Zubiri: SC decision didn’t diminish Senate’s power

MANILA, Philippines — Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri yesterday downplayed the impact of the Supreme Court (SC)’s decision denying the Senate’s petition challenging the constitutionality of former president Rodrigo Duterte’s directive to bar executive officials from attending Senate hearings.

“It is my position that the ruling does not in any way diminish or disturb long-established doctrines on the legislative’s power to conduct inquiries in aid of legislation,” Zubiri said.

The SC denied the petition for certiorari and prohibition filed by the Senate, which challenged the constitutionality of Duterte’s memorandum barring executive officials from attending hearings conducted by the Senate Blue Ribbon committee on the budget utilization of the Department of Health (DOH).

Through a memorandum in October 2021, Duterte, through then executive secretary Salvador Medialdea, prohibited executive officials and employees from attending the Senate hearings on the government’s disbursement of COVID-19 funds.

Zubiri clarified that the Senate “respects the Court’s decision and the body will discuss how to move forward with this.”

He said they would “certainly study the decision and use it to strengthen our internal rules while preserving our constitutional mandate.”

The Senate president explained that the SC dismissed the case on procedural and not on substantive grounds – it considered the filing of the case as premature, saying that the jurisdictional issue raised by the executive branch should have been first resolved by the Senate using its own rules.

“We note that the decision recognizes and upholds the inherence and breadth of the power of Congress to conduct inquiries in aid of legislation, provided that the inquiry is material or necessary to legislation,” he said.

For former Senate president Vicente Sotto III, the SC decision only supported the Senate as a co-equal branch of the executive, maintaining that he has yet to read the complete SC decision.

“While the SC denied the Senate’s petition, its decision only buttressed the independence of the Senate as a co-equal branch of the executive by declaring that the Senate rules should be followed in resolving matters within its committee’s jurisdiction,” Sotto said.

“Also, as already pronounced by the SC in the case of Senate vs. Ermita in 2006, the Congress has the right to compel the appearance of officials to hearings in aid of legislation, which the Senate used as a basis in its petition and still the case law on the matter,” he added.

Dissenting opinion

Meanwhile, Associate Justice Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa asserted that the SC should not have dismissed the petition challenging the constitutionality of a Duterte’s 2021 memorandum.

In his dissenting opinion, Caguioa said the high court should not resort to “technicalities to conveniently justify” the dismissal of the petition and “ultimately, evade its obligation to be the final arbiter on questions involving the validity of the legislative or executive’s exercise of its authority.”

In the SC ruling, penned by Associate Justice Amy Lazaro-Javier, the high court found that there is no actual case or controversy ripe for judicial adjudication, considering that the Senate itself has its own rules in resolving committee jurisdiction challenges and should have resorted to that before bringing the case to the SC.

The ruling also found that the memorandum posed no immediate or threatened injury to the powers of the Senate.

Caguioa argued that the SC’s power of judicial review is based on its duty to settle actual controversies and determine whether there has been grave abuse of discretion on the part of any branch or instrumentality of the government.

“More than a power or authority to settle disputes, the court has a duty to fulfill its role in the system of checks and balances,” he said.

He added that it is “completely illogical” to claim that there was no immediate or threatened injury to the powers of the Senate with the issuance of the memorandum, since executive branch officials attended the previous hearings prior to the order.

“I therefore disagree with the pretextual dismissal of the petition because of the supposed absence of an actual case or controversy before the court. That is simply not the case,” Caguioa said.

“By dismissing the petition on the ground of prematurity, the court deliberately closed its eyes to the public statements of the President prior to and contemporaneous with the issuance of the subject memorandum,” he added.

The associate justice also argued that it is a “trivial and vain exercise” to require the Senate to rule on its own on the jurisdictional challenge before filing a petition before the SC, saying the Senate’s petition mainly questioned the constitutionality of the memorandum.

“This bone of contention presented by the Senate is already beyond and above a mere assertion of its jurisdiction to conduct inquiries and to compel the executive officials to again attend its hearings. This time, the Senate is already questioning the constitutionality of the action of a co-equal branch,” he said.

“When there is a perceived encroachment by one branch of the government on the mandate and functions of the other, there is no other arbiter than the court itself,” he added.

Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo and 12 other SC justices concurred with the ruling penned by Javier, all of whom are Duterte’s appointees.

Caguioa and Senior Associate Justice Marvic Leonen, who were appointed by Duterte’s predecessor, the late former president Benigno Aquino III, issued dissenting opinions. — Daphne Galvez