Philippine military chief Romeo Brawner Jnr has revealed he recently rebuffed a group of eight retired generals and colonels who urged him to tackle rampant corruption in the country, a call sources have described as a push for a “soft coup” to withdraw support from President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr and back Vice-President Sara Duterte-Carpio.
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General Brawner, who spoke to This Week in Asia after a briefing with the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (Focap) on Friday, said the overture was made on September 20, on the eve of nationwide protests over the 1.9 trillion peso (US$33 billion) flood control corruption scandal.
The officers, led by retired air force major general Romeo Poquiz, delivered their request in person at Camp Aguinaldo, where Brawner was meeting his joint battle staff under red alert.
The meeting offers a rare window into how the country’s top military leadership handled the most direct appeal yet to abandon the president amid his biggest political crisis to date.
But Brawner said the institution’s long memory of past military uprisings – including coups he personally witnessed – had made today’s force more resistant than ever to political adventurism.
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“I told them we are one with the people in our fight against corruption,” said Brawner, the armed forces’ chief of staff. “But I told them that we are different in the way we express, for instance, our dismay at what’s happening.”