Sundalo Tagapagtanggol ng Pilipino - Soldiers of the People

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Scout Rangers, Marines and Special Action Forces Officers under Investigation and Custody, in Detention, and/or Changed

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Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim

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Brig. Gen. Francisco Gudani

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Maj. Gen. Renato Miranda

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Col. Orlando de Leon

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Col. Ariel Querubin

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Lt. Col. Alexander Balutan

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Ltsg. Antonio Trillanes IV

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Capt. Nicanor Faeldon

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Capt. Rene Jarque

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Sen. & Lt. Col. Gregorio Honasan

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Gen. Jose Almonte

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We Belong

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We Belong

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Who is Col. Ariel Querubin?

Alecks Pabico, PCIJ, February 27, 2006

COLONEL Ariel Querubin is no ordinary soldier.

Presently the commander of the 1st Marine Brigade, Querubin is a recipient of the military’s highest honor in 2002 for the most exemplary heroism and sacrifice displayed in combat — the Medal of Honor. As a lieutenant colonel, he commanded a Marine battalion landing team that engaged an estimated 300-strong, fully armed band of Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels in a 24-hour gun battle in Kauswagan, Lanao del Norte from March 18 to 19, 2000.

Though outnumbered and facing heavy artillery fire, his forces succeeded in breaking the last line of defense of the rebel stronghold, resulting in the capture of Camp John Mack, the MILF’s most strategic staging area for operations.

In the citation, he was described as having inspired courage in his men with his daring maneuvers, unmindful of his own safety, moving positions and drawing fire towards himself with the end of pinpointing where the enemy fire was coming from.

Interestingly, Querubin’s wife was pregnant and about to give birth in a few weeks at the time. The colonel was said to have admitted that her wife’s situation didn’t occur to him for a while. “All I thought about was that my men depended on me,” he said.

Now 49, Querubin is a proud father of seven. While the Medal of Valor award afforded him such perks of getting prioritized in promotion to the next rank, medical benefits, scholarships and tuition privileges for himself and his dependents, he still works in the field most of the time, coming home just once a month for no more than a week at any given time.

Interviewed for the Marine corps newsletter once, Querubin said he makes sure to spend quality time with his kids since he is away most of the time. “My wife will tell me, pagalitan mo si ganito, si ganun, and I would say, hindi ako, gusto ko pag uumuwi ako masaya sila at nami-miss nila ako.” He believes his distance should not give his children a reason to be even more distant.

In the active service for almost three decades now, Querubin has always wanted to become a Marine. “Love of country talaga ang nagtulak sa akin,” he said. “Naramdaman ko na rito ang calling ko.”

Querubin is proud of the kind of discipline that the Marine corps as an institution practices. “We make sure na ang mga tauhan, marunong rumespeto ng ibang tao,” he said, pointing to the high credibility enjoyed by the Marines. "‘Pag may lapses, seryoso kaming wag marumihan ang reputasyon (ng Marines).”

Querubin’s career, however, has also been marked by involvements in "military adventurism." As co-founder of the military fraternity Young Officers’ Union (YOU), he and his men joined about 3,000 rebel troops in the bloodiest coup attempt against the Aquino administration in December 1989. They were imprisoned but later pardoned and reinstated in the service in 1995, after retired general Fidel Ramos, who was elected president in 1992, granted amnesty to military rebels.

Only recently, Querubin was implicated in the alleged thwarted plot to unseat Arroyo. Querubin confirmed yesterday that he planned to join street protests last February 24, taking with him a "majority" of the 400-strong Marine officer corps.

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Bosom Buddies

Glenda Gloria, Newsbreak

They are so alike in many ways. They belong to elite fighting units in the Armed Forces, their men look up to them, and they have scars to show-physical and psychological-for the cause they once fought for as leaders of the Young Officers Union. They're very good friends as well.

