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Monday, July 28, 2003
Rebel soldiers adept at special warfare
SOLDIERS taking part in the latest military uprising were drawn from the military’s elite special warfare fighting units and backed by shadowy civilian players, officials said.
But the group had failed to generate much high-level military support, and the 200-odd rebels had holed up inside a booby-trapped high-rise luxury apartment complex in the Makati financial district.
Some of them appeared ready to fight a vastly superior military force.
The mutineers, whose spokesman is a boyish-looking 32-year-old lieutenant who wrote a masters thesis on corruption in the Navy at the University of the Philippines, accused the government of corruption and supporting terrorism, and of mismanaging soldiers’ pension funds.
President Arroyo denounced Saturday what she described as a coup plot, and gave them until 5 p.m. yesterday to stand down or face a military attack. The standoff ended at 10 o’clock last night. (See main story)
The rebel leaders “are primarily from the classes of 1995 to 1997” of the Philippine Military Academy (PMA), which produces most of the military’s officer corps, Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes said.
Fallout
Their Navy officer frontman, Lt. Senior Grade Antonio Trillanes, comes from a military family and his father also graduated from the PMA, family friends said.
The others include a number of his former PMA classmates, who commanded battalions of the elite Army Scout Rangers and the Navy’s Special Warfare Group, a unit trained for demolition and equipped with high explosives.
The government had known for some time that “they have problems and they have expressed certain complaints. What we did not know was that they would rise up,” Reyes said.
“In terms of the security of the nation, I don’t think there is anything to worry about,” Senate President Franklin Drilon said. But he said he worried about the economic fallout, particularly on foreign investment.
“This incident is confined to Makati. This group does not have widespread support from officials of the armed forces,” presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye said.
Internal only
Sen. Rodolfo Biazon, a retired Marine general and armed forces chief of staff who put down the bloodiest of seven coup attempts against the Corazon Aquino presidency in the late 1980s, said it was a small-scale uprising.
“During my time I fought entire brigades,” said Biazon, who visited the rebels early yesterday to try to convince them to end their rebellion.
PMA graduates also produced the core leadership of the 1980s coups.
Most were later pardoned as part of a peace settlement with the government in the early 1990s, but the president’s aides yesterday accused Sen. Gregorio Honasan, who led at least two coup attempts, of a role in the present mutiny. He denied the allegations.
“These misguided elements are being supported, abetted and aided by known and unknown leaders, conspirators and plotters in the government service and outside the government,” Arroyo said.
Biazon said the current rebels lacked the “personalities” or “issues” that could rally support. “Their issues are internal” to the armed forces, he said. (AFP) |
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