President Marcos Jr. must start prosecuting treason now

Outrageous is what it is.

As reported by another publication: “President Marcos Jr. led the mid-year AFP command conference at Camp Aguinaldo on July 4 with Department of National Defense (DND) Secretary Gilberto Teodoro, Jr.,” along with “service unit commanders, ground commanders, and other high-ranking officials.” Reportedly, “following a heated discussion,” an “unnamed AFP general… stood up, rendered a salute, and said: ‘Permission to leave, sir.’ Other generals in the room allegedly followed suit.”

However, there was one thing wrong with the account — it was an absolute lie and complete rubbish.

AFP spokesperson Col. Francel Padilla vociferously debunked the “fake news”: “I was there personally. There is nothing of that sort that happened.” In fact, “it was a very professional exchange of ideas and discussions and there [were] also a lot of updates that [were] given. It all ended on a positive note.” (“Another fake news! No walkout of AFP generals during command conference — official,” Manila Bulletin, July 16, 2024). Her statement was later corroborated by others present at the conference.

Clearly the foregoing acts are seditious.

Even more so when such fake news was followed by open calls for President Marcos Jr. to step down and for the military to disobey or otherwise withdraw support from the Commander-in-Chief.

We must stop the normalization of treason.

The Revised Penal Code (Arts. 134-142) penalizes with up to six years imprisonment any person that incites others to sedition or leads or tends to stir up the people against the lawful authorities.

Batasan Pambansa 39 or the “Act Regulating the Activities and Requiring the Registration of Foreign Agents in the Philippines” penalizes those propagandizing in favor of a foreign hostile country to the detriment or damage of Philippine national security.

Finally, there is Commonwealth Act No. 616, “An Act to Punish Espionage and Other Offenses Against the National Security.” This covers instances of a person sharing confidential information that could negatively affect the security of the country, either by sharing it with foreign countries or unduly sharing it with the public in a manner undermining the government’s declared national security policy.

However, it is the provisions of Section 3 thereof that are now most relevant: Imprisonment of up to 10 years can be imposed upon any person who, with intent to interfere with, impair, or influence the loyalty, morale, or discipline of the military, naval, or air forces of the Philippines: (a) advises, counsels, or urges, or in any manner cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty by any member of the military, naval, or air forces of the Philippines; or (b) distributes any written or printed matter which advises, counsels, or urges insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty by any member of the military, naval, or air forces of the Philippines.

Moved by the utter gravity of the situation, constitutionalist and Dean of the San Beda Graduate School of Law Fr. Ranhilio Aquino posted this on his Facebook page on July 17):

“Elements, agents, servants of the PROC [People’s Republic of China] who have wormed their way into Philippine society should be sniffed out, exposed and either proceeded against judicially, perhaps even administratively, or summarily deported.

“Those who insist that there is no such thing as a Philippine claim in the West Philippine Sea are maintaining a position adverse to the interests of the Republic. There is something more than free speech involved here: the paramount interests of the Republic of the Philippines and the threat of a society subverted by lackeys of a foreign power.

“Under German law as well as the laws of many other countries, it is a crime to deny that the Holocaust ever occurred. There are some propositions that CANNOT be maintained. There is a limit to the capacity for free speech — when free speech is such that it makes the future survival of the Republic perilous, then such speech cannot be countenanced.

“Government must also purge itself of those elements that not-too-subtly use their positions to support the PROC incursions into what international law holds to be ours.”

We completely agree. We urge the Marcos Administration, in the interests of national security, to investigate and prosecute anyone and everybody practically committing treason (in the general sense of the word) in our midst. It must assert its authority in securing the Constitutional goal of securing “the sovereignty of the State and the integrity of the national territory.”

We also urge Congress to criminalize treason even in relative “peacetime.”

We must not allow the perversion of our civil liberties to be used against us by those seeking to undermine not only our constitutional system but our Republic itself.

The views expressed here are his own and not necessarily those of the institutions to which he belongs.

Jemy Gatdula is the dean of the Institute of Law of the University of Asia and the Pacific and is a Philippine Judicial Academy lecturer for constitutional philosophy and jurisprudence. He read international law at the University of Cambridge.