senator bato says he wants a fourth hearing — isa-subpoena na niya si paquito ochoa, executive secretary ni PNoy in 2012, na dalawang beses nang naipatawag ngunit busy daw noong una, at may covid naman nitong ikalawa.
ang tanong, can sen bato be stopped from holding one more hearing?
at the last one, senators jinggoy and chiz and senate prez migs mismo were quite obviously unhappy that the hearings were being used as platform for a jonathan morales who insists that the PDEA document attributed to him that someone leaked to the hitad vlogger is authentic. but jinggoy chiz and migs insist right back that morales is not exactly a credible source, given his history, which decidedly does not inspire confidence that he’s telling the truth at any time. parang he has his own agenda, the way he’s been pandering to both the senate and the hitad vlogger. and really, what does jinggoy’s credibility (or lack of it) have to do with morales’s credibility as reluctant whistleblower. loose cannons get boring, too.
Dela Rosa is persistent. He said that as chairman of the Senate committee on public order, he has the prerogative on the matter, including scheduling one more hearing next week.
“I am asking my colleagues and the Senate President that even though it’s just a motu propio investigation, [allow me] one more time, it will only be one more,” he said. https://www.rappler.com/philippines/bato-dela-rosa
my fearless forecast, given the political temper of the times: mananaig ang interes ng nakaupo. no 4th hearing.
of course i’m half-hoping i’m wrong, na sen bato prevails, and exec.sec ochoa either shows up, or does not. #abangan
KIT TATAD: “Investigating Bongbong”
From all indications, de la Rosa is determined to pursue his inquiry to see whether there is enough evidence against Marcos. This is not as simple as it appears. The issue here is not simply the credibility or lack of credibility of the witness. The real issue here is whether the Congress has the right or the duty to investigate a sitting president outside of the impeachment process. Under our Constitution, no sitting president can be investigated by Congress unless and until he has been impeached by the House of Representatives, and is now being tried by the Senate impeachment court. In the case at bar, the alleged offense is supposed to have been committed when Marcos Jr. was a senator, but he is now the president, who is immune from suit for any criminal offense.
We dealt with this problem once before, in 2000, when then-president Estrada was accused of bribery and corruption by Ilocos Sur governor Luis “Chavit” Singson, and Sen. Aquilino “Nene” Pimentel Jr., as chairman of the Senate blue ribbon committee, rushed to investigate the charges as soon as they were repeated in the Senate by Senate Minority Leader Teofisto Guingona Jr. As Senate majority leader and chairman of the committee on rules at the time, I tried to remind Pimentel that the Constitution did not allow him to investigate.
But I was rudely brushed aside, and among my colleagues, only the late senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago, a former trial judge and a constitutional expert, supported my position. The rest of this is history: Estrada was impeached, but the prosecutors walked out of the impeachment trial when they could not get what they wanted, and Erap was ousted in a judicially instigated coup by a small mob of pro-Gloria Arroyo supporters.
Marcos Jr. has the choice of rereading to the de la Rosa committee the constitutional provision on the separation of powers, or taking a chance that what happened to Erap would not happen to him.
https://www.manilatimes.net/2024/05/17/opinion/investigating-bongbong/1947009
[…] surprise, Sen. Bato got his 4th PDEA hearing last Monday (so much for my fearless forecast), and former LizaMarcos-law-partner Paquito Ochoa made an appearance and denied having anything to […]