So should we abolish the Senate, Ducky?

Sabi ni Ducky Paredes tungkol sa arrest ni Camilo Sabio:

Executive Order No. 1 issued by then President Corazon Aquino on February 28, 1986 created the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG). E.O. 1 has this provision:

"Sec. 4. (a) No civil action shall lie against the commission or any member thereof for anything done or omitted in the discharge of the task contemplated by this order.

"(b) No member or staff of the commission shall be required to testify or produce in any judicial, legislative or administrative proceeding concerning matters within its official cognizance."

Clearly, then, the order of the Senate for the arrest of Camilo Sabio, Chairman of the PCGG, is in violation of EO 1. Since at the time that EO1 was promulgated, what we had in place was a "revolutionary government," and since EO 1 has not been superseded by any legislation, it is as good and has as much validity as any law passed by both houses of congress and signed by the President.

In its over-eagerness to prove its authority, machismo and powers over the executive, did the Senate perhaps overstep its bounds?

Eto ang sagot ng PDI Editorial:

But Sen. Joker Arroyo, who was Aquino's executive secretary, said this particular provision of the EO was "effectively repealed" by the 1987 Constitution, specifically by the provisions giving Congress the authority to conduct investigations in aid of legislation.

Sabio and his commissioners adamantly maintain that the Aquino EO remains in effect and that it allows them to keep the Senate from looking into the PCGG's affairs. Earlier, they refused to reveal the details of negotiations between the PCGG and businessman Eduardo Cojuangco regarding the shares of stock in San Miguel Corp. purchased with funds taken from the coconut levy during the Ferdinand Marcos era. And they stuck to this position even when the senators punished them for their defiance by threatening not to appropriate anything for the PCGG's operations.

With the PCGG and the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration challenging the authority of the Senate to make the PCGG officials testify, the Supreme Court will have to resolve the issue. But right off it seems inconceivable that the Court would uphold an EO over the fundamental law. The 1987 Constitution clearly confers on Congress the power to conduct inquiries in aid of legislation. And even when that power was not expressly provided in the Charter, such as in the 1935 Constitution, the Court declared that Congress' "power of inquiry -- with process to enforce it -- is an essential and appropriate auxiliary to the legislative function."

More from Malaya:

a review of EO 1 ought to be educational.

EO 1 tasks the PCGG with the recovery of the ill-gotten wealth of President Ferdinand Marcos and his cronies and to sequester/manage the recovered properties.

Additionally EO 1 tasks the PCGG with "the adoption of safeguards to ensure that the above practices (Marcos’ accumulation of ill-gotten wealth) shall not be repeated in any manner under the new government, and the institution of adequate measures to prevent the occurrence of corruption."

How things have changed in 20 years. In the Senate hearings on PHC, witnesses have accused PCGG officials of helping executives "loot" the company. PHC, whose primary source of income used to be dividends from Philcomsat, at one time had assets, mostly in cash, of P800 million. With satellite communication giving way to the latest advances in digital technology, PHC’s operation has been reduced to managing the money market placements of the mountain of cash in its hands.

PHC officials, assisted by the PCGG, turned out to have a reverse Midas touch. Everything they touched turned into dross. PHC’s assets are now placed at only P500 million, about a quarter of which is in the form of an unsecured loan to a cousin of a high company official. The loan is naturally is carried in the books as receivables and the interest from it is religiously booked as accrued income.


Whether the borrower has the capacity to pay has hardly come under the scrutiny of PHC officials and their PCGG monitors.

That’s one of the deals the Senate is looking into. Why PCGG officials would refuse to cooperate is puzzling unless…

A Toyota Camry is only slightly over 1 percent of the P125 million of the questionable loan. The car was reportedly bought by PHC for the use of a PCGG commissioner.

That’s how cheap they now come.

And about the Senate's over-eagerness to prove its "machismo" and "powers" over the executive Ducky, maybe it's about time they did that, and tell the arroyo admin to hell with EO 464 and MC 168. Eto yung sinabi mo dati, diba?

One tends to lose a right or a power that one does not use. Thus, for this reason alone, it was incumbent on our senators to insist that any person – no matter how high up in the Executive Department – has to come forward when the Senate calls him to a hearing.

The first time that the person does not show up, he will be asked for an explanation, which is then submitted to the senators. If the explanation is not acceptable, the person will face immediate arrest. If it is accepted, he is then invited once more. And, this time, he had better come if he knows what’s good for him.

Malacañang has been frustrating the Senate and the Congress as a whole. First, it came up with Executive Order 464, which was, arguably, ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Then, Malacañang came up with Memorandum Circular 168, under which, when called to a congressional inquiry, someone from the Executive Department is supposed to ask for a list of the questions he will be asked and inquire on how his testimony will impact on the legislation (sample requested) that might result from the inquiry "in aid of legislation."

No matter how one looks at it, Memorandum Circular 168 is an impertinence that no senator in his right mind should even countenance. Why the senators let it go unchallenged for so long is probably a symptom of what ails the Senate – it costs too much to win a Senate seat (limiting the possible senators to the richest people in the land) and, probably because our choice has been limited to the very rich, the senators that we have elected of late just do not measure up to the greatness that previous generations of senators displayed under fire.

(Imagine that a city mayor who was invited by the Senate came up with a letter asking the senators to submit their questions to him before he would agree to face them!)

If what we had now were of the kind that we had some years back, would we still be in the present mess we are now?

It is good that the Senate – to a man – stood for their right as senators to call in whoever they want to talk to. Anyone! If they did not insist on this right, surely, over time, they eventually would lose that right and, probably, whatever other powers they now have.
.....

