The clearest sign that a pardon for convicted Magdalo mutineers is in the works lies in Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno’s high-profile role in the process, the same role he played in managing a pardon for convicted plunderer Joseph Estrada. We can expect President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to approve Puno’s recommendation. It is the political thing to do.

We oppose this pardon for the same reasons we opposed the other one: It is premature, it sends the wrong message about crime and accountability and it allows politics, yet again, to trump the rule of law.

We realize that many would welcome a pardon for the nine mutineers convicted last week by the Makati Regional Trial Court. Certainly, for the President and her allies it is a way to soothe restiveness in the ranks and consolidate control of the military. (Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Hermogenes Esperon is staunchly anti-coup, but he has gone on the record as saying that offering executive clemency to the nine convicted mutineers may be appropriate.) For others, it is simply the humanitarian thing to do. It has been almost five years since the Magdalo mutiny; surely the mutineers have spent enough time in detention?

The Arroyo administration made much of the same argument for Estrada, as though the years the deposed president spent in his suite at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center and his rest house in Tanay were sufficient penalty for the crime he was finally convicted of. The Magdalo mutineers who changed their plea to guilty did not enjoy the same amenities Estrada did; their time in detention has taken a serious toll on them.

But there’s no getting away from the reality, indeed the enormity, of what they did in July 2003. Some of the country’s most elite soldiers, with top-of-the-line equipment and superior training, rose in arms against the duly constituted authority and took over a luxury high-rise in the middle of the country’s prime business district. Regardless of the justness of some of their demands, their mutiny cannot be countenanced. Their kind of adventurism must be punished—or else it will erupt again.

Twice in the past two years the country came under threat from the same kind of military adventurism. Perhaps the inordinate length of the trial of the Magdalo soldiers may have been an additional factor in encouraging the latest adventurism—which is all the more reason then to uphold the court’s convictions. Behavior, psychologists will remind us, is reinforcement.

Again, as in the Estrada plunder case, the public outrage over the original crime has waned over the years. We would not be surprised if a majority of Filipinos were to support pardon for the mutineers. Enough is enough, they may say; it is, in fact, time to move on.

But then we Filipinos have always been famously forgiving. We may not forget, but we all too easily forgive.

Why not extend the same, the traditional, courtesy to the nine Magdalo mutineers? Because the rule of law must prevail over sentimental tradition. From the time the hapless military rebels who took over Manila Hotel in 1986 were punished with push-ups, the signal sent has been unmistakable: Crime pays. Or at least breaks even.

It is for this reason that we support the unpopular effort to have the Magdalo mutineers serve some time in jail. They must serve as the right kind of example to others in the military who may still harbor dreams of adventurism, or think that the fundamental principle of civilian supremacy is open to negotiation.