A P16 billion attempt to overprice?

Among the principles of law that students are fascinated with is parliamentary immunity. It is also known as legislative immunity. For us ordinary citizens, this principle simply means that a legislator is free from prosecution for any speech he delivers in the halls of legislature when in session or even in committee meetings. No criminal liability attaches to the lawmaker for statements he makes in congress. He cannot be sued in court no matter how scurrilous a libel he utters during sessions.

To lawyers, this is known as the “speech or debate clause” of the constitution and for us, the teachings came forth in the case involving the nasty language of the late Boholano representative Bartolome Cabangbang. The Supreme Court said that it refers to utterances made by congressmen and senators in the performance of their official functions, such as speeches delivered, statements made, or votes cast in the halls of Congress while the same is in session as well as bills introduced in Congress in the discharge of their duties. This parliamentary immunity is indispensably necessary so that legislators shall enjoy the fullest liberty of speech and be protected from the resentment of everyone, however powerful, to whom the exercise of that liberty may occasion offense.

Senator Panfilo Lacson invoked this legislative privilege the other day when he declared that the senators “were had” when General Carlito Galvez and other supposed resource persons were not forthright and honest in the senate inquiry on the vaccine program of the government. The speech itself could have been better structured but the pressure of time in writing it understandably had its toll. But, the substance was more important. Senator Lacson revealed that the vaccine produced by Sinovac, a company in Communist China, was “the best and worst defended” among the list of at least seven brands that the government is trying to procure.

The senator spoke about the low efficacy of the Red Chinese-made vaccine. This was where the speech construction could have been more emphatic. Diluted in so many of his words is the fact that the efficacy rate of this Communist Chinese medicine is below the qualification standard of the World Health Organization. In other words, it is not effective against the virus and yet Galvez, Duque and this Duterte administration are bent spending billions of our money to buy it.

There were so many data that Senator Lacson wrote in his speech on the cost of Sinovac. His earnestness in getting down to the correct figures was spawned by the paucity of the information Galvez gave. Lacson sensed that the former general was dishonest. The senator had to juxtapose the data he apparently gathered from foreign sources and the health department. He fumed to hear of a Galvez dealing with private Chinese citizen named Helen Yang. In the end, the legislator computed an over price of more than sixteen billion pesos. In order to get everyone’s attention, I will write it in figures -- P16,000,000,000. While in his privileged speech Lacson described this caper as an attempt (yes, just an attempt) to misuse public funds, he uncovered the brazenness of the seeming corrupt plan. Thanks to this speech and debate clause of the constitution, I have come to hear a lurid aspect of this present administration.