If the Senate does not go out of its way to prove itself, the current ferment over changing our system of governance may just lead to the demise of the Senate as an institution.

More on Ducky Paredes' rants about abolishing the senate. So when did you start parroting the pro-administration line, Ducky?

UPDATE: Ducky's flip-flop regarding his view of the Senate, from supportive to extreme hostility, is breathtaking. This was from last year, October 3, 2005:

Malacanang is only half-right when it charges that Senate President Franklin Drilon and the Senate are engaged in “serial impeachment.”

Impeachment, after all, has many meanings, among which are, according to the dictionary, the following: “to charge a serving government official with serious misconduct while in office, to charge somebody with a crime or misdemeanor, to question somebody’s good character,” or, in the U.K., “to accuse somebody of a crime, especially treason or another crime against the state.”

In each of those definitions, clearly the investigations being undertaken by the Senate on various projects and events could constitute parts of a “serial impeachment.” They want to find out just how badly Gloria Arroyo has ruined this country. And. If she is guilty of anything, whatever it is, by definition, she is impeached!

But, Malacanang is only half-right since what actually impeaches Gloria Arroyo is the truth that she is trying vainly to suppress. There is no attempt to revive the impeachment charges that were effectively killed by Gloria in the House; but there is still a need to find out the truth.

Truth sets the righteous man free and imprisons the liar in her own web of pretensions. While an accomplished liar is tough to catch at all of her intrigues, in the natural course of events, she will inevitably lose all her credibility and will eventually be discounted as someone we should not at all believe. That is the natural fate of a liar and I really have no doubt that that is where the present liar we are all talking about will eventually end up.

Malacanang is engaged in hiding the truth, even to denying it. The Senate and the House want to know the truth. That is where we are at the moment. Truth finds its own way of cutting through all the webs of deception that liars like to weave. Inevitably, the truth (whatever it is) will out.

* * *

Malacanang is suffering from a persecution complex that stems from its guilt over killing the impeachment complaint that should have been pursued to its natural conclusion. This is the reason why Malacanang sees everything as a continuation of the stillborn impeachment charges.

Like some woman who forced an abortion on herself, the face of the fetus she destroyed will forever haunt Gloria.

Thus, it is only natural that Malacanang interprets as an attempt to impeach Gloria Arroyo anything that the Senate or the House now discovers or will look into.

An investigation into the North Rail Project that brings out the truth about this putrid deal with the Chinese government -- a deal that that gives the Chinese all of the marbles and makes the Pinoy a salimpusa in his own country -- is clearly, to the idiots in Malacanang, part of “serial impeachment.” So are investigations into the military’s suspected involvements in electoral fraud and practically anything else – anything at all -- that the Senate may want to investigate.

Can we look into whether the Department of Agrarian Reform is doing the right thing in relation to Hacienda Luisita? Aha, serial impeachment again! Mike Arroyo? Serial Impeachment! Jueteng? Serial impeachment! Seeking too know the truth is, in Malacanang’s view, part of that serial impeachment. Truth has now become an enemy of the state that Gloria Arroyo heads!

What is clear to me is that Malacanang is suffering from a guilty conscience. That is exactly how every child acts when she has done anything that Mother and Father clearly disapprove of.

The crazy accusation that former President Cory Aquino and Senate President Franklin Drilon are out to assassinate Gloria that was delivered for Malacanang by Senator Miriam Santiago can only come from a mind suffering from an advanced stage of mental imbalance.

This is so outlandish that only Miriam gets away with saying it. And, of course, being that the accuser is only Miriam, the charge must be dismissed for what it is: Crazy!

UPDATE: JB Baylon defends the senate:

The Constitution sets up a system of government whereby power is divided between an Executive, Legislative and Judicial branch, and power within the Legislative is divided further between an upper and a lower chamber. When one branch of government – in this case, the Executive – refuses to cooperate with another branch in the latter’s exercise of its functions, you effectively have one branch of government serving to undermine another, if not in fact undermine the whole Constitutional framework.

Of course, critics of the Senate will argue that it is in fact the Senate, in its exercise of its functions, that is effectively undermining another branch (the Executive) and in fact the whole Constitutional framework. The investigations the Senate conducts, the critics continue, are really not legislation-related, but are resorted to by political opponents of the president who could not get at her any other way.

But is this the case?

In the investigation into the fertilizer fund scam, for example, was the Senate doing this as a matter of political vendetta, or to get to the bottom of the situation which had an alleged connection to the contested 2004 elections? And when the prime suspect in the fund scam disappeared – only to reappear in the United States – was it the Senate that was hindering progress or hindering the achievement of good government, or was it the Executive branch?

Similarly, in the impeachment process, was the Senate a hindrance to progress and to the achievement of good government? Or was the nature of the lower house a guarantee that this president would not have to be made accountable to allegations that the 2004 elections were characterized by systematic cheating? The Senate, we must remember, was to act as the court before which the case against the President was to be tried; but before it could get to the upper chamber, the lower house had to act as the fiscal and determine in the first place whether a case actually existed.

While the general public believed a case did exist, the lower house on two separate occasions disagreed. Was good government advanced? And would good government be advanced if only the House survives as the legislature?

I really suspect that there exists some orchestrated effort to get the Philippine Senate, as part and parcel of the effort to get our Constitution changed and a unicameral legislature established. I hope I am wrong, but given all that I see, read and hear, how can I come to a different conclusion?

Read the whole thing. Is he talking about these types of vicious attacks on the Senate from fellow malaya columnist Ducky Paredes?