WITH 20 affirmative votes and one negative vote, the Senate on Monday approved on third and final reading a bill seeking to allow the head of the Philippine National Police and the director and deputy director of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group to issue subpoenas on cases under investigation.
The measure was authored and sponsored by Senator Panfilo Lacson, chairman of the Senate Committee on public order and dangerous drugs.
In the House, Rep. Rodolfo Albano said only the courts and the legislature could issue subpoenas.
He said the measure would put the PNP and the CIDG in a class of their own.
Rep. Harry Roque said the bill “will give the PNP coercive powers to compel attendance in its investigation. I’m for it.”
Lacson said that when the Philippine Constabulary and the Integrated National Police were merged to establish the PNP under Republic Act 6975, otherwise known as the “DILG Act of 1990,” most of the powers due the agency were carried over except for the subpoena powers.
“It seems absurd that the Criminal Investigation Unit, now known as the CIDG, with a mandate to undertake monitoring, investigation and prosecution of all crimes of such magnitude and extent as to indicate their commission by highly placed or professional syndicates and organization, has lost its subpoena powers,” Lacson said in his sponsorship speech.
Lacson, a former PNP chief, said it would be difficult for the PNP’s investigative arm to complete a thorough investigation with the removal of its subpoena powers.
Without the subpoena powers, he pointed out, investigations would be incomplete and government resources would be wasted.
Senate President Pro Tempore Franklin Drilon said there was “every reason to grant such authority to the PNP chief who has control and supervision over lower-ranked officials, like the director and the deputy director of the CIDG.”
Lacson and Drilon agreed that the subpoena powers should be limited to the PNP Chief, the CIDG director and deputy director and that those powers may not be delegated to other officers.