certainly, you don’t expect me to take the side of [AFP] Chief Galvez who is not a lawyer over the words of a learned judge,” Roque said, adding that one of the two Makati City courts handling Trillanes’ criminal cases had already ruled against the senator’s claim that he had complied with the amnesty requirements.
“It doesn’t matter. He [Galvez] is not a lawyer and under the rules of evidence, it [original copy] is the best evidence. Before you can offer secondary evidence, you need to establish why you can’t produce original document,” he added.
At the same hearing, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said he was “not knowledgeable” on what happened because the processing of his amnesty application was done during the administration of President Benigno Aquino III.
But he admitted that on Aug. 16, he received a call from Solicitor General Jose Calida asking him if they could produce the amnesty records. He related that his staff was able to produce Proclamation No. 75 issued by Aquino as well as an amnesty document signed by then-Defense secretary Voltaire Gazmin.
“That’s all that came from us. Those are the only two documents that were given to him [Calida],” Lorenzana said.
Lorenzana said a J1 staff certified that the senator’s amnesty application could not be found at the GHQ.
When Trillanes asked if the DND has already conducted its own investigation on the missing document, Lorenzana said they did, but could not find anything.
Trillanes was implicated in at least two military uprisings— the 2003 Oakwood mutiny and the 2007 Manila Peninsula siege, to overthrow the government of then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
Galvez said they had tried to reach out to the ad hoc committee that processed Trillanes’ amnesty application.
Honorio Azcueta, committee head and Berbigal certified that Trillanes had applied for an amnesty.
“Lt. Col. Josefa Berbigal is the one who administered your oath,” Galvez said.
Berbigal, an officer at the Judge Advocate General’s office, has filed an affidavit in court, supporting Trillanes’ claim he had applied for amnesty and was granted one by the past administration.
In voiding Trillanes’s amnesty, President Rodrigo Duterte’s Proclamation No 572 cited his failure to apply for a general amnesty and to admit his guilt in the crimes committed.
Duterte also ordered the Department of Justice and the Court Marshall of the Armed Forces of the Philippines “to pursue all criminal and administrative charges” against the senator.
