A NEW petition against the renewal of the legislative franchise of ABS-CBN Corp. was filed before the Supreme Court (SC) by Lorenzo Gadon, the lawyer who also filed the impeachment complaint against former chief justice Maria Lourdes Sereno.

In his petition fpr prohibition, Gadon said the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) has neither authority nor jurisdiction to issue a permit to operate to ABS-CBN when its franchise ends on May 4, 2020.

“I am not against the granting of franchise to ABS-CBN, if that is the will of the Congress. ‘Yung ang House ay magbibigay ng provision sa NTC that is another aspect,” Gadon told reporters.

The petition added that “the Congress, not Cayetano or Alvarez, has the exclusive jurisdiction to grant, modify, renew, or repeal a legislative franchise.”

He was reacting to the letter sent by House committee on legislative franchises chairman Franz Alvarez and House Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano to the NTC, enjoining it to grant ABS-CBN a provisional authority to operate while Congress deliberates on the pending bills.

Gadon said both Cayetano and Alvarez “infringed on the fundamental principle of separations of powers in our system of government.”

He also disagreed with Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra.

In a letter addressed to the NTC last February 28, Guevarra said the concurrent resolution from both chambers of Congress would provide legal basis to the practice of allowing networks with pending franchise renewal bills to operate past the expiraton of their licenses.

“I disagree with the honorable Secretary of Justice because a franchise is a law. You cannot replace it with just a resolution,” Gadon said. (SunStar Philippines)