Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Goyo may seek ‘amnesty’ if alive today


Photo from Goyo Facebook
By Chester B Cabalza

Blogger's Notes:
Commentary of an Academic 
(Copyright @ 2018 by Chester B Cabalza. All Rights Reserved).


Against the backdrop of war, doubted youngest and celebrated one-star Filipino general, shrivelled with agile vocation to save a flawed president flunked to triumph in his last battle. Gregorio del Pilar’s tactical command in a visceral level of military strategy diminished a demeanour sauntered out in Tirad Pass, our nation’s Thermopylae waterloo, beheld by aphids of clouds atop the boundless vigor of Ilocandia’s mountain peaks. Fear and salvation snapped out from his stumbling spirit onto a clandestine cloister of inner struggle to fathom his role in nation-building and venture into odyssey if Aguinaldo’s revolution was worth fighting for.

His youthfulness and morose death elevated his snap heroism. No pompous burial bared for him unlike the mad-genius General Antonio Luna flattered with a lush orchestration of political whims in his funeral to mantle white lies about his murder.

Insert post-modern Philippines. Our history has been coated with episodic military adventurism. This euphemism of instigating a war of aggression to the government is mostly not won over by romanticized soldiers when Filipinos deem that our Constitution remains the fundamental law.

This is a great lesson that we should learn from the past.

Charismatic mutineer Colonel Gringo Honasan, now a senator, led five coup d’état to the first Filipina president Cory Aquino during his heydays as rebel against putschists, thieves, and opportunists. Enamored Lieutenant Senior Grade Sonny Trillanes IV, a sitting senator, copied the same military adventurism against the second Filipina president Gloria Arroyo due to alleged rampant corruption in the government. Both former military officers rallied for change, turned out politicians by demand, but aspired to become the second highest official in the country in recent national elections. President Fidel Ramos granted amnesty to Honasan while President Benigno Aquino III endowed amnesty to Trillanes.

Hypothetically if Goyo heeded to his own demon and altered a courageous narrative of defiance against bad governance of a blemished commander-in-chief, could he embody the ideals of Honasan and Trillanes in his trying time? Albeit underlying the historical context of his state at that time, the colonizer came out to be the primary adversary, notwithstanding the Tagalog president and his northern ethnic armed warriors. But if he were alive today, the vicious cycle of Filipino feeble governance and fragile defense posture sum up the Philippines’ corrupted system that may inspire pampered PMAers to stage a coup to the government.    


Goyo might end up guilty of a morbid political offense. Banish or die. Or suffer murder just like what Bonifacio and Luna ended up like.