Panel report on flood mess sought

LEGAL practitioners have filed a petition with the Supreme Court (SC) seeking to compel the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee to officially release a draft partial report on its investigation into alleged anomalies in national flood control projects.

Petitioners Eldrige Marvin B. Aceron, Sikini C. Labastilla, and Purificacion Bartolome-Bernabe argued that the Senate’s refusal to disclose the document violates the constitutional right to information and that its invocation of deliberative process privilege is no longer valid.

The lawyers asserted that Committee Chairman Senator Panfilo “Ping” M. Lacson effectively waived this privilege through three weeks of detailed public disclosures regarding the report’s evidentiary basis and specific recommendations between Feb. 4 and 23.

“The Senate cannot use Chairman Lacson’s public statements to build public confidence in the investigation — as it clearly has —while simultaneously invoking privilege to deny citizens the document those statements describe,” part of the petition read.

“The right to information is not a gift from the state to the citizen. It is a guarantee the citizen holds against the state. It is time this Honorable Court enforced it,” the petitioners added.

In response, Mr. Lacson maintained that the draft remains a work in progress and is not subject to court intervention.

“What I know, and this is in consultation with a recently retired SC justice and an incumbent Court of Appeals justice is that matters that are ministerial in nature are not subject to mandamus and/or certiorari,” he said in a statement.

“This, aside from the fact that the draft partial committee report, unless adopted in plenary with all the amendments and finally approved by the body, is just a draft,” Mr. Lacson added.

According to the petitioners, the draft report names Senators Francis Joseph “Chiz” G. Escudero, Joel J. Villanueva, and Jose “Jinggoy” P. Ejercito Estrada, Jr. as subjects of recommended criminal and administrative charges.

Mr. Lacson previously assured the public and the Office of the Ombudsman that the recommendations were evidence-driven, based on testimonial and documentary materials gathered during hearings into systemic corruption, kickbacks, and ghost projects.

The filing also flagged the withdrawal of signatures by Senators Juan Miguel F. Zubiri, Joseph Victor G. Ejercito, and Sherwin T. Gatchalian. The petitioners also noted a “severe” conflict of interest involving Mr. Ejercito, who chairs the Ethics committee handling a complaint against Mr. Escudero while simultaneously withdrawing his signature from the Blue Ribbon report.

The petitioners are seeking an urgent temporary restraining order to prevent the Senate from altering or destroying versions of the draft that contain original signatures. They are also asking the High Court to order the three senators to provide written explanations for their signature withdrawals and to compel the release of the “full, complete, and unredacted” document as it existed in early February. — Erika Mae P. Sinaking