INQUIRER PHOTO / NIÑO JESUS ORBETA
Magdalo party-list Rep. Gary Alejano is used to taking on presidents.
He was one of the core leaders of the Magdalo rebel junior officers who tried to force President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to step down on corruption allegations twice: during the Oakwood mutiny in 2003; and during the Manila Peninsula siege in 2007.
For these incidents, Alejano and his fellow officers, including Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, spent seven years in jail. They were granted amnesty by President Benigno Aquino III.
By some twist of fate, Arroyo and Alejano, who used to be a member of her Presidential Security Group, are now colleagues in the House of Representatives.
“The question is, were there reasons to go against the President? Do we do this just to grab power? No, we don’t,” Alejano told the Inquirer shortly after filing an impeachment complaint against President Duterte on Thursday.
Alejano said Magdalo had been consistent in its cause: to make the highest leaders of the land accountable to the people.
Alejano said that while the Magdalo allied with Aquino throughout his six-year term, that did not mean it did not call the former President to task.
Alejano recalled the time when Aquino and some lawmakers met at Malacañang in the aftermath of the Mamasapano debacle in 2015. “In a respectful manner, I told the President that we would have a problem if he didn’t step up as a leader,” he said.
This time around, Magdalo wants Mr. Duterte to answer for his alleged misdeeds a mere nine months into his presidency.
“We’re now working within the system. If they think we are destabilizing the government, then that only means that there [are] no longer checks and balances [in] the government,” Alejano said.
Like Trillanes, Alejano is a graduate of the Philippine Military Academy Class of 1995, who immediately saw action on the field. He was among the junior officers who took part in the fierce all-out war against Moro rebels declared by President Joseph Estrada in 2000.
Alejano, who was wounded in battle, was subsequently nominated for the Medal of Valor.
But the nomination remains pending with the Armed Forces of the Philippines because of his participation in the Oakwood mutiny.