The Philippine Online Chronicles

Detained senator Antonio Trillanes IV might not vote for the Liberal Party (LP)’s Senator Francis Pangilinan for the Senate presidency even if President Noynoy Aquino – who ran under the banner of the LP – has ordered a review of Trillanes’s request for bail.

Responding to reports that Pangilinan counts Trillanes as one of his supporters in his bid for Senate presidency, Trillanes's spokesman lawyer Reynaldo Robles said, “We cannot say it is a sure thing.”

“Trillanes merely committed to vote for a Senate president. And Pangilinan's list [of allies] is his own. Trillanes has made no public declaration of who he will vote for,” Robles said. “Who Trillanes will vote for as Senate president is all speculation at this point."

During the 2010 national elections, Trillanes threw his support behind Nacionalista Party’s Manny Villar. Villar now stands as Pangilinan’s rival for the Senate presidency. While both have allies from among the twenty-three senators who will be voting for Senate president, neither has claimed majority support.

President Aquino raised eyebrows when he ordered Justice Secretary Leila de Lima to look into Trillanes’s case, with some suggesting this was a move to earn Trillanes’s support for LP. According to Aquino, Trillanes may be a victim of injustice with his continued detention.

Trillanes remains detained at the PNP headquarters in Camp Crame for his role in the 2003 Oakwood Mutiny and the Manila Peninsula hotel siege in 2007. Both coups were meant to overthrow then-president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. In addition to his civil cases, Trillanes is also facing charges of mutiny before a military tribunal.

According to Presidential Communications Group official Herminio Coloma, rumors that Aquino’s order to investigate Trillanes’s case is connected with Pangilinan’s bid for the senate are unfounded.

“I think that’s already going too far,” he said. “It is speculative. Let’s limit the discussion to the review of the case.”

Earlier, Senators Joker Arroyo and Edgardo Angara spoke out against Aquino’s order, saying that it was a violation of the separation of the government’s executive and judicial branches.

"It is an axiom of the law that when the Judiciary steps in, the Executive steps out,” said Arroyo. “In plain language, once the Executive files the case in court, like in the Trillanes case, the Executive should no longer interfere. ...[In the matter of] allowing Trillanes to participate fully or partially with the Senate duties, the sole and final say is with the courts. The Executive cannot interfere with that.”

“If it comes from no less than the president, it may be subject to various interpretations,” Angara said.

“More important to me on the issue of Senate independence, this may not be related to the desire of [President Aquino's] party to get the Senate leadership, but the timing is so close that people may suspect that this [review] was being done so that [Trillanes can vote for its candidate. That [speculation] is what we're trying to avoid,” he said.