It’s a valid question: Did both Houses of Congress conduct their most recent high-profile hearings only for the purpose of the usual grandstanding and smearing?
The Senate committee on justice, under the new management of Senator Richard Gordon, has exonerated President Rodrigo Duterte at the end of its investigations on alleged extrajudicial killings. On the other hand, the House justice committee, led by Oriental Mindoro Rep. Reynaldo Umali, has failed to recommend charges against Senator Leila de Lima, after holding its own headline-hogging probe of the illegal drug trade at the New Bilibid Prison.
If you think that the enemies of Duterte in the Senate and the adversaries of De Lima in the House had battled themselves to an investigative stalemate, you’re not alone. On the surface, it appears that the public was only regaled with tales of mass killings in Davao and huge amounts of money changing hands in Bilibid, all of which did not even end up with slaps on the wrist against anyone.
In the case of the Senate justice committee, you could argue that the hearings ended the way they should. It was Gordon who actually saved the chamber from getting hijacked by De Lima and her sidekick, Senator Antonio Trillanes, who had probably planned only as far as holding “unli” hearings in order to embarrass Duterte and nothing much beyond that.
After all, as Gordon pointed out sometime during the investigation, the proper way to go after Duterte was the filing of an impeachment complaint against him in the House. Later on, Gordon decided to end the probe because he was convinced that there was no real evidence brought forward against the president by De Lima, Trillanes and their star witness, the now-famous Edgar Matobato.
Of course, Gordon ascended to the justice panel chairmanship when the Senate majority realized that De Lima and Trillanes were taking all of them for a ride. When it became clear that the two senators and their ward did not really want to probe EJKs but were only conducting a pre-emptive strike to divert attention from the House probe that quickly followed in its wake, the De Lima-Trillanes tandem’s plans died on the vine.
And when Gordon ended his probe this week, the message to De Lima and Trillanes was clear: The Senate will no longer allow itself to be used for moving-target investigations against the political enemies of individual senators.
The other message to De Lima and her henchmen (and women) is that, if they wanted to go after Duterte in the Senate, the EJK route has already been closed. Try again next time, with another issue, and good luck.
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Over at the Batasan Pambansa, Umali presided over a similarly sensational series of hearings, generating a lot of sound and fury that ultimately signified less than nothing. Yes, not even a recommendation to file charges against De Lima, the so-called “mother of all drug lords” of Bilibid.
For the life of me, I can’t understand why Umali and his committee could not recommend the charging of De Lima on the basis of even the least grave of her so-called offenses. And there were 22 witnesses brought before Umali and his colleagues, each bearing tale after tale of De Lima’s alleged terrible crimes while she was head of the justice department during the previous administration.
Umali has maintained that all the evidence needed to file charges against De Lima will be contained in the report that his committee will submit to the plenary soon. But his only response to the question of why his panel didn’t recommend any charges was that this was the job of the Executive branch and not of Congress.
If you press Umali further, he will reply that what he presided over was a House investigation in aid of legislation that was not really intended to go after De Lima personally. Umali will even recite each old law that needs to be revised and each new one that needs to be filed as a result of his probe—but he will not directly answer why his committee will not recommend the filing of charges, as is customary at the end such investigations.
Unlike Duterte, De Lima does not enjoy immunity from suit. And any of the charges filed against her would immediately land her in the company of two of her Senate colleagues, who are up to now languishing in jail for offenses that are arguably “lighter” than what De Lima supposedly committed.
When I think about Umali’s refusal to even recommend charges even after three criminal complaints have already been filed outside the House, I recall how he was once a stalwart Liberal Party-mate of De Lima’s. And how his brother, the convicted (but unjailed) Mindoro Gov. Alfonso Umali was one of the closest friends of Noynoy Aquino.
And then I hear Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales —another staunch defender of the Aquino administration who helped De Lima convict the late Chief Justice Renato Corona on trumped-up charges—has also refused to entertain complaints against Leila. There is no evidence against De Lima, said the Ombudsman, who used to file charges against people simply because Noynoy didn’t like the way they looked to him.
Then I wonder if maybe change really hasn’t come. After all, Congress is still a worthless pit of taxpayers’ money and the Yellows are still very much around and protecting each other.
Someone say it ain’t so.