When Lim and Querubin led the December 1989 coup that came close to toppling the Aquino government, both were 33. Now 50 years old, they've come full circle, yet again mired in a rebellion that many thought they had shaken off from their system.

Government bullets pierced through Querubin's chest in his daring attack on Camp Aguinaldo on the first day of the failed 1989 coup. He survived, won an amnesty in 1995 under the Ramos administration, and went back to the Marines, embraced by the organization that he rebelled against. In 2000, he led his battalion in a ferocious fight against Muslim rebels in Lanao, for which he was awarded the coveted Medal of Valor.

Lim was not wounded in the 1989 coup, but had to carry the burden of leading his fellow Scout Rangers back to barracks after they gave up on their siege of Makati's financial district. His career took a backseat after, but he came back with a vengeance after the 1995 amnesty, returning to the Scout Rangers and getting his first star in 2003-the youngest general to be named and one who jumped over many heads in the hierarchy.

It was President Arroyo who gave Lim his first star-a move that critics say was the President's way of rewarding her "adopted" classmate in the Philippine Military Academy (1978). Lim belongs to Class 1978 because he spent his first year at the PMA with them before going to West Point. Querubin is likewise associated with Class 1978 because he spent years with them, too, before he was turned back and was made to graduate with Class 1979.

Ironically, Lim's career was resurrected under the Estrada administration when he was appointed to the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) under then DILG Undersecretary Narciso Santiago, husband of Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago. After Estrada's ouster, Lim went back to the Army and shortly before the 2003 Oakwood mutiny was appointed commander of the First Scout Ranger Regiment.

On the other hand, Querubin spent most of his post-1989 years fighting Muslim guerrillas in the South. He was the deputy of then Brig. Gen. Renato Miranda when the latter was brigade commander in Basilan in 2002. Miranda was commandant of the Marines until his relief last February 26.

Before his brigade assignment in Marawi, Querubin headed the training center of the Marines based in Fort Bonifacio. It was in Fort Bonifacio where Querubin got wind of the complaints of young Marine officers about the conduct of the 2004 presidential elections. One officer who complained bitterly to him was his former deputy in Lanao: Lt. Col. Alexander Balutan, who would later testify with retired Brig. Gen. Francisco Gudani about alleged anomalies in the 2004 polls.

Lim was caught in a similar situation. His operations officer at the Rangers, Maj. Jason Aquino, was relieved last year for distributing leaflets that called for a new political system. Aquino was sacked from the Rangers amid speculations that Lim was either to be transferred to another post or sent abroad.

Asked about this, Lim told NEWSBREAK then in a text message: "If they transfer me this time, I'm going to retire."

They didn't-and he went on to lead yet another failed coup.

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Danilo Lim's "Roller-Coaster Ride"

Fe Zamora, Inquirer, March 5, 2006

AS he lay dying in January last year, retired Commodore Domingo Calajate kept asking for Capt. Danilo Lim. When Lim finally showed up at the Cardinal Santos Hospital, the nurses heaved a sigh of relief and ushered him into a room.

“How can I refuse a dying man’s wish?” Lim would tell the Inquirer in May at the Club Filipino, where he was given a testimonial dinner for his promotion as brigadier general, and as chair of the Rebolusyonaryong Alyansang Makabansa (RAM), which was Calajate’s dying wish.

In his speech, Lim dispelled doubts about possible conflict of interest that may arise from his positions in the Armed Forces of the Philippines and in RAM, which, despite a peace pact with the government, continues to be linked to destabilization plots. Lim emphasized that under his helm, RAM would become a civic group, even a cooperative for the welfare of retired and active military men.

Calajate’s final request highlighted his trust and confidence in Lim over the more senior former Sen. Gregorio “Gringo” Honasan, who co-founded RAM, then known as Reform the Armed Forces Movement, in 1985. Honasan tried to wrest control of RAM by declaring himself chair of the steering committee. But majority of RAM’s some 4,000 membership agreed to honor Calajate’s choice.

