Topic: Amendment in Senate rules

[simply_red91]

Many times in the past and at present, we have seen that Congressional hearings involving controversial issues often lead to accusations of wrongdoing against an invited resource person or persons. Senator Joker Arroyo is correct and I agree that individual rights of people, enshrined in our Constitution, have been violated in this kind of hearings in aid of legislation. There are Constitutional provisions on Bill of Rights and separation of powers by the Legislative & Judiciary, and many times we have seen that these Constitutional provisions have not been lawfully observed in Congressional hearings when one or any of the resource persons gets accused of wrongdoing by witness or witnesses testifying in hearings in aid of legislation.

Here is a news article: Amendment in Senate rules to protect witnesses rights pushed (Philippine Star)

Amendment in Senate rules to protect witnesses rights pushed
By Christina Mendez (The Philippine Star) Updated February 11, 2011 12:00 AM 

MANILA, Philippines – Sen. Joker Arroyo yesterday pushed for the amendment in the rules of the Senate to protect the rights of witnesses and resource persons during congressional inquiries.

Arroyo said the Senate Blue Ribbon committee had basically adopted the rules under the 1935 Constitution that did not provide for the protection and respect of the rights of persons being summoned, unlike what is provided for under the 1987 Constitution.

“The Rules of the Senate Blue Ribbon committee must be amended. It is long overdue and necessary,” Arroyo said.
Arroyo made the proposal on the heels of accusations that the Senate investigation into the corruption in the military drove former Defense secretary Angelo Reyes to commit suicide.

Arroyo, who had previously chaired the Blue Ribbon committee, admitted the present rules curtail a resource person’s right to defend himself.

“The rules, unfortunately, lend itself to a situation whereby a witness in the course of his testimony can libel a mere resource person invited to appear before the committee, and the hapless resource person, who now finds himself as the accused, would have no right to examine or cross-examine his libeler,” he said.

Arroyo referred to Section 5-e, Article 6 of the rules that provides that a witness and his counsel shall not have the right to examine or cross-examine any witness before the committee or subcommittee but may ask leave to submit to the presiding officer proposed questions which the latter may propound if, in his opinion, the same are necessary for clarificatory purposes.

“The resource person’s right to defend himself on the spot is curtailed. If at all he can exercise it, he does so not because he is entitled to it but by the grace of the chairman who may even disallow it,” Arroyo said.

Arroyo noted the Senate enjoys an “extraordinary privilege” of parliamentary immunity where “no member (of Congress) shall be questioned nor be held liable in any other place for any speech or debate in the Congress or in any committee.”
“A person thus summoned to appear in a legislative inquiry is at the outset at a disadvantage in the face of such uneven or lopsided situation,” Arroyo said.

According to Arroyo, the situation has become a “tradition and practice of the conduct of legislative inquiries that has developed and evolved over the years.”

Arroyo said he wanted to amend the rules to allow resource persons to defend themselves during the grilling.

He said any amendment to the rules should not be perceived as impairing the power of the Blue Ribbon committee to conduct the inquiry in aid of legislation or in the exercise of its oversight functions.

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile said he is leaving it up to the senators to decide on the manner they would throw the questions during congressional inquiries.
“We will moderate our conduct in the hearing matters that are to be heard in aid of legislation but it is all addressed to the individual senators to frame their questions, to address their questions and use language that could not offend unnecessarily the dignity and self-respect of the resource person,” Enrile said.
For his part, Enrile said his style of questioning during Senate hearings is patterned after a strategy to cross-examine witnesses like in a trial court.

Sen. Manuel Villar Jr. expressed support for the need to amend the rules on congressional inquiries.
Villar said he has been cautious himself when he asks questions during inquiries to ensure that the resource persons’ rights are respected.
“We do not need to humiliate the person invited to appear in the hearing,” he stressed.
Villar though called on the Blue Ribbon committee to continue the investigation on the issue of corruption in the military.

Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. said the House of Representatives has been generally fair and objective in the conduct of congressional inquiries.
Belmonte said the House leadership has been reminding lawmakers on the proper conduct in questioning resource persons to avoid possible abuses and trampling of rights of the witnesses.
“We’ve been trying to temper that (grilling of witnesses),” Belmonte said.
He said the House has been updating its rules on congressional probes since July last year when the 15th Congress opened.
Belmonte, however, refused to compare the manner in which the House and the Senate conduct their respective inquiries.

