De Lima to peers: Assert const’l powers; don’t let officials skip Senate hearings

Senator Leila de Lima has urged Congress to asserts its onstitutional power and condemn the October 4 Memorandum issued by the Office of the President, directing all officials and employees of the Executive Department to ignore the Senate blue ribbon committee’s hearings on the irregularities in the Covid-19-related purchases.

The detained senator filed proposed Senate Resolution 931 expressing the sense of the Senate condemning the memorandum for being violative of the Senate’s power of legislative inquiry and the people’s right to information.

“It is imperative that this Senate assert its constitutional powers and condemn the practices that disrespect and weaken our institution, lest we establish a precedent that would diminish this chamber’s very role in our democracy,” she said.

In his public address last September 14, President Rodrigo Duterte claimed that some resource persons, especially those coming from the Executive Department, attended the hearings for hours but were not given a chance to give their testimonies.

In the same address, he said, “this time, I will require every Cabinet member to clear with me any invitation and if I think, that he will be called for walang silbi [no purpose] except to harass, to be berated in front of the republic, eh hintuin ko na yan at pagbawalan ko na [I will bar them from attending].”

On October 4, Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea issued a memorandum providing that “the President has DIRECTED all officials and employees of the Executive Department to no longer appear before or attend the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee hearings effective immediately.”

De Lima lamented how the memorandum is replete with what she called “constitutional infirmities.”

“Foremost of which is the violation of the authority of the Senate to conduct inquiries in aid of legislation,” she said.

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Source: Latest Politics News Today (Politics.com.ph)