Presidential legal counsel Salvador Panelo. INQUIRER.net / CATHY MIRANDA
Senator Antonio Triilanes IV should be dead by now if democracy in the country is dead, Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo said on Wednesday.
Panelo made the remark to refute Trillanes’ claim that democracy died when the Makati Regional Trial Court Branch 150 issued an arrest warrant against him over the Manila Peninsula siege in 2007.
“Kung walang demokrasya dito, either na-salvage na iyan, nakulong na iyan o pinatay na iyan. ‘Di ba? Kung totoo iyong mga pinagsasabi niya. Eh hindi totoo kasi, kaya nandiyan pa rin siya,” Panelo said in an interview over dzRH.
(If there is no democracy here, it is either he is summarily executed, jailed or killed. Right? If what he is saying is true. But it is not true that is why he is still there.)
Shortly after the Makati court ordered his arrest for rebellion, Trillanes on Tuesday said democracy died at the hands of President Rodrigo Duterte.
READ: Trillanes yields to police
The senator insisted that his prosecution was a clear attempt to silence the administration’s critics.
Trillanes, one of Duterte’s staunch critics, had previously holed up in the Senate for three weeks after Duterte revoked the amnesty given to him by former President Benigno Aquino III.
Panelo also reminded the opposition senator that he is the living proof that democracy is still alive.
“The living proof that democracy is alive is Trillanes himself,” Panelo said.
“Look what he is doing, he is maligning the government and nandiyan pa rin siya,” he added. /jpv
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