Ilocos Norte Rep. Rodolfo Fariñas, vice chairman of the House committee on justice, earlier revealed plans to draw up new rules to govern the conduct of congressional inquiries and protect the rights of resource persons.

The move to come up with tighter rules on congressional investigations came as more lawmakers lamented how public hearings are used to destroy the reputation and humiliate resource persons leaving no issue being resolved.

[yamatoyukihiro]

ok lang din na magkaroon ng amendment since may mga unnecessary din talaga na remarks paminsan na nabibitawan na nakakahumiliate nga. hindi nga lang ako nagaaggree sa last part na sinabing dahil sa mga ganung panghihiya kaya walang nareresolba na kaso. 

[simply_red91]

The link to the above article is http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=656321&publicationSubCategoryId=63

Here is a related article:
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20110211-319620/Joker-wants-Senate-to-level-field-for-resource-persons

Joker wants Senate to level field for resource persons
By Christian V. Esguerra
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 04:28:00 02/11/2011

Filed Under: Military, Graft & Corruption, Congress
MANILA, Philippines—Did the late Angelo Reyes know what was coming when he attended a Senate committee hearing on military corruption?

Sen. Joker Arroyo Thursday asked his colleagues to amend the rules of the blue ribbon committee to level the field for resource persons such as Reyes, who suddenly found himself in the hot seat at a hearing intended to grill someone else.
Arroyo, a former blue ribbon chair, said people showing up at the committee’s hearings were put at a disadvantage given the rule that prevented them from answering an accusation directly.

The rule says: “A witness and his counsel shall not have the right to examine or cross-examine any witness before the committee or subcommittee, but may ask to submit to the presiding officer proposed questions which the latter may propound if, in his opinion, the same are necessary for clarificatory purposes.”

Arroyo said the rules “unfortunately, lend (themselves) to a situation whereby a witness in the course of his testimony can libel a mere resource person invited to appear before the committee, and the hapless resource person, who now finds himself as the accused, would have no right to examine or cross-examine his libeler.”

He said the resource person’s right to defend himself on the spot was curtailed. “If at all he can exercise it, he does so not because he is entitled to it but by the grace of the chair who may even disallow it.”
Arroyo said a person summoned to appear in a legislative inquiry was “at the outset at a disadvantage in the face of such uneven or lopsided situation.”

In the first and only Senate hearing on military corruption that he attended on Jan. 27, Reyes repeatedly begged the committee chair, Sen. Teofisto Guingona III, to be allowed to directly question his accuser, ex-military budget officer George Rabusa.
The hearing was supposed to tackle the plea bargain between former military comptroller Carlos Garcia and government prosecutors.

Surprise witness

But Sen. Jinggoy Estrada presented a surprise witness in Rabusa, who alleged that Reyes had received a P50-million send-off gift (pabaon) when he retired in 2001 on top of a P5-million monthly fund for personal use when he was the military chief of staff.

Reyes denied the allegation and asked Rabusa, through the committee chair: “Can I ask Colonel Rabusa, if, during the time that I was chief of staff, if I became greedy? Did I ask him for anything? Did I demand money from him, officially or unofficially?”

Compared with Rabusa’s lengthy testimony, which dominated the hearing, Reyes got very little opportunity to respond.

“The rules of the Senate blue ribbon committee must be amended. It is long overdue and necessary,” Arroyo said, noting that the rules did not necessarily reflect the constitutional provision that says “the rights of persons appearing in or affected by such legislative inquiries shall be respected.”

Untouchable

Arroyo said senators were also virtually untouchable in committee proceedings, given the constitutional provision proscribing that “no member (of Congress) shall be questioned nor be held liable in any other place for any speech or debate in the Congress or in any committee thereof.”

Negatively phrased, a senator or a representative cannot be questioned at all or held to account in any way for any utterance he makes on the floor of the Senate or the House of Representatives or even at a committee hearing, Arroyo said.

“The broadcast or publication of this same utterance enjoys an identical immunity. The Senate is well aware of this extraordinary privilege,” he said.
At the Senate committee hearing, a fuming Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV shouted and interrupted Reyes, who complained that his reputation was being besmirched by Rabusa.

The whistle-blower himself had admitted pocketing amounts from a military slush fund, but did not say how much and hardly apologized for it. Instead, Rabusa declared at the outset that he wanted to become a state witness

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Here is interesting article on the topic: http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20110211-319629/Reyes-Ides-of-March

Reyes’ Ides of March
By Amando Doronila
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 05:25:00 02/11/2011

FORMER ARMED Forces Chief of Staff Angelo Reyes was a doomed man as soon as he walked into the Senate blue ribbon committee hearing on Jan. 27, days before he shot himself in the chest last Tuesday. It was a moment when he was most vulnerable in his public life—his Ides of March, a day of treachery and of unbridled character assassination in the annals of Philippine congressional investigations carried out as “in aid of legislation.”