Former rebel soldiers from RAM, Young Officers Union and the Soldiers of the Filipino People (SFP) speak highly of Lim’s role in the peace negotiations in 1993, which resulted in amnesty in 1995. Except for those who opted to retire with full benefits, the mutinous troops, including those convicted for the 1987 violent attack on Camp Aguinaldo, were reinstated and given back pay for years spent in the military stockade.

No work no pay

Lim, the defiant Army captain who led the march of fully armed Rangers back to Fort Bonifacio after a failed coup in December 1989, waived his back pay, invoking his personal creed of “no work, no pay.” But he would not impose his belief on others. That was one of the reasons he negotiated the back pay.

Close friends said that was typical Danny, whose military career had been described by his wife, Aloysia Tiongson-Lim, as an exhilarating “roller-coaster ride.”

“Danny’s military career can be described as a roller-coaster ride mainly due to his principles, advocacy and fight for ideals in the military organization and good governance for the country,” she wrote in the class roster.

West Point

A 1978 graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point and member of the same batch at the Philippine Military Academy (PMA), Lim’s military career began as platoon leader of the all-Igorot Forward Recon Unit based in Jolo, a unique group organized and led by another controversial officer, then Lt. Ricardo “Dick” Morales.

But Lim’s career took a nosedive when rebel soldiers led by him occupied the Makati commercial district from Dec. 1 to 7, 1989 in an attempt to unseat President Corazon Aquino.

The Scout Rangers occupied Makati after other rebel attempts to seize military installations had failed, including the rebel Marines who rammed Gate 1 of Camp Aguinaldo with a Landing Vehicle Tracked (LVT), leaving more than a dozen soldiers dead and wounded.

... Ariel Querubin’s escape

Among the ‘cadavers’ was the team leader—then Capt. Ariel Querubin. Querubin was bleeding profusely from wounds in the stomach. A doctor who checked the cadavers for identification, however, noticed a slight twitch on his finger.

Querubin was nursed back to life at the V. Luna Hospital where he would escape months later with the help of the doctor. Years after the incident, Querubin would tell the Inquirer that his getaway vehicle was driven by a businessman.

Wanted

He joined the underground rebel group when the military issued “wanted posters” with rewards for him and three other Marines who were branded “mad bombers and terrorists.” Then AFP chief of staff Gen. Renato de Villa even described Querubin as “psychotic.”

By that time, however, Querubin’s exploits at Gate 1 had already formed part of combat stories that soldiers love to talk about among themselves.

Even his classmates expressed awe at his exploits, but in typical PMA banter. “Whenever we hear rumors of a coup, we always ask, ‘On which side is Ariel?’ We don’t want to be on his side because he would surely survive, and we won’t,” a colonel from PMA Class 1979 said with a laugh.

Truancy

Even at the PMA, Querubin already led a charmed life, according to another classmate. Querubin was originally a member of class 1977, but was “turned back” twice for various infractions of PMA regulations, such as drinking alcohol, breaking curfew and even plain truancy. “But never on academic deficiencies,” Querubin once told the Inquirer.

That Lim and Querubin would find themselves on the same side during the 1989 coup was something that colleagues did not find surprising. But their amnesty and subsequent promotion were resented by officers who fought them during the coup. One officer said promoting Lim would send the wrong signal to younger officers that in the military “one can get away with murder.”

The rebellious past of Querubin was also the subject of discussion by the board that decided to award him the Medal of Valor. A source, who was privy to the discussion, said the issue also hinged on the “wrong signal” that could arise from giving the most prestigious medal to a former rebel.

That they would become “suspects” in fresh plots to unseat a President also did not surprise a police senior superintendent, who is close to both Lim and Querubin.

“They are not corrupt. They are both idealists and they have their own tales of heroism that would inspire soldiers to follow them,” the source, a 1978 PMA graduate who is involved in monitoring suspected coup plotters, told the Inquirer.

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