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Raissa Robles

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.
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 a 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 armed forces more resistant than ever to political adventurism.
“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.”
He recalled telling the group: “When we took that oath, we gave up some of our rights. And one of the rights that we gave up is the right of self-expression, the right of freedom of speech.”

‘Military is solid’
Brawner said the meeting took place after Poquiz personally delivered a letter requesting an “audience” with the military chief, which was handed in at the gates of Camp Aguinaldo earlier that week during a rally. The general convened his senior commanders from the army, navy and air force, given the red alert status in place at the time.
“We gave General Poquiz a chance to talk to us, to air their grievances,” Brawner said, describing how the group expressed concern over corruption and dissatisfaction with the Marcos administration.
But the subtext was clear: Poquiz and his allies were advocating for a leadership change in favour of Duterte-Carpio – Marcos’ estranged vice-president and daughter of his chief political rival, former president Rodrigo Duterte.
“They don’t say withdrawal of support,” Brawner said. “What they say is, the government has too many corrupt [officials] including senators and congressmen. Are you going to accede to this?”
The answer, he said, was a firm no.
A highly placed source told This Week in Asia: “When you talk to Brawner, who is at the very top of the chain of command just before the president, that’s a soft coup asking for withdrawal of support because only the military chief can withdraw support.”
This was “the same template” used in 2001 when then military chief General Angelo Reyes was also persuaded to withdraw his support from president Joseph Estrada, the source added.
Brawner insisted that the military’s foundations were unshakeable, telling the retired officers “the military is solid” and that today’s institution was “a very professional and disciplined organisation”, as he credited Poquiz and the seven other retired officers with “inculcating discipline and professionalism” across the ranks.
He linked that discipline to reforms introduced since 2010, aimed at preventing the conditions that once enabled coups to thrive. Under what became known as the military’s transformation road map, the armed forces adopted a performance-governance system based on individual and unit “scorecards”, along with oversight from a Multi-Sector Advisory Board to enforce transparency and civilian-aligned goals.
Many of today’s battalion and division commanders, now in their forties and fifties, came up through this system and were shaped by its emphasis on professionalism over personal loyalty, Brawner told This Week in Asia after the Focap briefing.
The armed forces also now require any soldier approached about political agitation to immediately report the incident through the chain of command.
“That’s why we have a list of those who approach younger officers and we are monitoring their moves,” he said. Still, the military cannot arrest those involved unless formally deputised by the Philippine National Police.

Shadow of past uprisings
Brawner believes a “soft coup” today would fail not just because of reforms, but because the military has lived through what happens when loyalty to the chain of command breaks down.
He pointed to two episodes that left a lasting imprint on the institution – and on him.
In October 1990, renegade colonel Alexander Noble in the southern Philippines proclaimed a breakaway “Federal Republic of Mindanao” and seized two army camps, demanding the ousting of then president Corazon Aquino. The putsch collapsed without bloodshed, but not before highlighting the vulnerabilities of a military still recovering from dictatorship.
But it was the December 1989 uprising – the bloodiest coup attempt since the fall of Ferdinand Marcos Snr – that shaped Brawner most. He was a young lieutenant then, stationed at Fort Magsaysay, when troops from elite Scout Ranger units as well as battalion and division commanders defected and tried to join a siege on Camp Aguinaldo in Manila.
“I saw soldiers turn rifles on each other, taking the lives of comrades,” Brawner wrote in a commentary published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on September 23. “I stood in disbelief as the ideals we swore to uphold collapsed into violence, while Filipinos bore the cost of our military camps becoming battlegrounds.”
One especially tragic moment occurred when a marine officer fired upon a landing vehicle, only to discover that the rebel soldier inside was, in fact, his own brother. This harrowing incident was reported by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Manuel Mogato, who was on the ground covering the siege at the time.
Brawner noted that a government investigation later revealed how opaque chains of command, shifting loyalties and covert planning had allowed that revolt to escalate – lessons that inspired many of the checks and protocols now embedded in the armed forces.
That institutional memory, he said, was why today’s military held firm even as recent protests flared and retired officers urged intervention.
“The tragedies of the past no longer define us,” Brawner said. “Despite the anger and calls for us to intervene, the military did not fracture. Not a single soldier raised arms against another.”
He called that “the most hopeful sign”.
“In my term as chief of staff, I feared we might again reach a point where soldiers turned on each other because of politics. What I witnessed proved those fears unfounded. The Armed Forces of the Philippines today is united, disciplined and professional.”


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Memories of past uprisings have made today’s military more resistant than ever to political adventurism, General Romeo Brawner Jnr says


Memories of past uprisings have made today’s military more resistant than ever to political adventurism, General Romeo Brawner Jnr says.


.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Memories of past uprisings have made today’s military more resistant than ever to political adventurism, General Romeo Brawner Jnr says

Memories of past uprisings have made today’s military more resistant than ever to political adventurism, General Romeo Brawner Jnr says