By Alejandro Lichauco
The most surprising and significant aspect of recent events is the revelation that Gen. Danilo Lim of Scout Rangers fame has been part of the military resistance. This revelation came with his arrest as he approached Chief of Staff Generoso Senga to tell him that “Sir, the people are waiting. It is time to act.”
Those are dramatic words which will be part of this nation’s military history for a long time to come.
Surprisingly, because Lim, after he was returned to active service (he was among the original founder of the Young Officers Union or YOU and was one of the spark plugs in the military rebellion of 1989 for which he was temporarily terminated from active service) was seen to have abandoned the fire and idealism that had driven his group and to have chosen the life of military conformity and obedience to further his career. From the rank of captain then, he has steadily risen to the rank of general, and eventually placed in charge of the elite Scout Rangers.
Lim is today a universally respected military figure, both in and out of the military establishment and holds the unique distinction of being one of those rare generals who rose from the ranks and yet remains unstained even by the slightest hint of corruption.
The significance of all this? Well, figure it out. The reputation of the Armed Forces today is in absolute tatters and generals are universally perceived to be as crooked, corrupt and double-dealing as the trapos. Mention the word general and you might as well mention corruption, this time in uniform.
That’s the reason the arrest of Lim on grounds that he has been part of the military resistance after all, as he had been in 1989, is immeasurably significant not only for the Armed Forces but for the nation. Because what the arrest of Lim has shown is that the military establishment nourishes within its breast not only junior officers of idealism and patriotism but surprise - of all - surprises ranking generals too. And the question raised is, just exactly how many Danny Lims are there?
If this nation has been in despair and crisis, it is because people have lost faith in just every institution that makes up its government, from the police to the Supreme Court and from the Congress to the Armed Forces.
What Lim and the idealistic junior officers have proved is that the Armed Forces, after all, have within both their junior and senior ranks men who can be trusted to come to the aid and redemption of the nation and the protection of the people, that it remains the only institution that offers both the prospect and capability of reconstructing and reinventing itself and discharging its role as the ultimate “protector of the people and of the state” not only against external enemy but against the enemies within.
Hope and the promise of national redemption is what the arrest of Danilo Lim has given the nation and the Armed Forces which he represents. And that is service enough, in these times of singular service, in a time of national despair.
Not all in sum is darkness. There is, after all, light at the end of the tunnel and that light is what Lim, together with youthful lieutenants and captains that compromise the Magdalo and Magdiwang factions, represent.
This piece hazards the observation that far from aborting the coup attempts, the arrest of the highly and widely respected Lim has only infused new vigor in the resistance movement and represents a quantum leap in the people’s rebellion against a hopelessly corrupt political and economic establishment.
There is hope after all.