Once the most powerful man in the country as AFP chief of staff,  who toppled President Joseph Estrada in January 2001, by leading the military in withdrawing support from the corrupt Estrada government, Reyes walked in absolutely unprotected to testify as a “resource person” in the blue ribbon investigation of alleged corruption over military funds.

The investigation had nothing to do with him, at the beginning. It was about another case involving Carlos Garcia, the former AFP comptroller accused of plunder who had struck a plea bargain agreement with prosecutors.

Reyes had no premonition what was in store for him at the Senate hearing, although it is common knowledge that congressional investigations are the abattoir where legislators abuse invited guests, insult them, humiliate them, browbeat them, bully them and rob them of their dignity; an arena where witnesses are exposed to merciless trial by publicity, where all pretensions to due process of law and fair play are thrown to the four winds; where legislators turn into accusers, prosecutors, judges and juries—in a procedure more cruel and arbitrary than the Holy Inquisition.

It was his lowest moment of vulnerability. He had retired from public service, especially the military, his power base, and was no longer a Cabinet minister, a position from which he could fight back.

Reyes was dragged into the plunder case when retired Lt. Col. George Rabusa, a former military budget officer, testified that Reyes and two other former AFP chiefs received huge “send-off” money when they retired. Rabusa said Reyes was given up to P50 million as “pabaon” when he retired.

Reyes was invited following allegations made by Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV that Garcia, who is facing plunder charges, was just protecting a “powerful” person. Rabusa, who admitted to receiving cuts from the money, said the giving of send-off money had become a tradition in the AFP. Reyes denied the allegations, saying he was never involved in the preparation of the funds.

Senate President Pro Tempore Jinggoy Estrada presented Rabusa as a “surprise witness,” prompting Reyes to accuse Estrada of getting back at him for withdrawing military support from his father, then President Estrada. In his opening statement at the hearing, Reyes claimed that Rabusa, who was comptroller during his term as AFP chief, had turned whistle-blower and even dragged his family into the alleged pay-offs to ingratiate himself with the Senate and become a state witness.

Retired Commodore Rex Robles, a confidant of Reyes, claimed that the general just inherited a system.

The suicide of Reyes highlighted another sensitive issue: the abuses arising from the inquisitorial manner of congressional investigations. Reyes was repeatedly scolded by Estrada for insisting that he be allowed to directly question Rabusa. “Can I ask Colonel Rabusa, if, during my time as chief of staff, I became greedy? Did I ask money from him, officially or unofficially?”

Estrada cut him short: “This is not an issue of greed. The issue is, if you collected money, if you were corrupt as chief of the Armed Forces.”

“Who cares if you were generous?” Trillanes weighed in to join the gang-up, when Reyes complained that his reputation was being attacked. He angrily told Reyes: “If you are so concerned about your name, you should have fixed yourself in office.”

Trillanes could hardly conceal his gloating. “This is the time of reckoning,” he said. “You better find very good lawyers.”

The unkindest cut came from Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, who described Reyes as “one of the greatest morons in history,” if he knew nothing about military corruption under his watch.

Reyes was completely devastated and isolated in the Senate. No one defended him. His former underlings in the military were betraying him. Reyes later told Robles, “There’s nothing I can do. They are determined to crush me.”

In an interview with the Inquirer, days before he committed suicide, Reyes talked about a “smear campaign” against him and how it had taken a toll on his wife and children. “I can take everything they say against me, but not against my family. They should not be dragging my family into this controversy.”

He said Rebusa, who was his compadre, was being used by Jinggoy Estrada to wage political vendetta.
From the accounts of his friends and family, there is no doubt that Reyes was crushed by shocking testimonies in the Senate.

When Julius Caesar went to the Roman Senate on the Ides of March (March 15 on the Roman calendar), senators, fearing the threat of his dictatorship, ganged up on him and stabbed him 23 times. In the Philippine Senate, any citizen summoned to testify faces the grave risk of character assassination.

What drove Reyes to take his life is a matter of conjecture. Whether the inquisition in the Senate pushed him to the edge is hard to say. Senators are washing their hands of any responsibility for his death.