Monday, April 07, 2008 Arinday: Another brewing controversy By GH Arinday, Jr. Sunfare
ANOTHER CONTROVERSY is now in the offing, as a fall-out from the issue of executive privilege that the Supreme Court in a 9-6 majority vote thumbed down the Senate's investigative powers touching primarily on security and diplomatic matters.
This time, it is about the "house rules" on any congressional inquiry. Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita insists that there must be definite rules to be followed but Senate President Manuel Villar thinks otherwise.
Viewed from our historic attitudes, we have taken the whole matter with complacency if not ignorance that the due process clause in the Constitution applies with equal legal safeguards just as well in any congressional inquiry. It is not an exclusive staple of judicial business.
There is cogent reason to adopt such procedural requirements given the vast powers of Congress in any inquiry if honestly done in aid of legislation.
Due process is not a mere legal niceties but a means of "preventing and correcting the unfair exercise of governmental power".
In the celebrated case of Sec. Romulo Neri, a member of the Senate delving into the aborted ZTE National Broadband Network deal, threatened to expose the private life of the cabinet member, which is a classic example that in the absence of any body of rules governing the inquiry, there appears to be a limitless exercise of a "senatorial" privilege to cross the zones dividing the sphere of sanity and its opposites.
What is paramount in any congressional inquiry purposely to enhance the effectiveness of the law is the kind of treatment accorded to a "resource person" or witnesses who have first-hand knowledge of the subject-matter.
Woe unto those pilloried by a "surprise" witness, which under the modicum requirements of fairness and equity is a gross violation of individual rights. It is reminiscent of inquisition or war-time period when hooded witnesses would make indiscriminate identification of a purported "enemy" of the State.
Under the premises obtaining in the Senate inquiry, there is no escaping the observation and necessity for balance, if indeed, a citizen being a sovereign and the source of governmental powers must be given full respect and protection whichever demand arises. But this is not the case as it appears that the Senate inquiry has embodied in one body the trinity of due process-that of the prosecution, the judge, and the executioner.
Nothing is more civilized than to meet the requirements of the due process and avoid the quicksand in putting the system in place and avoid paying the price of an unpardonable error.
In this country where anything is possible, including psychosis, the rule must be lucidly written and couched in terms or phrases firmly definite to avoid deconstructions.
It is plain hubris if one insists that his set of rules must be the governing procedure as it is an affront to the dignity of an individual, let alone his primordial privilege to be free from nonsensical barrage of questions. If one is confronted with unwritten rules, is it not inequity? Worst, if one gives an answer undesired by the senators, he would likely be held in contempt. Is this due process? If everybody is equal before the law, what is equality to speak of?
It is unfortunate that for a long time there are only few solons given the favor to have a seat in the august body with parliamentary acumen. Of course, of course, the citizens' error in electing some of them can never be an excuse for any elected member of Congress to flaunt his misunderstood power. He or she is bound to study the metes and bounds of his parliamentary authority. They must impress in their minds that they are public servants and not clad with pseudo divine powers.
If by any reason, the Senate inquiry on matters believed worthy of such attention instead of legislating, they must by all means create the rules by which an ordinary citizen can be fully informed in consonance with the timeless principle of due process.
Good publicity must proceed from pure intentions of really improving the legislative mill and the positive effectiveness of the law desired to be improved.
If the purpose is merely in aid of publicity and projection of the individual for some hidden agenda, then put a stop to all those wasteful investigations and spare the public from stress and anguish.
