On October 2010, Pnoy endorsed to Congress his signed General Amnesty for the Magdalo soldiers who participated in 2003, 2006, and 2007, Oakwood mutiny, marine standoff, and the Manila Pen Siege. This Amnesty was in fact questioned before the Supreme Court and was declared valid.
Now, the Magdalo soldiers had Pnoy under their thumb, the General Amnesty was cleared by the Supreme Court, and the food was on their plate. As in a Boodle fight, Trillanes and the other 31 Magdalo soldiers were in haste to complete everything.
The requirements in order to be covered by the General Amnesty would be 1. A personal application under oath; and 2. Admission of guilt which consists of two parts, a) they should admit they are guilty of all the offenses being charged, which are Coup d’etat, Mutiny, and Rebellion; and that b) they should also retract any public statement which is not consistent with the admission of their guilt.
On January 5, 2011, Trillanes, Alejano, and the 31 others filed their personal application for amnesty. However, as to the requirement for the admission of their guilt, they only made a general admission in a wholesale fashion. Consequently, Trillanes, Alejano, and the 31 others, all of them wrongly complied with it. They should have known better that, it’s not enough they’ll make a general statement admitting some wrongdoing or that they’re at fault, but also, they will retract whatever public statements they might have made which is not consistent with an admission of guilt. Thus, the declaration as null and void under Proc. 572.
Had Pnoy started rightly by letting those to be granted General Amnesty file their application first and after which, that's the time the General Amnesty will be endorsed to Congress, the present fiasco would not have happened. Now, it has done so far beyond what Pnoy and Trillanes could have imagined.
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