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With days to go before the inaugural session of the
Fourteenth Congress, the issue of whether detained Sen. Antonio
Trillanes 4th could attend remains unresolved.
As of Friday, the courts had not
decided on Trillanes’ petition to be allowed to attend the Senate
session.
Trillanes is being held at Fort
Bonifacio on charges of leading the Oakwood mutiny. The Department
of Justice has opposed his petition.
If Trillanes is allowed to
attend, he will be seated between Senate President Manuel Villar and
Sen. Miguel Zubiri. Trillanes has said he would not want to have a
“cheat” for a colleague in the Senate, referring to Zubiri whom
he charged of having benefited from election fraud in Maguindanao.
Under Senate tradition, senators
are seated in alphabetical order at the inaugural session while the
Senate secretary presides until the election of the Senate
President. If this tradition is set aside and Villar presides before
the election, then Trillanes and Zubiri would be sitting side by
side.
After the election, the seating
would be minority senators on one side and majority senators on the
other. Trillanes is expected to belong to the minority, and Zubiri,
the majority.
Senators Francis Pangilinan and
Mar Roxas both expressed the hope that the courts would allow
Trillanes to attend Monday’s and subsequent sessions.
“If the senator is not allowed
by the court to attend the opening of Congress on Monday, then my
colleagues and I have no choice but to respect that decision.
However, the justice department, in continuing to oppose the
senator’s petition, must not delude itself that having such an
empty chair will sit well with our people,” Roxas said.
Pangilinan said that Trillanes’
attendance is now the court’s call.
“The grant of bail for Senator
Trillanes is the courts’ domain, but I will support any resolution
that would make the Senate co-petitioner in seeking the grant of
bail,” he said.
Trillanes could not vote on any
Senate issue while he is detained. The Senate rules require physical
presence for a senator to vote.
--Efren L. Danao
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