THE 55-member House committee on justice will divide the house to decide on whether or not to allow the showing of the sex video allegedly involving Senator Leila De Lima and her alleged ex-lover Ronnie Dayan.
The decision to hold a vote was reached after Oriental Mindoro Rep. Reynaldo Umali, panel chairman, could not decide if he would allow the sex tape to be made public, even as Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez said it should be shown.
“The Speaker wanted it shown but some lawmakers and women’s groups are lobbying hard against it. So I think I would leave it up to the panel members to decide. We will divide the house,” Umali told radio dzBB on Sunday.
Umali said he was told it was the drug lord Jaybee Sebastian, not Dayan, in the video, however.
He added that he would require the Justice department to send the video to experts in the National Bureau of Investigation first for authentication by experts.
Some 34 of 86 women legislators submitted a letter to Alvarez, opposing the showing of the video. Some 10 congressmen also signed the petition.
Dinagat Island Rep. Arlene Kaka Bag-ao said the letter was meant to stop the House from being demeaned, considering that lawmakers would be violating several laws in having the video shown.
Bag-ao said the sex video was irrelevant to the ongoing probe, which seeks to find out why the illegal drugs trade proliferated in the maximum security prison of the New Bilibid Prison when De Lima was Justice secretary.
Umali said the hearing on Thursday would be limited to discussion on what was germane or not.
“If we limit it to what is germane, that has got to be between De Lima and Dayan. But there was an insinuation that the other person is Sebastian. Then it should have been done inside the NBP. Outside of that would make it difficult to consider it germane,” Umali said.
Umali also said he wanted to know if the video was authentic.
“For all you know, on these two issues alone, it would be moot, so why are we wasting time arguing about those?” Umali told dzBB.
Umali said the panel hearing was moved from Oct. 5 to Oct. 6 because of the intense debate in the plenary on the national budget on Wednesday.
He said aside from Dayan and Sebastian, who was recuperating in the hospital after he was stabbed in a prison riot, those who were summoned by the panel were Joenel Sanchez of the Presidential Security Group, who was a former security aide of De Lima; members of the Dec. 15, 2014 NBP raiding team, including Chief Inspector Reginald Villasanta, former chief of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission under the Office of the Executive Secretary in the previous administration; and former Bureau of Corrections chief Franklin Bucayo.
Umali said as of Sunday, Dayan could still not be found.
Bag-ao said as of Friday, there were already 35 women legislators who signed the petition and 13 congressmen who joined the women.
“I am a member of the justice panel and I would definitely raise the issue before the committee. I will vigorously oppose the showing of the video,” Bag-ao told dzBB in a separate interview.
Umali said the Thursday hearing may be the last to be held by the committee after he said there were already enough information that had been gathered to enable Congress to come up with legislation that would help the government in its campaign against drugs and the reforms to be enforced in the prisons nationwide.
In Thursday’s hearing, Umali said he would allow the two camps to argue on the need to show or not to show the sex video.
“There are lawmakers who favor the showing of the sex video. There are those who would object. As committee chair, that is my role to conduct orderly proceedings so we would probably divide the house. And we will make the decision. So I will have to give way to the body to make the decision,” Umali said.
“In the meanwhile, let’s play it by ear on what will happen and hopefully people will come to their senses—their sense of dignity, sense of decency,” Umali said.
Umali said the panel was also considering the warning made by Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III that if the House would show the video, their counterparts should be prepared for a “political backlash.”
He agreed there might be a possible backlash but added: “We have a job to do.”
The women legislators said they wanted the Speaker to accord De Lima the appropriate inter-parliamentary courtesy.
Buhay party-list Rep. Lito Atienza said Sunday the House hearings should stop and let Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II file appropriate charges against De Lima in court.
Congress must pay its attention on its legislative agenda while letting Aguirre do his job, he said.
After two consecutive hearings in September, the party-list lawmaker said he is convinced of the existence of the illegal drug trade inside the national penitentiary during De Lima’s stint as Justice secretary.
He called on Umali to end the probe and recommend the needed legislation to reform the prison system.
Supreme Court Associate Justice Marvic Leonen said he opposed the House plan to show the alleged sex video.
In a series of posts on his personal Twitter account, Leonen cited laws and statutes prohibiting recording and showing of videos of sexual acts, such as “Republic Act 9995 or Anti-Photo and Video Voyeurism Act of 2009,” with the hashtags “#everywoman,” “#everyman” and “#everyone.”
The hashtag #everywoman spread rapidly last week as internet users expressed their opposition to the House plan to play the sex video.
Leonen, former dean of the University of Philippines College of Law, also quoted a relevant provision of the 1987 Constitution—Article 2, Section 11—in a separate tweet. The provision states that “the State values the dignity of every human person and guarantees full respect for human right.”
Of the 15 current Supreme Court justices, only Leonen keeps a Twitter account with over 14,500 followers where he has been actively posting.
Women journalists also spoke out against Alvarez’s and Aguirre’s plan to show the alleged sex video.
“We are incensed by this cavalier threat by the Speaker and the Secretary of Justice to expose the sexual proclivities, real or imagined, of any person,” said Women Writers in Media, a group of women journalists.
In a statement, Ma. Ceres P. Doyo, Marites Vitug, Neni Sta. Romana Cruz, Fanny Garcia, Sol Juvida, Sylvia L. Mayuga, Jo-Ann Q. Maglipon, Fe Panaligan Koons, Gemma Nemenzo, Paulynn Sicam, Rochit Tañedo, Criselda Yabes, Karina Africa Bolasco and Elvira Mata said “slut-shaming is an assault on all women” and said it was “cruel, despicable, and in this case, unparliamentary.”
“It is, at its core, an assault on all women. Yes, on all of us. Your very own wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, cousins, and friends,” they said.
As journalists and as women, we are enraged by this virtual rape of De Lima by our lawmakers.
“We are scandalized by this attack on her basic constitutional right to dignity and privacy,” they said.
“All of you who smack your lips with delight at the thought of exhibiting a sex video to the world to shame a woman, are you not descending to the level of perverts? Yes, perverts,” they also said.
They noted that the plan defiles a person who has not been proven to be in the right or in the wrong.
“And, even if the person were eventually found to be in the wrong, what can that person’s sex life have to do with the case under investigation, other than to shame the accused, titillate the public, and herald the powers of a speaker and a Justice secretary? “ they asked. With Macon Ramos-Araneta