What are we to make of the executive clemency President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo granted to the last 10 soldiers still serving time for the assassination, 25 years ago, of Ninoy Aquino (and also for the death of his alleged gunman Rolando Galman)? Our instinct is to decry the President?s obvious politicization of the pardoning process, and to express our outrage over the nation?s continuing failure to solve what has rightly been called the ?Crime of the Century.? But hard as it may be to accept, pardoning the convicts after they had served almost a quarter-century in jail was probably the right thing to do.

To be sure, when the late opposition leader?s only son, Sen. Benigno ?Noynoy? Aquino III, talks about the convicted soldiers? apparent lack of appropriate remorse, we feel his pain. ?They haven?t owned up to their sin. Why were they freed when they have yet to ask for forgiveness??

When we hear the late opposition leader?s famous daughter, the actress Kris Aquino, criticize the story line the convicted soldiers continue to tell, we share her anguish. ?I wanted to keep my silence but I was really bothered by the narrative of the soldiers. It?s just so sad that they can rewrite history.?

Legally, there is no dispute. The President has the power to grant executive clemency to any convict who is qualified, and the soldiers, because their life sentences had already been commuted, were qualified for the state?s extraordinary exercise of grace.

Morally, a consensus is taking shape fast. For instance, the Catholic Church which has been a source of strength and solace to the Aquino family all through these years has spoken, through two leading bishops, of the pardon as an eminently ethical decision. Archbishop Oscar Cruz of Lingayen-Dagupan may have spoken for many when he said, ?Justice, no matter how straightforward, should not fail its humane dimension, otherwise it becomes cruelty.?

In explaining the President?s decision, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita artfully let it be known that Bishop Efraim Tenedero of the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches was one of those who actively intervened on behalf of the soldiers.

Politically ? well, that?s where the pardon becomes complicated.

To the EDSA democrat ? the Filipino whose belief in the democratic project was renewed in the sudden spring of the People Power revolution ? the pardon amounts to a test of faith.

It is critical to know who masterminded the assassination, because gallant and vital as countless other sacrifices made or endured before Aug. 21, 1983 were, it was Aquino?s ?willing sacrifice of the innocent? that bloody Sunday which started the series of events that led, a thousand days later, to the People Power revolution on the EDSA highway.

It is even more crucial to know who masterminded the assassination because, over two decades after the democratic restoration, many enemies of democracy continue to lurk in the background, waiting to turn back history?s clock.

To the EDSA democrat, the pardon comes close to being a political tactic, designed to keep President Arroyo?s many enemies off-balance. Many Filipinos, in fact, may be ready to see the grant of executive clemency as given out of spite; Aquino?s widow, former President Corazon Aquino, has been calling on President Arroyo to resign since 2005. There may be something to that, and Ermita?s wishing away of the allegations of spite (?The President made a decision. So, we should not think of any other motive other than the fact the President thinks it?s about time they be given an executive clemency?) is downright absurd.

But Ms Arroyo?s political tactics aside, what can the nation gain from seeing the soldier-convicts continue in jail? If the object was to punish them, no one will contest that they have suffered enough ? and according to the law?s own standards. If the object was to rehabilitate them, the evidence of reformed lives is clear. But if the object was to force them, through incarceration, to reveal the truth behind the assassination, the fact that they have continued to say the same thing over and over again, the fact that they continue to tell the same unsatisfying story, should tell us that after a quarter-century we have nothing else, nothing more, to learn from them.

Time to let them go. After justice, mercy.