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When Senate President Villar’s Nacionalista Party
enters into an alliance with President Arroyo’s Lakas andKampi
parties, will the Senate still hold probes?
Malacañang—and its local
government allies, its allies who control a vast majority in the
House of Representatives and its supporters in the media – have
mocked senators for their investigations.
Mockery of their
investigations—sometimes reduced to the level of catcalls by
people reasonable men must suspect of being paid
propagandists—must not discourage the senators from holding the
kind of investigations, in aid of legislation, that they held to
learn the truth about the ZTE National Broadband Deal, the
proliferation of jueteng, the fertilizer scam, the “Hello, Garci”
tapes and several other maters.
The House of Representatives also
had investigations. But because its leadership and members are
mostly friends and apologists of the Palace, their investigations
into corrupt and shady dealings have tended more to promote the
administration’s desired results.
The power of inquiry of the
Congress—with the various tradition- and precedent-hallowed
processes to enforce it—is an essential and appropriate auxiliary
to the legislative function. How can the Congress legislate wisely
or effectively in the absence of information about the conditions
which the legislation is intended to affect or change? And when the
Congress does not have by simple research the information required,
it must be given the opportunity to obtain complete and correct data
by those who do possess them.
In our country, however, mere
requests for required information do not yield correct and complete
results. This is why Congress is also given powers to punish
witnesses who refuse to testify and submit documents, and refuse to
tell the truth when they do attend hearings in aid of legislation.
The Arroyo administration has
made it ever so difficult to get at the truth about its affairs.
More and more of these are layered with mysteries, missing or
contradictory documents and preposterous deviations from the normal.
These deviations are so commonplace that even the person most
committed to seeing only the positive cannot but suspect corruption,
misuse of funds and abuse of authority.
The latest triumph of the
administration in its campaign to keep its affairs secret is the
Supreme Court decision upholding the misuse of the principle of
executive privilege by Malacañang. The decision, against which
Supreme Court Chief Justice Reynato Puno wrote a dissenting opinion,
now allows the Palace and its officials to invoke executive
privilege on anything.
This makes it imperative for the
Senate to hold hearings in aid of legislation about things and
matters that must be reformed in our country. Every department of
life under the Arroyo administration has been so corroded by
corruption that laws governing everything must be repealed or
drastically amended. Therefore, the Senate must hold hearings about
everything and anything.
Executive privilege allow the
cabinet officials and their underlings to refuse to attend hearings
or answer the simplest questions. A simple question that senators
have asked and have often been given no answer is: How much has been
spent on that project and to whom were funds paid?
The senators can, however, still
try to get to the bottom of things by inviting non-government
witnesses who cannot invoke Malacañang’s blanket weapon against
Truth.
The senators must of course use
the best techniques to make ABS CBN, ANC and GMA TV and radio crews
cover the hearings live. This is now ever more necessary to keep the
information lifeblood of Philippine democracy flowing. Media
coverage must offset the Palace’s and the various Cabinet
department’s determined efforts to keep the general public and the
members of Congress ignorant of what really the administration is
doing, how much it is spending and who it is paying.
We hope Mr. Villar’s alliance
with Malacañang’s parties does not mean he too will now help keep
information from the people.
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