In July 2003, several disgruntled officers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines led by Danilo Lim, Nicanor Faeldon and Antonio Trillanes IV staged a mutiny against then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. When their plan failed, they laid siege to the Oakwood premiere apartments at the heart of the commercial arcades of Makati. They were eventually arrested and charged with rebellion and related offenses.
President Arroyo was already quite unpopular back then on account of the “Hello, Garci” scandal where Arroyo is said to have asked help from the Commission on Elections to ensure her re-election bid in the May 2004 presidential elections against Philippine box-office king Fernando Poe Jr.. Although Arroyo apologized on television for the incident, her credibility was seriously tarnished.
Political observers suggest that the specter of having then Vice President Noli de Castro succeed Arroyo as president was enough to discourage any attempt to oust her from office by legal or extra-legal means.
Anyway, Trillanes still benefited from Arroyo’s unpopularity. In May 2010, he was elected to the Senate because of his anti-Arroyo stance. Despite his win, Trillanes remained in the military stockade by reason of the mutiny raps against him.
In November 2007, the Lim-Faeldon-Trillanes threesome walked out of their court hearing in Makati, claiming that there was no justice under the Arroyo government. Seeing the crowd that had gathered to watch them as they left the courthouse, the troika decided to march on to the commercial district in the city. Their publicized march ended at the Manila Peninsula, a posh hotel about a kilometer away from Oakwood. They were joined by their fellow mutineers in holing up at the hotel.
Their march and their decision to hole up at the hotel were enough reasons for the military establishment to suspect a repeat of the Oakwood coup attempt. Several hours after the troika and their supporters decided to take over the hotel, the military forcibly entered the hotel premises and arrested the rebels, including media personalities who were suspected of involvement in the mutiny. Upon their arrest, Lim and Trillanes were thrown back to the military stockade. Faeldon, however, managed to escape.
Lim ran for a Senate seat as a guest candidate under the Liberal Party in the May 2010 national elections. He was finally released from military custody after he conceded defeat. Later that year, Trillanes was also released from military detention, this time with the blessings of the new AFP commander-in-chief, Benigno Aquino III, the LP bet who won the 2010 presidential race.
Lim’s ties with the LP got him the post Bureau of Customs chief under President Aquino III, a post Lim held until July 2013 when he resigned in the wake of alleged corruption in the bureau.
In May 2017, Lim joined the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte as chairman of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority, succeeding Thomas Orbos.
It turned out that the MMDA under Lim is as inefficient as it was under Orbos. Lim has not done anything about the thousands of reckless motorcycle drivers who occupy any part of the road they please, without regard for other motorists, and without any concern for public safety or the smooth flow of traffic. They also belch a lot of smoke, thus adding to the air pollution problem in the metropolis.
Lim has not done anything to solve the bottleneck of vehicles along the northbound lane of Epifanio de los Santos Avenue under the Edsa-Camp Crame flyover. Instead of directing these vehicles to the rightmost lane of Edsa where vehicles going under the flyover properly belong, Lim continues to allow these vehicles to use the narrow alley between the northbound and southbound lanes of Edsa. Consequently, vehicles accumulate in the area, blocking traffic as far back as Edsa-Shaw Boulevard. The northbound lane gets clear and wide only after this intersection.
Further, Lim has failed to rid the sidewalks of parked vehicles which force pedestrians to use up part of the roadway, thus reducing the already limited road space for motorists. His MMDA traffic enforcers are visible only during the daylight hours. They are gone at night, probably because there are no more motorists who could be coerced into paying bribe money for violating the number-coding ban (which ends at 7 in the evening), or for breaching the prohibition against using mobile phones (which is difficult to ascertain from the outside of a vehicle in the absence of sunlight).
Faeldon joined the Duterte government as its customs chief in June 2016. Last month, Faeldon made it to the newspaper headlines when he was accused of involvement in an illegal narcotics shipment worth P6-billion. Reacting to the adverse publicity, Faeldon revealed that in the past, Senator Panfilo Lacson himself was involved in drug smuggling. Why Faeldon did not stop the alleged illegal shipment he attributed to Lacson, and why his revelation came out only now, is not explained by Faeldon.
Grateful to President Aquino III who released him from detention back in 2010, Trillanes has been a rabid supporter of Aquino III.
Trillanes won reelection to the Senate in 2013, but he has not accomplished anything of sterling significance during his incumbency. In 2015, it was revealed that he hired more than 50 consultants, far beyond the budgetary allocations allowed by law for that purpose. He also admitted employing his own brother at public expense.
The current object of Trillanes’ animosity is President Duterte. During the presidential campaign, Trillanes alleged that Duterte had secret bank accounts, but his accusation got him nowhere. Credible witnesses Trillanes said will testify against Duterte have yet to show up in the Senate.
Trillanes lost in the vice presidential derby last May 2016. Observers say that since Trillanes had no presidential running mate, and no senatorial line-up, the Comelec should have disqualified Trillanes for being a nuisance candidate. Apparently, his incumbency as a senator prevented that.